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Show HN: A 45x45 Connections Puzzle To Commemorate 2025=45*45

thomaswc.com

79 pointsthomaswc39 comments

It's a a long puzzle, somewhat akin to a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Solving it collectively with others is encouraged.

If you are the sort that likes rules, the rules are you can use Google or whatever external sources you like for help. View page source, however, is cheating.

Hat tip to Octagon and the TND crew for help in play testing and proposing categories.

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Thomas, I love this! I vibe coded a bunch of quality of life improvements to this and put it up here: https://vessenes.github.io/2025is45x45/ .

Note - you didn't license your original page; I've released my modifications under CC0 and linked back to you -- if you hate it, I'll take it down. I just thought it was fun but I wanted something that was a little easier to engage with.

Quick summary of features - some font and ui design, "S" to shuffle, "R" to reset, "/" to search, Esc works throughout, pinned boxes so you can scroll and search.. that's the main stuff.

fyi, it appears that if you search for a category name like "sports" or "instrument" it will just show you every item for that category lol

interesting. the javascript had a category name - I'm guessing my vibe employee added in category search as a feature.

Are you not going to remove that? That seems counter to the spirit of the puzzle.

I definitely accept prs

p.s. I pushed a small update. Thanks for the nudge

This is great! I totally authorize anyone to copy the puzzle, as long as they link back to the original, as you did.

Cool! I'd suggest you slap a CC-BY, CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-NC-SA license on it if you have a second; doesn't take long and lets everyone know your preferences.

Done. (Sorry for the delay, but I was on vacation.)

Thank you! Here's my take on it https://threeemojis.com/en-US/play/globs/en-US/demo . What I feel like you nailed is adding up the groups one by one. This is different enough from existing connections like games that it really caught my attention, enough that I wanted to take a stab at it.

Thanks for sharing. Although 'Boromir' and 'One does not simply' should absolutely be a match!

If it's Italian, it's pasta.

If they have 3 names or a middle initial and sound old, they're a politician.

If they have a suspiciously common name, they're a comedy actor.

If they have two names and they're old, they're a writer. If they're young, they're a cartoonist.

I clicked straight through without reading your directions and I liked figuring out the puzzle of the puzzle. I really appreciate a long puzzle. This is great!

edit: Now I see that the bigger challenge is finding the small collections again after I’ve grouped a few together.

This is a lot of fun! Works decently well on mobile too. One suggestion (although, take it with a grain of salt)- I didn’t notice the deselect since header disappears on zoom. Might be better that way, but might be useful sticked top. Nice work!

Interesting idea. One note: sometimes after I connect two items it'll reselect the combined item, sometimes it won't. I'd prefer if it never did, but at least if it was consistent I could get used to having to click "Deselect" each time...

EDIT: Also, would be helpful if the items where I've created a category were somehow grouped (column on the left?) so when I find a third item, it's easier to find the ones I'd already joined.

I think the click logic may be a little twitchy. My trackball button worked okay, but my footpedal button frequently did what you describe here - possibly due to a longer-duration button press?

And yes, that would be helpful, but would remove part of the memory challenge. Maybe an optional feature?

Nice afternoon of puzzling, thanks for sharing it. (The one feature I could have used was either dragging items around - maybe only already-grouped ones - or the ability to pop back to the one that got merged, since I'd noticed something in the neighbors but had to pick only one of them :-)

(minor spoiler) Fess up, how many of you tried to figure out if "Google Lips" was ever a thing? :-)

2025 had a bunch of bits of fun mathematical trivia:

45² = 45 x 45 = 2025

Also,

9² x 5² = 2025

40² + 20² + 5² = 2025

My favourite?

1³+2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³ = 2025

Ha! I really should have known that last one, given that I once wrote a paper about the sum of cubes. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/1378446.1378486

Most of a day into it, still haven't googled anything yet... but it's soooo tempting

Current score 1670 with 764 mistakes

Thanks for such a fun puzzle!

> Make 45 groups of 45! (By combining two at a time.) Score: 1980 Mistakes: 6531

I was even until 1500, but for the last 500 I had to use brute force.

Very challenging and fun. Score 1695 and mistakes 315 when I gave up and started Googling things. Did not do so well on (rot13)Nzrevpna ICf, pnegbbavfgf, be FAY pnfg zrzoref. Pbzcyrgryl zvffrq gur ncbpelcuny obbxf bs gur Ovoyr nf jryy. Gung jnf zrna!

Geez, last time the year was a square was 1936. And it won't be again until 2116.

Wonderful game! Really, really well made, lots of fun. Might I ask, who are the Octagon and TND crew? I've seen a lot of these puzzles but nobody has ever just made a bigger connections before, brilliant!

TND stands for Thursday Night Dinner, a Boston area potluck group that has been around since 1995.

Octagon is a friend who did a lot of the playtesting and also contributed the fabric and flowers categories.

That's so awesome. Working on my own take on this now, it's really a great puzzle!

This is delightful. Having a lot of fun and I'm addicted.

Any way to save progress? I'm quite anxious about accidentally closing the tab as I chip away at it a bit each day.

It appears to save to browser-local storage. Mine is still there after having the tab closed for at least 24 hours.

5 hours into “just checking it out”.. very nice puzzle.

The connections are too easy to the point where the main challenge for me was to remember/locate where I had stored the nodes of that category. I think the fun in a connection puzzle comes from trying to figure out what the link is that connects different nodes, and resolving any red herrings by deduction (which is what makes OnlyConnect's connection wall great and NYT's knockoff mediocre). In this one I can spot the intended category for each node without even looking at the others.

Have you actually completed it? There are plenty where the category is obvious, sure - but also many ambiguous entries. It's not trivial to fully complete if you're aiming to keep errors low!

E.g. in ROT13: Cuvynqrycuvn pbhyq unir orra n zrzore bs "H.F. Pvgvrf", "Purrfrf", be "Gbz Unaxf zbivrf"

That aspect makes it kind of a massively parallel "startup name or fantasy sword" challenge, once you get past the obvious ones (whether that helps or hinders I wouldn't claim either way, but it rhymes?)

The connections are too hard. I'm at 1761 and 1144 mistakes and I'm guessing, I have no idea what most of these things are

Well, this has sucked up a couple days of my free time so far... :)

My brain overheated just reading the words at first. Great puzzle!

very nice! would be nicer if it can be playable on mobile, i know where i'm gonna spend my time waiting for my wife at the mall now.

So... got any more of these?

This is magnificent <3

Now I know that grouping J with APL is a mistake.

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