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Show HN: I made a little math game named Summle
I made this game for my children to play, as they are heavily into Wordle, and I thought they'd also like something maths based!
Every puzzle is solvable and has at least one solution (usually more).
There is a kids mode in the settings, plus a hard mode for extra difficulty.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- NKosmatos 5y agoNice one and an interesting twist from the classic Wordle. If I may one small suggestion, please add a clear and/or backspace button. Like the buttons present on most real calculators: CE (current entry), C (clear), AC (all clear). I know that you can click on an occupied cell and clear it, but backspace is more convenient :-)
- kirchhoff 5y agoThanks. The backspace is something I considered, but it would have to function more like an undo button. You can refresh the page (or click the logo) to clear all the cells.
- fouc 5y agoNice. Summle seems a bit easier to get into than https://nerdlegame.com https://nerdlegame.com
- neogodless 5y agoNerdle works like Wordle. This works differently. You can burn yourself early by doing an incorrect equation, and the only way to finish is to reset by refreshing the page. So it is more of a learning game then a competitive/iterative game. You could do it all in your head (or in another program/on paper) to do it the best way on your first try, but you can't fix mistakes once trying something teaches you something.
- kirchhoff 5y agoYou can click on numbers to remove them, so that you do not need to refresh the page.
- compsciphd 5y agoI find nerdle easy. always 23+45=68. (only missing 0,1,7,9,-,*,/) so in one test, touched 8 of the 15 possible characters.
- smallerfish 5y agoInspired by Countdown? Been a while but don't they have 6 numbers? Might be nice to allow users to choose "2 big and 4 small" as well.
- kirchhoff 5y agoIndeed. Everything old is new again. There should be 6 numbers - perhaps one is cut off. Are you on mobile?
- AStrangeMorrow 5y agoThat's what I thought of too. Even though Countdown is kind of the UK version of the longer running French game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_chiffres_et_des_lettres#Numbers_round https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_chiffres_et_des_lettres#Nu...
- lloeki 5y agoYup I immediately thought about the numbers challenge in that French show I watched as a kid
- colinmsaunders 5y agoWrite a bot to play countdown: https://botfights.ai/game/countdown https://botfights.ai/game/countdown
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y agoCountdown can actually get quite difficult too. Since you have the 30s timer. I learned a lot from Rachel’s solutions.
- zestyping 5y agoI'd pay good money to play Summle 2.0: Jimmy Carr insults you before you start playing.
- dav 5y ago#Summle #7: 3/5 = = = I like it. Some UX tweaks would be nice, maybe an undo, a clear all, and perhaps some helpful focus shifting (of which tile is being intended for a click) depending on context.
- dav 5y agoAnother thought, having an in-app calculator (so one could free calculate factors of an arbitrary number) might generate interesting data to see the approaches your users take? I could see how that might be interesting data for cognitive mathematics research.
- kirchhoff 5y agoThe undo function is in the works.. to clear all you can refresh the page (or click the logo). There is an effect when a tile is filled but perhaps it needs to be more dramatic.
- gus_massa 5y ago> I made this game for my children to play Mathematician here. It's fun, but it's quite hard! How old are your children? [spoiler alert?] I finally solved it in 4 steps. It needs a lot of backtracking planning. I has to guess which will be the last expression and try to reach the numbers that it used. I don't play too much Wordle, but my approach was just trying to find a word that is not to stupid (like reusing a lot of letters that are already grey) and just hopping that that the new info will make the next step easier.
- kirchhoff 5y agoThere is a kids mode in the settings. Today's one is hard, I must admit (though it can be done in 3 steps) - they did well when I was testing the site!
- fgeiger 5y ago> It needs a lot of backtracking planning. I has to guess which will be the last expression and try to reach the numbers that it used. I ended up creating a mental factorization table of the target number with only the available numbers as factors. That pretty "quickly" lead to a solution in only three steps. I put the "quickly" in scare quotes because I essentially brute forced the problem.
- rntksi 5y agoI'm pretty sure this is the only way to solve it (factorization table). I don't see how else?
- Someone 5y agoHard? I found the hard one fairly easy, and don’t think I accidentally spotted the solution early. For difficult, I would expect at least one division, as in (ax+b)/(c-d) But yes, I factored the result in my head. I would have done the same with (result ± any of the other numbers), if necessary. Also, for the simple one, I immediately recognized 243 as a power of 3, so maybe, I’m not in the target group ;-)
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- crobertsbmw 5y agoI’m a kids mode type player.
- kirchhoff 5y agoYou won't like the extreme mode I have planned.
- hombre_fatal 5y agoMe too. This game definitely did not come naturally to me. I could only brute-force it and backtrack.
- neogodless 5y agoIt was not clear to me that "the" solution didn't require all the tiles. Or that there were multiple solutions. In the end, I did all the steps in my head, and then refreshed the page to do it in 3 steps. But it's not really an "iterative" game.
- kirchhoff 5y agoThe rules are on the info page - maybe not that obvious.
