[HN Gopher] Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
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Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
Author : r2b2
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-04-21 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)
| opminion wrote:
| The Android version worked very well when I installed it year
| ago. It was a great choice for someone who does not want to have
| addictive games installed in the phone, while at the same time
| enjoy the occasional brain teaser.
| viernullvier wrote:
| I have to vehemently disagree with you here - the Android
| version is the main reason why I needed to set a "no phone in
| the bedroom" rule for myself.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Simon likes to joke that the time wasted on his puzzle
| collection has surely cancelled out all the productivity
| benefits from PuTTY.
| mmastrac wrote:
| These are pretty basic to advanced brain puzzles, but there's a
| few gems in there. Magnets is a lot of fun. Net, Signposts and
| Tracks are clever puzzles. There was one other one in there I
| used to enjoy but I can't recall which one it was (maybe
| Pattern?).
|
| They're all about on-par with the level of exciting-ness of
| Minesweeper and Sudoku. Take that as you wish.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| I install this on everything. It is really really good, and IMO
| the way more games should be made: make a fast simple
| windowmanager friendly interface presenting puzzles and games in
| a very pure and unencumbered form. Another example: I love
| SimCity 2000 for Win95, but not SimCity 3000 or SimCity 4. Why?
| Wright did 2000 right, the post-EA SimCities were all full screen
| flashy playskool interface monstrosities. 3000 brought some cool
| features in, but I wish they had kept to a 2000-like interface.
|
| My ideal games look something like Siemens PLM NX or something,
| and less like a one-armed bandit in Vegas.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| I install these on everything and play them to procrastinate all
| the time. The only issue is that they break entirely with 200%
| DPI
| leni536 wrote:
| It has the best version of minesweeper, where every board is
| solvable.
| viernullvier wrote:
| You can also swap primary and secondary clicks (at least in the
| Android version), which makes it the fastest on touchscreens as
| well.
| dsvf wrote:
| Even better, the latest release from a few weeks ago lets you
| manually set the delay for long press. I've set it for 100ms
| and can now blaze through mines even faster. But that
| guaranteed solvable makes it so much better than
| nondeterministic minesweeper as well.
| ooterness wrote:
| There was a Minesweeper variant called Kaboom, where you're
| playing against a computer that's trying to make you lose. The
| computer has to comply with all revealed information, but if
| you ever make a guess, no matter how improbable, it's have
| over.
|
| https://pwmarcz.pl/blog/kaboom/
|
| Previous discussion on HackerNews:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21883875
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| Bridges (aka "Hashi") is one of my all-time favorite logic
| puzzles. I recently discovered Galaxies, and I enjoy this one a
| lot too; I also like Slitherlink (called "Loopy" here) a lot.
| However this site is missing two that I like quite a bit more,
| which are Paint by Numbers & Battleships, both of which I
| originally started doing in Games Magazine and later found on
| Conceptis Puzzles [0] (they call PbN "Pic-A-Pix") where I bought
| $25 worth of credits maybe 20 years ago that have still kept me
| going to this day, every couple years I'll buy a week's puzzle
| bundle and then slowly go through them.
|
| The other one I used to play a lot is Mamono Sweeper [1] One
| summer in undergrad when I was supposed to be doing graph theory
| research, instead I got really, really, really good at basic
| arithmetic by playing this game for 5+ hours a day. This is how I
| learned that I had no interest in math grad school and I now work
| as a developer in a video game-adjacent space.
|
| Recently I made an online Pentominoes puzzle [2] and I've played
| it a lot also.
|
| If anyone knows a good source of free Paint by Numbers puzzles I
| would love to hear about it!
|
| [0] https://www.conceptispuzzles.com/
|
| [1] https://hojamaka.com/games/mamono_sweeper
|
| [2] https://pentominoes.river.me
| votiv wrote:
| I am quite addicted to Suguru puzzles. I hope Simon gets to
| implement them some time.
| viernullvier wrote:
| This was one of the first games I installed on my very first
| Android phone, the Motorola Milestone. 15 years later, I'm still
| playing it nearly every day.
|
| I'm a bit disappointed though that the original desktop version
| doesn't really play nicely on touchscreens.
| wespad wrote:
| Every general purpose Linux desktop I setup gets Simon Tatham's
| puzzles and all of Kenta Cho's and Jason Rohrer's games.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Kenta Cho - https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/
|
| Jason Rohrer - https://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/
|
| Do distros package these? They should!
| wespad wrote:
| Indeed they do. At least the Debian-based distros, like
| Ubuntu and Mint.
| slig wrote:
| Shameless plug: if you enjoy logic puzzles, check out my new
| puzzle website: https://www.zebrapuzzles.com which was recently
| posted on Show HN [1]. It's playable without JavaScript.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39765519
| enasterosophes wrote:
| I really like loopy. It has a very stat mech or discrete math
| feel. I think it could be used to introduce deeper concepts in
| mathematics to novices, such as proofs, and the question of
| whether mathematics is constructed or discovered.
|
| A lot of the time solving loopy involves noticing re-usable
| patterns. But how do you know a possible pattern is re-usable?
| Well, you can prove it, such as with notions from graph theory.
|
| The construction vs discovery aspect could be approached in a
| couple of ways. On the one hand, the loop that you are
| "discovering" is really only induced by the underlying solutions
| which the computer has already "constructed." On the other hand,
| the computer only created the hidden solution using mathematics
| which was discovered.
|
| And on the _other_ other hand, the mathematics which we
| "discover" is arguably induced by the ZFC etc axioms which we
| have _constructed_ because of their ability to model consistent
| reasoning. Other sets of axioms, lacking the flexibility or
| consistency which we expect from our mathematical models, were
| discarded, yet would induce different mathematical systems
| capable of discovery.
|
| And the nesting of construction and discovery into each other
| could continue even deeper ...
| Arainach wrote:
| For more variations, research papers, implementations, etc.
| search for its canonical name `Slitherlink`.
| neilv wrote:
| SGT's puzzles has gotten me through so many waiting rooms, from
| the Nokia E61, onwards.
|
| Today, with reliable Internet on my phone, I could instead scroll
| Fediverse or something, but I figure blazing through puzzles
| using rules I've learned is more meditative.
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