I've had this on my phone for years, it's a great collection of puzzles. I haven't tried them all (games on phones), but it's certainly the best I have. No ads, no useless gamification, but well polished and varied puzzles, and quite a bit of control over the difficulty.
My favourite has to be "Keen", it's a sudoku-like where a grid has to be filled with no repeated numbers on either columns or rows, and arbitrarily shaped cells must be filled to satisfy an arithmetic constraint like "sums to 7", "the product is 84" or "one divided by the other is 3" (if sized two).
Towers is nice too, similar concept (re repetition), but the constraints are now visibility ranges on the boundaries of the grid, as you put down towers of varying height. I find it more difficult.
Some of the games are more mechanical, where you can mindlessly iterate to a solution step by step. Like "Net" (rotate pipes to connect them all to the center). Towers takes some more guess work, and I find Keen is there in the middle.
Net can be done with reasoning rather than mindless iteration. You start by locking in end points surrounded by other end points except for one free space. if you have a straight line that can connect two end points then you lock it in the other orientation. If a line is locked next to a T pipe, the back of the t pipe goes against the line. If a corner piece is next to a locked pipe, you know that the side opposite the incoming pipe is empty, so it could be the back of a T or the side of a line piece, etc.
i only play Net (largest size or bigger, wrapping) using the locks; I disconnect the surrounding pipes from the center so nothing is lit up, and then start locking squares based on their surroundings. some of them I can't even solve. I can see the answer, but my head can't contain the logic necessary to lock them down
Yeah, that's what I meant. On the other hand, something like Towers has you trying different configurations because there's not always enough information to motivate the next step.
I haven't tried Towers, but I had thought that every game in his collection was such that guessing was never required. The logic/rules might not always be obvious, but supposedly they are there.
As a note, after some years of playing with this puzzles, I recently discovered why its name sounded familiar to me... It's Simon Tatham from PuTTY (the Windows SSH client).
I wonder how many thousands of hours I have put into this wonderful collection. My kids play them too.
There's some jank relating to fractional scaling on Wayland unfortunately, but I keep one monitor without scaling so when I want to play I just launch the puzzles on that.
I installed that on both my computer and phone after someone mentioned it in some HN comment a few months ago. On my phone it has been the only game I have played in several years that wasn't in an emulator (mostly DOSBox).
Also convinced my kids to install it on their phones, hoping that it will distract them somewhat from the apps they otherwise use. Not much success with that. I guess there isn't enough bling. If it was full of animated coins and sound effects triggering on every interaction it would probably work much better for competing with normal app-driven rubbish mobile games.
I wonder if they would be happy with modern graphics but no twitchy bling. I mean, 3d shaded and colorful tiles. Kids these days associate spartan graphics with old school/boring gameplay.
A version with better UI for mobile could be super neat.
And I don't mean that it needs to be a Flutter app that launches in 3 business days and eats battery like a horse, just that it didn't look like it's from 2012. (Some of the UI design elements are also frankly confusing)
Simon Tatham also wrote PuTTY, which was for the longest time the best SSH client on Windows (I don't use Windows anymore so I can't say if it still is or not). I can't find the quote now, but I remember him saying that between PuTTY and his puzzle collection, his contribution to human productivity was net zero
Given how many platforms these have been ported to, this really is the DOOM of puzzle apps.
I've been using this PocketBook port on my e-reader for years: https://github.com/SteffenBauer/PocketPuzzles
I love this collection on my phone. It's among the first software that I install to it. Alongside Simon's stuff, Gauguin is also a favorite. It's a sudoku type of game, but with different shapes and math instead of the basic sudoku rules. I love these when I have some time to kill, and I don't want to look at the internet.
related: https://www.janko.at/Raetsel/index.htm huge collection of games and playable online (general desciptions are in German only but the rules of every game are translated in English and Japanese)
Does anyone know of a collection of mini games like that with available source code, and preferably in a more approachable language than C? Thinking that something like this might be great for getting my 9-year interested in coding using a non-visual prog lang (so not Scratch).
We used to have these kinds of puzzles physically in the 80s. Little plastic pocket Chess boards etc with pieces that would stick in there with a Pin. Never thought of them until i read this :)
Oh nice! I play Loopy while listening to podcasts or sometimes watching Netflix, and the bugs causing right edge to require double long-hold and left edge to require fanatical precision always drive me nuts, so this is very welcome!
