Show HN: A daily math puzzle inspired by Wordle | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A daily math puzzle inspired by Wordle

mathler.com

111 pointsdanieltait78 comments

After seeing this post this morning, I went and tried a few of the other math variants of Wordle (https://www.mathler.com/, https://nerdlegame.com/, https://converged.yt/primel/, https://mathlegame.com/) and this one is definitely my favorite. Bookmarked!

Guessing numbers? How do I see the point of this? First thought is that numbers don't have any structure, like words. But clearly, with arithmetic there is some relation and structure - but the space of "sentences" that make sense is huge?!

Awesome thanks for these

Finally my binge watching of 8OO10CDC pays off!

Edit: 8 out of ten cats does countdown, a panel show where comedians "play" a game show with numbers.

Holy cow. As a fan of IT Crowd, I thought "Countdown" was completely made up. But it's almost completely a real show!

It is actually a real show. And the "8 out of 10 cats" version is just comedians normally doing another show (called 8 out of 10 cats) playing that, like a crossover. Think it started as a one-off special, but it worked, and has now been on for 22 series!

Richard Ayoade / Maurice Moss is on some of the "real" 8OO10CDC episodes as well, they are worth a watch.

Countdown was always on in my house when I was a kid!

This is pretty cool. First it annoyed me but then it hooked me once I understood it. It will be interesting to see how much replay value it has.

Please fix it on firefox, though :)

It works on my firefox (96 on ubuntu).

I'm colour blind, and the colours used for "correct and in the right position" and "correct and in the wrong position" are indistinguishable.

(I'm guessing the OP is in this thread)

To OP's excuse this is a verbatim copy of Wordle, UI-wise.

Not exact, because Wordle has color-blind mode :)

Thanks for the feedback Gordon - added to the todo list

There is also Nerdle [1] where you even have to figure out what the result is.

[1] https://nerdlegame.com/

The concept is good : I got caught longer than expected banging my head before realizing that you can reuse components : having a good '8' does not mean there's no other '8' in the game

Oh! I didn't realize you could reuse components, thank you!!

I'm still banging my head through my first Nerdle, despite being challenging it's pretty fun!

I think however that if you do use a 2nd component and it's not required it will flag it as such.

Internally it evals your input, so it accepts inputs like 23//00 since everything after the // is a comment. You can also get it to create a regex like /0000/ but it doesn't do anything interesting with it.

To be honest, I don't love it. Wordle just 'works' better

A nice and well done puzzle, congrats =)

You could maybe add some kind of visual validation when the proposition entered does not equals the expected amount.

Maybe adding the "= 23" at the end of the (current) line could be a good visual clue that the equation is supposed to validate this.

The thing about this is that solutions aren’t unique.

Ex: I tried 25-1-1 and was rejected.

I think that's by design - just like 5 letter words aren't unique. For it to be accepted at all it has to be a solution; but you may be 'wrong' and get hints at finding the solution.

Yeah that’s fair.

There is also primel where you have to guess a 5 digit prime. https://converged.yt/primel/

Suffers from the same issue for me, f12 can ruin the game...

Edit: I realized that comes off more harsh than I intended. I'm super pumped someone made something and put it out there but, if I were selfish and there was a game exactly how I wanted it, then it wouldn't be able to be ruined by f12.

I know the amount of effort increases dramatically to make that happen though. Regardless, good job.

If you write a number like 05 there will be a...

    Uncaught SyntaxError: Octal literals are not allowed in strict mode.

I thought it was failing due to load or something, but seeing the other comments it seems it might just be due to me being a Firefox user.

Same problem happened with me. When I opened the page with Edge/Chrome everything loaded in an instant.

Working on a fix now

You're not alone :D

> Uncaught TypeError: e is null

Of course I don't think that is very useful.

Fixed!

Thank you.

Nice one, thanks! Bookmarked.

I'm not sure how much mental math you're expecting but you might consider building in a side calculator.

I suck at math. I cheated and used a calculator a couple times.

Benefits of playing on mobile - “hey Siri what’s <insert maths here>”

[spoilers for puzzle number 2]

Got it in 2 today after getting only a green × for ab×c+d. I thought the solution was the only other thing that matched, although my friends found another one.

It feels really harsh that if the answer includes ab×c and you type c×ab it doesn't count - they're the same sum!

Good point! Will have a think if should add exceptions for that

When sharing I only got a '1' after the url, which doesn't seem to currently communicate anything about my attempt. With Wordle I get the guesses it took to complete at the top. The shared graph appropriately included the 3 tries it took me to complete.

At first I thought the popup at the end was showing the distribution of everyone’s scores which would be cool. I’d rather see how well I did compare to everyone else than how well I did compared to myself. Especially since it was my first time playing.

Neat but really needs keyboard input (assuming it's not just Safari being weird.)

Fixed! Thanks

If possible, please bind to the numpad "enter" key for submitting an answer on Macs.

In Firefox pressing / doesn't enter / in the guess, but pops up browser's in-page "quick search" widget.

Got it in 3 tries! Pretty happy with myself, especially since...

*Spoiler*

...It had 2 different operators.

I prefer it to wordle! It’s fun and has more deductive reasoning.

Ahhh, that's it! I've been wondering why I prefer it to wordle and why it's more fun to solve.

Pretty fun got it in 3 tries. Only annoying UI thing was that I couldn't go back and change entries without deleting everything upto that point.

Played on mobile

Like this alternative, nice job! Wonder if there's room for a Wordle that crosses genres each day too to keep things interesting.

Good job!

Here is a different approach I took: https://mathlegame.com/

I kind of like this one, but it doesn't seem to support keyboard input, which is a bummer.

Thank you for the feedback!

I never had that on my rader. Just added support for keyboard. Should be online a few seconds.

Cheers, Kiru

Hey I really enjoyed this one, really tough. I think an easy mode where you were still allowed to use the numbers that have been grayed out would be nice

Got in 2 tries. Nice game but the bug on Firefox is a bummer. Report sent, though.

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(weird! When pasted in HN, all the green dots were automatically deleted! Why?)

similar idea to https://nerdlegame.com/

Both good

A simple math puzzle inspired by wordle!

Today's puzzle took me 4 guesses even though I added the solution yesterday haha

I think I have a valid solution but it's not marked as green.

Find the solution that equals 23 :

5*9-22

There are many valid solutions, but you are looking for a specific one.

I was a little confused at first but seeing your comment makes it clear, thank you.

12-(-11) is apparently not a solution

Lots of fun, really enjoyed playing my first game this morning. Didn’t encounter any issues on iOS.

Nice. To find 23 I tried "50-027" and nothing happens when submitted, may be a bug.

    Uncaught SyntaxError: Octal literals are not allowed in strict mode.

Nice job, reminds me of the countdown numbers game with a twist of wordle.

The answer appears to be in the ? help guide.

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Gets the brain going a bit more than Wordle - fun game all round!

* turns out hacker news doesn't like green / yellow square emojis though

Does not seem to function on Firefox on Android. Maybe it's just me?

EDIT: Also on Firefox on Windows 10.

Same for me using desktop Firefox. Just an error in the console, nothing renders:

    TypeError: e is null
        P App.tsx:36
        React 2
        Fn App.tsx:31

Now working on firefox!

When I try divide FF does a search

mathler.com 1

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GGGGGG

Can you mark the number of trials instead of "1" for shared text ? (3/6 here)

don't publish a website if it doesn't work with all major browsers. that's not how the web is supposed to work.

not loading on firefox

mathler.com 1

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Love it!

mathler.com 1

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Edit: Ok HN doesn't like the shared characters...

Just wondering why you chose 23 instead of 42?

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