Show HN: I made a sliding crossword puzzle
njyoon.github.io
Some fun-for-me considerations:
- In normal number/picture sliding puzzles, half the configurations are unsolvable (Numberphile has a pretty good video on why this is). But having duplicate letters means that even if you are left with a single inversion in a 5x5 sliding puzzle (which usually indicates that the puzzle is unsolvable), you can often get out of it by switching duplicate letters.
- I'm not very good at math though, so if anyone can tell me the conditions under which switching duplicate tiles reverses parity, I'd love to know! Just in case all configurations aren't solvable, I ran some code to shuffle the tiles with legal moves when I set the daily puzzles.
- I'm very new to game design (this is my first one), but I've always enjoyed games and puzzles that can scratch both sides of my brain. Hope that comes across in this one!