Any way to change the yellow to something tamer, and reduce the line widths slightly?
To clarify, only the second app is mine. I’m a fan of the “Puzzles” and the original from the current HN discussion. But I didn’t like that the nonograms (a.k.a Pattern) were random patterns and not pictures; so I built “Nonoverse” to address that.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about Loopy. If you want, this could be your sign to build your own version :)
Oh, that's my very much unfinished wasm version from 2013. It wasn't meant to be a "vandalized" or dumbed down version; I just stopped working on it because Simon released a much more complete wasm version on his own site around the same time.
I've recently started working on an updated PWA port that works offline and on touch devices, mainly because the iOS app hasn't been updated in years. (If you hunt around you can probably locate the work in progress, but it's not ready for critics yet. I'll post a link when it is.)
if somebody wants a "C lang/linux level" bug/puzzle to figure out (could be as simple as looking at the source), I just discovered it a couple days ago: if you use a large number to set up a board in untangle, the algo is extremely slow to set the board up, probably an O(N*2) or worse or something. You can see this slowness in the web version, put in a 600 or 2000
the bug: anyway, I was running the C version of the puzzle from cli (didn't want to slow my browser down) and I must have put a typo in for an even bigger number than I intended and the process went away for a long time. I got sick of looking at the little window and discovered that I couldn't kill it even with kill -9. I killed the window with xkill but the process was still chugging away in the background at 99% CPU.
I finally managed to kill it with htop but I have a sense that I didn't really kill it, I think it just finished whatever long ops it was doing.
I didn't test much more, but I did load up a board size 600 to play and confirmed while it was building the board, kill -9 didn't do anything, and after it finished it allowed me to play the game. the kill -9 was swallowed and gone.
This sounds like an OS or kill bug not a with the program. Sending `kill -9`, aka `kill -KILL` is supposed to terminate the process immediately without giving it the opportunity to catch the signal and respond. (This is why you should start with `kill -TERM` and only resort to `kill -KILL` if that does not work.)
So if the process is not terminated this is an OS or kill issue because the process itself is not given a chance to catch the signal.
even if it's an OS or kill bug, most processes do reliably get killed with -9 so it's something that this program is doing is where to look/how to reproduce.
It shouldn't matter what the program is doing or not, it's an OS (or kill) level bug. Even if you can make changes to the program so it doesn't happen, it's still an OS/kill level bug. The OS is supposed to terminate the process. A process is not supposed to be able to prevent the OS from doing that.
The iOS app is long-unmaintained and has bugs. It needs a new maintainer, but they need some kind of Apple developer account to actually get it in the app store.
I absolutely love Flood type games- but I want huge maps(1000x1000 - 65535x65535). Alas, all of them also kill their playability by wanting absurd money ($5, ha!) and/or flow breaking ads.
I've had this on my phone for years, it's a great collection of puzzles. I haven't tried them all (games on phones), but it's certainly the best I have. No ads, no useless gamification, but well polished and varied puzzles, and quite a bit of control over the difficulty.
My favourite has to be "Keen", it's a sudoku-like where a grid has to be filled with no repeated numbers on either columns or rows, and arbitrarily shaped cells must be filled to satisfy an arithmetic constraint like "sums to 7", "the product is 84" or "one divided by the other is 3" (if sized two).
Towers is nice too, similar concept (re repetition), but the constraints are now visibility ranges on the boundaries of the grid, as you put down towers of varying height. I find it more difficult.
Some of the games are more mechanical, where you can mindlessly iterate to a solution step by step. Like "Net" (rotate pipes to connect them all to the center). Towers takes some more guess work, and I find Keen is there in the middle.
Net can be done with reasoning rather than mindless iteration. You start by locking in end points surrounded by other end points except for one free space. if you have a straight line that can connect two end points then you lock it in the other orientation. If a line is locked next to a T pipe, the back of the t pipe goes against the line. If a corner piece is next to a locked pipe, you know that the side opposite the incoming pipe is empty, so it could be the back of a T or the side of a line piece, etc.
i only play Net (largest size or bigger, wrapping) using the locks; I disconnect the surrounding pipes from the center so nothing is lit up, and then start locking squares based on their surroundings. some of them I can't even solve. I can see the answer, but my head can't contain the logic necessary to lock them down
Yeah, that's what I meant. On the other hand, something like Towers has you trying different configurations because there's not always enough information to motivate the next step.
