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Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

(www.theatlantic.com)
976 points brgross | 8 comments | 08 Apr 25 15:11 UTC | HN request time: 1.751s | source | bottom
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brgross ◴[08 Apr 25 15:11 UTC] No.43622720[source]▶
I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!)

The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles!

HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone.

FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal.

This happened quick and I feel very lucky. The HN community of solvers keeps me honest with much helpful technical and editorial feedback. I love it all -- here or at mayor@bracket.city

T[Tom who befriended a volleyball] HN

PS my original post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542

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1. NobodyNada ◴[08 Apr 25 16:38 UTC] No.43623702[source]▶
That's awesome, congrats! I had a lot of fun solving today's puzzle.

One minor bit of feedback/request: maybe I'm too spoiled by code editors, but it would be nice to have a visual aid for identifying matching brackets -- maybe colorizing matching pairs ("rainbow brackets"), and/or a click-to-highlight feature that highlights the entire contents of a pair of braces for you. I felt like I was spending a lot of time trying to count bracket pairs, which made it hard to keep track of where I was in the puzzle and was less interesting than trying to solve the wordplay.

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2. smw ◴[08 Apr 25 17:27 UTC] No.43624272[source]▶
Yes! Please!
3. linsomniac ◴[08 Apr 25 18:08 UTC] No.43624762[source]▶
Agreed about the matching brackets, I had sent that suggestion to mayor@ a couple weeks ago, so maybe once this craziness settles down...
4. Eric_WVGG ◴[08 Apr 25 18:32 UTC] No.43625032[source]▶
If the game never has more than three nested levels, you could use [square], then {curly}, then <angle> brakest. You could even do a fourth level with (parenthetical) brackets, but that would mean you couldn't use parenthesis in clues.
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5. echelon ◴[08 Apr 25 19:10 UTC] No.43625441[source]▶
Seconded. This would be super useful.

Amazing game!

6. m0d0nne11 ◴[08 Apr 25 19:18 UTC] No.43625508[source]▶
Nice work - congratulations! ...and, yes - I had to paste the text of today's game into vi so I could use the bracket matching to untangle the clues... :)

Also, I would make it more obvious which clues are eligible for solving at the moment rather than penalizing us for not being able to discern which ones are.

7. esperent ◴[09 Apr 25 06:02 UTC] No.43629309[source]▶
I think colors, or even shades of grey for accessibility, would be better for non-coders. Maybe even just put the current bracket in bold.
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8. brookst ◴[09 Apr 25 11:20 UTC] No.43630929{3}[source]▶
Side note: colors are fine for accessibility, as long as you think in HSL space and vary at least two of those dimensions. As a red/green colorblind person, bright red versus dark green is fine, as is pink versus bright saturated green. No need to go grey.