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Show HN: Countle

countle.org

152 pointsgdix53 comments

Countle is a daily puzzle game, a la Wordle, where you use 6 given numbers to produce of a sequence of calculations to reach a target number. In other words, it's a daily round of the "Numbers Game" from the British game show Countdown.

Sample numbers round: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI

A new puzzle appears every day!

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The Countdown numbers round included this impressive solution in the allotted 30 seconds.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

As always that means there is a solver.

https://www.maths-resources.com/countdown/

Another similar problem from earlier in the show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI

Can I ask why you don't just link directly to youtube?

I don't think I have ever worked out how to!(from the Android app)

The Android app definitely has an option to copy a link to the video under the share button. The copied URL doesn't even seem to contain any tracking parameters.

Thanks I see it now. I hate that UI more than any other.

I made summle.net a while back, which is similar.

After I while I found that this type of game can be frustrating as you are not incrementally solving the puzzle - instead there are multiple dead ends before stumbling upon the solution.

Nice game, thanks for summle.net!

Here is my try for a solver:

https://summle-solver.herokuapp.com

Nifty. Could use some explanation, as not everyone is familiar with the show Countdown (particularly outside the UK).

Even knowing the show, I was a bit confused how I was supposed to solve it using only one operation, until I realized it was a series of steps. And it took me a moment to figure out how to reuse the result of a previous step.

Once I had figured that all out, though, it was a pleasure to use. Well done!

There's a question mark icon help menu thing in the upper left.

Don't your users skip the walkthrough/tutorial as well? I always assume they don't, and design the UI as intuitive as possible.

Nice, as always with these things, the fun for me is writing a little solver:

https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/393e7840cc5a0d20ef2bff7098...

Nice implementation and animations.

I've used summle.net for a couple of months.

Few ideas from their implementation: - achievements, badges and stats - hints when your stuck - 3 levels (for kids, normal, extreme) - quick erase all - % of overall resolution from other user - best solution (in N moves VS your K moves)

Few other ideas: - dark mode - practice mode (more user retention, just like quordle)

Enjoy your code and your project, I'll try to add it to my daily puzzles.

Good stuff, thanks for sharing!

There's a card game Krypto that is similar, fun to play with my kids. I wrote some scripts awhile ago to solve Krypto games and figure out how many games are unsolvable.

I wrote up my thinking and how I went about solving here: https://mkaz.blog/math/krypto-game-analysis/

Very nice, particularly enjoyed the video (I did not know the original game). Could be improved on the sharing part! (Is puzzle the same for everyone?). A first idea: green squares for numbers on top used, yellow squares for intermediate numbers where used. Green square for final solution. Black (or similar) circle for operations. Black squares for other numbers

enjoyed this, thanks! I did have a problem (Firefox, Android) where hitting "share" upon completion just didn't work with some error I can't remember along the lines of not having any content to copy to clipboard. Now that the share button has disappeared I can no longer even try to share again

Have been playing https://numble.wtf for a while, which is the same thing but nicer UI

Countle has a way easier UI. The link you posted is not very friendly at all.

I once built a Tetris-like game prototype where you needed to form algebraic equations to clear objects, the more complex your equation the more points you got [1]. Reminds me a bit of this.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cux8jobEbEs

When adding to Home Screen on phone, title suggest is ‘React App’. I changed it to ‘Countle’.

Great game, thanks!

Oops, fixed this. Thanks for letting me know.

I would like to be able to undo any part of a calculation without trashing the whole row.

You can click either of the numbers, or the operator, in the row to remove them.

Not after a row is filled, even if you haven’t moved on to the next row yet.

The symbol for the multiplication shows as "ă" for me for some reason.

Hmm, it is the correct unicode character: × U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION_SIGN

Perhaps × html entity would fix that.

About time someone did a numeric version of Wordle. Nice execution

Named for the TV show?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show)

Yes!

That's really cool. The UI is very intuitive. Bookmarked. :)

This is my favorite so far of the number-based wordle-likes.

Nice. I too enjoy making these little puzzles. Check out one I did last month:

https://curdle.me

Not working for me :( Only get:

  Sorry, game OZQTYAJL not found or long expired!

Tried a couple of browsers but always get the same code...

Oh I'm an idiot, my first cURL had a browser user agent so I got HTML then never cURLed it again without the code!

No nerdle fans here?

https://nerdlegame.com/

Kind of a fan - but for some reason the UI is really bad for me in Firefox. You cannot type `/` or `Enter` - you have to use the mouse for those. And it kept saying things did not compute, even though it was a valid equation.

100 + 75 + 8 + 6 - 50 / 25 = 187

Any better solutions?

6 * 50 / 25 + 100 + 75 = 187

is one step less

I wonder how you do the input on Countle. It is still 4 steps, like above.

You can use one less calculation

50/25=2 2*6=12 100+75=175 175+12=187

Wow exactly my thoughts.

Absolutely unintuitive as compare to Wordle (which I'm guessing the name is a play on).

I was surprised you didn't have to use all of the numbers at the top. I never used the 8.

That’s just the way the game goes. Perhaps you’re not familiar with the TV game show Countdown, but it has been around for decades in case you’re interested in checking it out on YouTube. But I’d personally recommend the comedic variant “8 out of 10 cats does Countdown”.

RIP Sean Lock :’(

Okay. I have zero intuition about how to solve this and that has me very intrigued.

I'm really bad at calc, it took me 6mn, but without using the 8. :)

Brilliant, thank you. That’s a new daily puzzle in my bookmarks.

Oof, took me 30 minutes

Impressive you stuck with it for so long. I was just about to give up…

Took me 25 mins and many rearrangments :(

This is great

Very good.

I enjoyed this. Thank you.

This is fun, thanks.

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