I haven't tried Towers, but I had thought that every game in his collection was such that guessing was never required. The logic/rules might not always be obvious, but supposedly they are there.
I think there's still a unique solution but, on the harder difficulties, you're given very little to work with. (in Towers)
I think some guessing is necessary if you select one of the custom difficulty settings
I like Solo (Sudoku), but that's hard to play on my phone sadly.
I end up doing hard modes of Flood and Signpost a lot, though.
As a note, after some years of playing with this puzzles, I recently discovered why its name sounded familiar to me... It's Simon Tatham from PuTTY (the Windows SSH client).
Recommend the Android port as well, available on F-Droid: https://chris.boyle.name/projects/android-puzzles/
I wonder how many thousands of hours I have put into this wonderful collection. My kids play them too.
There's some jank relating to fractional scaling on Wayland unfortunately, but I keep one monitor without scaling so when I want to play I just launch the puzzles on that.
I installed that on both my computer and phone after someone mentioned it in some HN comment a few months ago. On my phone it has been the only game I have played in several years that wasn't in an emulator (mostly DOSBox).
Also convinced my kids to install it on their phones, hoping that it will distract them somewhat from the apps they otherwise use. Not much success with that. I guess there isn't enough bling. If it was full of animated coins and sound effects triggering on every interaction it would probably work much better for competing with normal app-driven rubbish mobile games.
I wonder if they would be happy with modern graphics but no twitchy bling. I mean, 3d shaded and colorful tiles. Kids these days associate spartan graphics with old school/boring gameplay.
A version with better UI for mobile could be super neat.
And I don't mean that it needs to be a Flutter app that launches in 3 business days and eats battery like a horse, just that it didn't look like it's from 2012. (Some of the UI design elements are also frankly confusing)
Simon Tatham also wrote PuTTY, which was for the longest time the best SSH client on Windows (I don't use Windows anymore so I can't say if it still is or not). I can't find the quote now, but I remember him saying that between PuTTY and his puzzle collection, his contribution to human productivity was net zero
I very much hope people link more like this here. My favourite right now is the love solitaire, and jongmah
https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=95641
https://www.jongmah.com/
I had not seen the love solitaire, but I have made a heart-shaped Kakuro puzzle into a book and minimal web app:
https://www.kakurokokoro.com
Given how many platforms these have been ported to, this really is the DOOM of puzzle apps. I've been using this PocketBook port on my e-reader for years: https://github.com/SteffenBauer/PocketPuzzles
Nice, I’d love to get one just to play it.and I guess battery life must be great.
I love this collection on my phone. It's among the first software that I install to it. Alongside Simon's stuff, Gauguin is also a favorite. It's a sudoku type of game, but with different shapes and math instead of the basic sudoku rules. I love these when I have some time to kill, and I don't want to look at the internet.
related: https://www.janko.at/Raetsel/index.htm huge collection of games and playable online (general desciptions are in German only but the rules of every game are translated in English and Japanese)
Also related: https://puzz.link/db/
And another one: https://www.brainbashers.com/puzzles.asp
Does anyone know of a collection of mini games like that with available source code, and preferably in a more approachable language than C? Thinking that something like this might be great for getting my 9-year interested in coding using a non-visual prog lang (so not Scratch).
There’s also the source code available for Puzzles Reloaded that another HN user posted earlier.
Repo: https://teamswarner.com/puzzles/
Teaching kids to program for over 40 years:
https://www.roug.org/retrocomputing/languages/basic/basicgam...
We used to have these kinds of puzzles physically in the 80s. Little plastic pocket Chess boards etc with pieces that would stick in there with a Pin. Never thought of them until i read this :)
If you’re on iOS:
- Puzzles[1] - includes these games and more (sudoku, nonograms, minesweeper, others).
- Nonoverse[2] - it’s just nonograms, but built by hand (not randomly generated); it’s my app, inspired by the above.
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/puzzles-reloaded/id6504365885
[2]: https://apps.apple.com/app/nonoverse-nonogram-puzzles/id6748...
Oh nice! I play Loopy while listening to podcasts or sometimes watching Netflix, and the bugs causing right edge to require double long-hold and left edge to require fanatical precision always drive me nuts, so this is very welcome!
