Show HN: Bracket City – A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle
bracket.cityHi hn - I co-own a diner where I co-host a puzzle night that is kind of like a diner-themed escape room. At the last one, I made a puzzle that was crossword-like clues nested in brackets. People at the diner seemed to like it, so I resolved to make it a real game and Bracket City was born: https://bracket.city.
I love crosswords, so it's been fun to write crossword-like clues:
[it contains MSG]
[___ <=== you ===> hard place]
Still working on a lot of features/fixes. I'm aware that scoring based on keystrokes is pretty unfair, especially given not-ideal custom keyboard on mobile! Still thinking through the best solution there.
Also fun fact: if you sign up for the email list, you get a special "Word of the Day" email written by James Somers (of https://jsomers.net). The only way to sign up for the email list is to finish a puzzle!
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(answer key: NYC, ROCK)
Pretty fun overall.
I really think it at least needs to give you the number of letters though. Some of the clues get really tough since you don't get any information - either number of letters or a few "given" letters from other clues like you get in crosswords.
Especially if you get "penalized" for keystrokes - there are some clues that end up as a lot of random guessing because so many things can solve them.
A good example - on Feb 19; I was guessing "New York" and "New York City" over and over because I was pretty convinced that's what it was. When I finally had to reveal it, finding out it wanted "NYC" was pretty frustrating.
Perhaps the number of letters should be another hint in addition to the first letter. However, I think it's quite obvious that the answer is a TLA when the clue is in the TLA format.
This is very cool. My only complaint is I should be able to go up a level. e.g. I saw "unwelcome in a China shop" and instantly knew it was "bull" but still had to work through a few more clues before I got there.
have gone back and forth on this point -- so far I've decided that outer brackets should be a hint that guides on you inner brackets, but that you can't skip any clues
but I hear you!
Two more suggestions after playing one or two more:
- There should be an easier way to know which brackets match.
- This game would probably be more fun with a 2-dimensional visualization of the layers. It would be more fun to see you knock off layers and see the progress you've made.
Same here with the smurfs. I get the idea, but it becomes a bit awkward sometimes when the only reason you can't skip a clue is that the script won't let you.
I think it might be because this format puts the words into a strict hierarchy of clues, meta-clues, etc, while in a traditional crossword puzzle, the words form more sort of a network, where you can choose the order by yourself.
I wonder if you could restore that property somewhat by arranging the clues into a graph structure instead of a hierarchy. E.g.: (slightly nonsensical example)
[#1: Famous software company] Inc announced a revolutionary new implementation of binary search [#2: The #1 does not fall far from the ___]s today, as well as an improved type of cryptographic [#3: algorithm that needs a [#4: origin of #2, purpose of #1], 3 words]. The ideas are said to have originated from a recently discovered high school notebook of [#5: Co-founder of #1, 2 words] himself.
I used the context as part of the clue in that way. I like it that way and don’t think it should change.
Same frustration, exacerbated by the mobile keyboard. I played on an iPad with large attached keyboard, but had to hunt & peck at the on screen buttons.
It would mean that if you can sort it out on your own you can reduce the minimum number of keystrokes by a lot
I heartily agree with this. Multiple times I have had to slog through multiple levels to get to where I already knew I was headed.
An annoyance is not accepting "close enough" answers, I was working an older puzzle from a few days ago and the answer was `pulls` and I was trying `pull`. I tried a few other things, clicked for the clue (first letter was `P`), tried `pull` again (does that count against my characters when I repeat failed answers?), tried `pulled`, then finally got `pulls`.
Echoing angry_moose's suggestion, a hint about the # of letters (on mouseover?) would help a lot. Or maybe that would make it too easy?
At least in this case, by crossword conventions, the answer has to match the tense of the clue. At least all the ones I did followed this convention including the one you're talking about.
I did not see the one angry_moose is talking about but in a normal crossword, even without seeing the number of letters, if the clue was like, "Most populous city in the US" -> NYC vs "Most populous city in the United States" -> New York City. Again, not sure if that was the case here since I didn't see it. (edit: I went and saw it, the clue had MSG vs Madison Square Garden hence, NYC, not New York City)
Cool puzzle though.
Today, I somehow ended up with 96 keystrokes vs. the ideal of 95. Not sure when that happened, but I assume it was a mistake that I deleted? Does backspace not count as a stroke maybe? Otherwise, how is it possible to be one keystroke off?
Hey! I was at the last puzzle night (lot's of fun) and everyone at my table loved the game when you came around and showed us the website. I've been playing it a few times a week since!
Congrats!
Amazing convergence! Thank you for playing!
Hey! This is a lot of fun, thank you for putting it out into the world!
My wife is a public librarian that creates puzzles for a Summer Game that her library runs. She'd like to re-use this idea with book titles for their 2026 Games (too late for this year unfortunately).
How would you like to be credited if she's able to pull this off?
Fun concept, but there are some really generation specific references here. Smurfs, Brady Bunch, Payphones...
There's kind of a crossword language, especially if you do NYT where there are regular callbacks. Some of them are pretty weak, actually, but they're shibboleths of sort to regular solvers. We complain about weak fill, but they're like clues in themselves.
fair! I do think today's puzzle betrays my elder millennial status more than most...
