HaxleRose

Thanks for your feedback. I agree and am converting each puzzle to remove the mistake system and allow the user to click a button when they've completed the puzzle to see if it's correct.

I hear ya and I am in the process of switching them to removing the error flagging and making them work by letting the solver click/tap a button when they've completed the puzzle. Then it will tell them if it's correct or not.

awesome!!

Different puzzles have different validation logic. So the logic varies from puzzle to puzzle. Generally we're working backwards from a completed puzzle.

Yep, it's a tricky problem. I'm currently in the process of switching the way the puzzles work so that they don't have a mistake counter and instead allow the solver to tap a button when they're complete instead. That will make mistakes no big deal. Hope it helps! I'll also see what I can do about the size of the cells.

Thanks for the feedback. The leaderboard definitely needs some love

All the puzzles are generated by the app. Each puzzle type has its own generator. Some take a while to generate and I have to do them ahead of time, but Sudoku and X Sudoku generate on the fly

email me at ChestertonTechnologies@gmail.com if you find bugs like this and I'll try to fix them. You should be able to play one puzzle of every type + difficulty without signing in.

That's a good idea. I'll look into adding that feature!

They should be unique solutions. The way I generate the puzzles requires them to have a unique solution. I've thought I found a couple that were not unique, but then both times, I was missing a cell I could eliminate. But let me know at ChestertonTechnologies@gmail.com with the puzzle number and difficulty if you find one and I'll look into it!

For sure! And I know this isn't going to make a bunch of money or anything, but it's made a few bucks to help cover server costs, so that's pretty cool!

That would be pretty cool!

Many of them have keyboard shortcuts. usually pencil mode is "P" and eraser is "E" or "backspace/delete". Also, the numbers 1, 2, 3 should work as well. Feel free to email me at ChestertonTechnologies@gmail.com if something isn't working!

Good feedback. I do plan on continuing to add other kinds of logic puzzles to the site as time permits. I'll check out those sites!

Good to know. Yeah, it's pretty easy to add 0, so I'll do that soon. For the kakuro backgrounds, it's pure CSS, no images. The diagonal split in the clue cells is a single linear-gradient hairline, not a tile or PNG:

.kakuro-clue { background-image: linear-gradient(to top right, transparent calc(50% - 0.5px), rgb(148 163 184) calc(50% - 0.5px), rgb(148 163 184) calc(50% + 0.5px), transparent calc(50% + 0.5px)); }

The site uses Tailwind CSS for the styling generally.

Thanks for the feedback. I've done nonograms with a three strikes and your out style, so I based it off of that. I just couldn't find any without having to watch ads often before and after playing a puzzle. Good criticism about hiding the title until after it's solved. Someone else mentioned that as well. It's on my list of things to change actually. Like I wrote to the person who you're replying to, it's not some slop web app. I'm a professional software engineer and I coded this the same way I code at work, with agentic AI using Ruby on Rails, following TDD, thin controllers & models, security best practices, ect.

Nope, I don't care about your email. Just a way for you to track progress, contribute to leaderboards, get achievements, and be able to reset your password if you forget it. The end-goal was originally just for me to have an ad-free place for me to play my favorite puzzle games and I shared it with HN. I do ask for a couple bucks after a solver finishes 25 of every puzzle + difficulty just to help out with server costs. But I don't dream that I'll even break even on this.

I'm a software engineer for my job and just code apps for a fun hobby in my spare time. Pretty much, most every software engineer uses agentic AI coding tools these days. I built this the same way I build software for my job. So it's not some slop codebase with API keys sitting in the HTML :)

Fair criticism. I appreciate the feedback! I thought I made the backspace key work on Sudoku. I'll look into that. I know "E" works for erase. Just checked it and if the incorrect answer is selected, you can press "E" or "delete"/"backspace" and that should clear the incorrect answer. As for the fail counter, it's so that the leaderboards are fair. If someone can just faceroll the keyboard to solve the puzzle quickly, it's not really fair for the leaderboards. But I get it. Sudoku isn't typically really a competitive puzzle and when doing them on paper, you often will erase wrong answers and keep going.

Nice! The first app I built and put is https://peopleneed.love Just a simple site to let random people encourage other random people. It was a good way for me to learn some of the Ruby on Rails Hotwire tools.

nice! good idea! I haven't looked into doing a PWA. I've never built one before, but this puzzle app is built with Ruby on Rails and I know the framework has tools for doing PWAs

oh shoot! I'll look into that. Star Battle is the most recent puzzle game I added and I'm still working out the bugs!

Gotcha, I appreciate the feedback. I'll see what I can do.

haha! no thanks :) I play it myself because it doesn't have ads and cause it has multiple puzzles that I like. It is monetized though. You get the first 25 puzzles for free in every puzzle type + difficulty, then you can pay a few bucks to unlock all of the rest. But this site has made $0 so far. It may never make anything, but at least I'll still have a place to play the puzzles :)

good idea. I might switch it to do that instead.

For sure! I couldn't find an app with a good mobile UI without ads. I would've paid a few bucks for one, so I figured others might feel the same way.

Alrighty, I figured it out. You should be able to use it now. It's because I'm using Tailwind CSS version 4 and some of the things won't look perfectly in that browser version, but the site should be functional now for ya!

fair point, maybe I should only show the title after the puzzle is solved. what do you think?

I do the same with new models.

Thanks for your thoughts. I completely agree. Let me think of how I can incorporate that into the site's wording. I do want to be completely up front.

Yep, I feel ya. Good feedback. This is like version 3 of the home page. The first two looked very typical AI. I thought maybe a newspaper vibe might be cool as a throwback to the puzzles you'd do in the paper. But it does have some of those cookie cutter AI tells. I'm a software engineer by trade and not much of a designer honestly. This probably won't be the final form of the home page, I'd imagine.