Any way to change the yellow to something tamer, and reduce the line widths slightly?
To clarify, only the second app is mine. I’m a fan of the “Puzzles” and the original from the current HN discussion. But I didn’t like that the nonograms (a.k.a Pattern) were random patterns and not pictures; so I built “Nonoverse” to address that.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about Loopy. If you want, this could be your sign to build your own version :)
The same puzzles can be played here with a more friendly UI: https://medmunds.github.io/puzzles/
not exactly the same, the ux cleanup has dumbed some of them down a bit
I play the original untangle on 600 or higher, that "friendly" UI doesn't allow that
I play the original Dominosa 6-extreme but friendly doesn't offer that either, unless it's set them all to extreme
the Net doesn't not allow custom sizes, and it's also broken the mouse buttons, it only allows rotation in one direction
not going to look further into the vandalism
Oh, that's my very much unfinished wasm version from 2013. It wasn't meant to be a "vandalized" or dumbed down version; I just stopped working on it because Simon released a much more complete wasm version on his own site around the same time.
I've recently started working on an updated PWA port that works offline and on touch devices, mainly because the iOS app hasn't been updated in years. (If you hunt around you can probably locate the work in progress, but it's not ready for critics yet. I'll post a link when it is.)
I discovered these as a child by just combing through the Ubuntu package repositories looking for games.
These days, I play the Android port all the time. It's my go-to to occupy my time on short flights.
For human-generated logic puzzles that you can solve in your browser, I can recommend the following site:
https://puzsq.logicpuzzle.app
if somebody wants a "C lang/linux level" bug/puzzle to figure out (could be as simple as looking at the source), I just discovered it a couple days ago: if you use a large number to set up a board in untangle, the algo is extremely slow to set the board up, probably an O(N*2) or worse or something. You can see this slowness in the web version, put in a 600 or 2000
the bug: anyway, I was running the C version of the puzzle from cli (didn't want to slow my browser down) and I must have put a typo in for an even bigger number than I intended and the process went away for a long time. I got sick of looking at the little window and discovered that I couldn't kill it even with kill -9. I killed the window with xkill but the process was still chugging away in the background at 99% CPU.
I finally managed to kill it with htop but I have a sense that I didn't really kill it, I think it just finished whatever long ops it was doing.
I didn't test much more, but I did load up a board size 600 to play and confirmed while it was building the board, kill -9 didn't do anything, and after it finished it allowed me to play the game. the kill -9 was swallowed and gone.
This sounds like an OS or kill bug not a with the program. Sending `kill -9`, aka `kill -KILL` is supposed to terminate the process immediately without giving it the opportunity to catch the signal and respond. (This is why you should start with `kill -TERM` and only resort to `kill -KILL` if that does not work.)
So if the process is not terminated this is an OS or kill issue because the process itself is not given a chance to catch the signal.
even if it's an OS or kill bug, most processes do reliably get killed with -9 so it's something that this program is doing is where to look/how to reproduce.
It shouldn't matter what the program is doing or not, it's an OS (or kill) level bug. Even if you can make changes to the program so it doesn't happen, it's still an OS/kill level bug. The OS is supposed to terminate the process. A process is not supposed to be able to prevent the OS from doing that.
correct, and virtually all programs get killed. so what is this program doing that seems to uncover the bug?
"shouldn't" hides the flaw in your thinking, it is happening, that's the bug, so shouldn't is out the window
I love these puzzles. I find the cube rolling one just so hard to get my head around!
I got really good at the spatial reasoning a few years ago (not perfect though) but now I can't remember any of that and I'm back to n00b again
For me the Vampire one
The iOS app is long-unmaintained and has bugs. It needs a new maintainer, but they need some kind of Apple developer account to actually get it in the app store.
Someone mentioned a different iOS version:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44695218
Mostly works nicely on black and white android e-readers too.
Found this recently and have been loving it! The one that has stuck the most is Keen but Galaxies is a close second.
Galaxies and the Lights one are my main go to
I actually might want to port this to homebrew Switch… Good summer project
Thanks for sharing! Awesome new time sinkhole for my phone…
I absolutely love Flood type games- but I want huge maps(1000x1000 - 65535x65535). Alas, all of them also kill their playability by wanting absurd money ($5, ha!) and/or flow breaking ads.