As someone that does lots of crosswords, this doesn’t seem at all out of the ordinary. I guess the difference is that in a regular crossword, these cultural unknowns can be worked around if you can get the crosswords, but that’s no guarantee either.
Great concept. I was on mobile and agree the custom keyboard is far from ideal. As others have said I also found it to be overly US-centric. Keen to see how this develops, feels like a winning idea!
Cool game, some references made it a bit hard for me like the Brady Bunch one or the cost to call someone who cares, but I don't know to what extent there's a culture barrier vs a generational one
For me too. It's both cultural and generational, I guess. It's pretty hard to find references that are widely understood. One usually writes from one's own frame of reference; knowing what others know isn't easy. Just like I don't know the names of Saturday Night Live hosts (something that slowed me down in an NYT puzzle recently), a puzzle maker in New York has a hard time imagining the things I do know about (in this case) US culture.
Across ages might be a bit easier, because there's more material at hand in your own language, but I do notice a considerable distance between me and my daughter in all kinds of knowledge. E.g., I haven't keep up with pop since ages.
But it's a nice, and nerdy, game format.
I think the format here is pretty brilliant, because you can look at what's outside of the brackets to try to fill in a reasonable answer. The Brady Bunch one was followed by ]orian, which made for a useful hint.
But there are few of those that are so cleanly nested. I know where it’s going, but the requirement to solve every individual step slows you down.
Of course, I’ve been a steady cruciverbalist for 35+ years, so learning a new puzzle style will always take a while. Do agree that until OP settles into a smoother rhythm, adding the length of the solvable answers would help.
I think it'd be interesting to see this implemented more like a crossword, with everything on a grid (though a 1D grid in this case). Then you could see how many letters you're looking for (which helps avoid some ambiguities that I see mentioned here in the comments), and the clues could be moved out of the solving area. The wrapping of the areas that I was trying to solve really threw me, especially when the final result was so much shorter.
I could really get into a UK version of this. As it is I'm at a handicap with most of these clues. Great puzzle though!
Love it! I'd appreciate a copy text button rather than the current share behaviour.
I'll also weigh in and say that solving sub-clues when you can see the higher-level answer is a good feature, and makes the game more crossword like. I wouldn't allow skipping that
papa smurf is not the eldest smurf
Grandpa Smurf (original French name Vieux Vieux Schtroumpf)
https://smurfs.fandom.com/wiki/Grandpa_Smurf
Delightful! Longtime NYT crossword solver here (when I'm in the mood).
What I REALLY like is that I got a 0 today and got 100 on the 16th. Variation like that is so solid; after a while doing the NYT you see how much answers (less so clues) repeat and it gets a bit repetitive.
Anyone else have a problem where input on iOS is incredibly slow and keys are missed? Disabled content blockers and tried in privacy too and it was nearly unusable.
This is very nice but it would be lovely if I could just skip to the higher level solutions once I figure them out instead of having to go through the whole tree of solutions
Clever idea. I like it.
Maybe visualization of the brackets could be improved a bit.
The overriding problem for me was the nonstandard keyboard. Would love to be able to use my device keyboard
This was super fun! The bracket format is brilliant. It's like going on a treasure hunt, you solve one clue and the next one reveals itself. Well done!
Neat! I've been getting into crossword puzzles recently, does anyone know of nice places to play them, other than newspaper sites?
Brendan Emmett Quigley (just search his name, you will go right to it) publishes puzzles for free on his website, in addition to the ones he sells to NYT, WSJ, and others. You can get PDF's, solve on the site, or download in the Across Lite format.
nm, found a nice open source one:
https://github.com/downforacross/downforacross.com
This is an amazing site. My team at work used to do a Sunday together every Friday afternoon. It was a nice remote game to play.
Really creative game! Great work. Echoing the suggestions in the other comments to provide some clue on the number of letters.
this is really fun. we have a group chat where we do a bunch of daily games (nyt, trainwreck labs, cinematrix) and this one fits in perfectly.
Love this and play daily! Needs to have a submit button for better tracking your guesses and grading you each day.
Nice job creating this interesting game. Whatever changes, have a classic mode to keep it as is!
This is a really fun game. Well done.
Was really fun, quite enjoyed it, did think some of the references were a bit too nuanced for me
That’s a fun variation of crosswords! I like it.
Btw, a self-plug, for the polyglots out-there: https://paul.fragara.com/cw.html Poly-alphabets crosswords, mixing Latin and Cyrillic letters!
I'm enjoying this a lot! Thanks for making it!
Love it. I played about a dozen. Good construction. Daily crossword solver and immediately took to it. I sent it around to 4 others and they're all into it.
>scoring based on keystrokes is pretty unfair, especially given not-ideal custom keyboard on mobile! Still thinking through the best solution there.
Maybe just the enter key or a button on mobile to confirm. I think counting the letters is fair because we still have to think of the potential entries, and there's some strategy to that. (Like [___ in comparison] has several idiomatic answers, but you have to look at the context to determine it.)
You should plug your spot. Or send me an email. I'm always on the road and I'd like to stop by.
Love this game, I’m addicted. It’s the new Wordle
Really fun and a fresh format. Well done!
cool idea, especially the newsletter so i don't need to visit the website every day
Tons of fun