- neogodless 5y agoYup - I skimmed them, so that's on me! Don't let me being relatively harsh discourage you. It's a good, educational game that makes you think. It just feels very different from something like Wordle, and that's OK. Now that I got the hang of it, I tried the easy and hard modes as well, and got them both on the first try without having to undo anything. But as others said, I looked at the available numbers, figured out what I had to multiply to get close, what I'd have to add/subtract to get the rest of the way, and how I'd use the leftover numbers there to make the addition/subtraction possible. Basically I brute-forced it in my head. But I think it would be enjoyable if it somehow felt more iterative, and less like I was working from the solution backwards, and then just filling the steps in all at once.
- kirchhoff 5y agoThanks, all feedback is most welcome. I tested it with only a small number of people.
- Lipsey 5y agoI built one less challenging in Java some years ago. https://github.com/teni/sumgame https://github.com/teni/sumgame
- Milner08 5y agoNice, very similar to countdown. If you've not seen it then '8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown' is a great comedy version of the classic show on Channel 4 in the UK.
- Someone 5y agoCountdown was inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_chiffres_et_des_lettres#Numbers_round https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_chiffres_et_des_lettres#Nu...
- dxbydt 5y agoQuite hard dude! I'm still going at it. Once you put down an equation like 100x3=300, your mind becomes committed to it...which biases your future choices & quickly leads you down the wrong path. Awesome game. Pls compile stats on average solve time. I'd be interested to know how long it takes to solve the daily summle on average (aka how dumb am I compared to rest of population ) You have +,-, * ,/. But no ^. Why ? I used to ask a^b * c^d=abcd as an interview question. In most programming languages its a 4-line nested loop to find the unique solution.
- kirchhoff 5y agoI wanted to keep it to operators everyone would understand, though it would be interesting to use exponents! I am only recording successful attempts, which for the regular puzzle is around 33% so far today. I might compile stats on solve time too.
- __s 5y agoIt becomes much easier once you factor the number, rather than trying to narrow in on the answer Light spoiler: gurer vf n fbyhgvba juvpu qbrf abg hfr bar uhaqerq
- gowld 5y agoThat's true if the solution is a product, not a sum.
- BizarroLand 5y agoStart with the product solutions, and if nothing seems pliable, start backwards and work with the sum results. For the hard one, 612 is not an easy number to find, but basic math shows that 6+1+2=9 so the number is divisible by 3 (and I won't go any farther to prevent spoiling it) Finding a system by which you create the situations that allow the operands and factors to be discovered while also flexing your basic math skills is the fun of the game.
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- blondie9x 5y agoWasn't that into it. I couldn't feel the connections as easily as Wordle between the incremental guesses.
- eatsyourtacos 5y agoIt's not meant to have the same type of connections as Wordle, even though it looks like it. You can't just randomly put in a combination and then use it or get info.. you really need to plan the whole thing out before doing anything.
- mvladic 5y ago[Spoiler alert] Terrible brute force program in JS says there is (possibly, didn't prove it) 6368 different solutions: https://gist.github.com/mvladic/9b2f2025a8c54aca78649ce1776600b6 https://gist.github.com/mvladic/9b2f2025a8c54aca78649ce17766...
- gowld 5y agoHow many if you filter out trivial permutations?
- MandieD 5y agoLove it - did both the regular and the hard mode. You should add a fiendish mode!
- kirchhoff 5y agoThank you. I do actually have another mode planned!
- latortuga 5y agoI got the answer on the first try in 5 steps but I felt like I was a bit lucky. Reminds me of playing 24 and Krypto.
- ed_db 5y agoPretty fun, few comments 1) The Share Results currently includes a few spoilers as it shows that the player has included the result of one of the previous steps. This makes it considerably easier for someone to get the answer. https://imgur.com/a/frGcWtL https://imgur.com/a/frGcWtL 2) It does not appear to remember your game if you close the browser and return as wordle does. The solution you entered is then hidden. https://imgur.com/a/IEFRFnT https://imgur.com/a/IEFRFnT it would be nice to be able to get back to this screen once you've completed it even if you close the browser https://imgur.com/a/DDkF7On https://imgur.com/a/DDkF7On
- kirchhoff 5y agoThanks. The 'share results' grid is about as minimal as I can make it without it being devoid of information! The reset upon completion is intentional, as there is (usually) more than one solution to be found. For the purposes of stats recording, only the first successful attempt is registered.
- akerr 5y agoNice work! The Countdown model works well for this format. Best maths Wordle variant I’ve seen so far. The video really helped to see what to do (minor point: had to scroll down to see numbers on my phone). Did feel a little cheated when my iteration was locked in as a solution and I could immediately see an improvement!
- kirchhoff 5y agoThanks for the feedback. Re: the scrolling issue - can I ask which device?
- cmeacham98 5y agoConsider a mode with limited uses of the operations too. I liked it, but I thought both normal and hard modes were too easy given I didn't have to think about what operation I was going to use at all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- makach 5y agoTook a while, solved kids mode^^ I suck, thanks for rubbing it in. Incremental difficulty?
- arendtio 5y agoActually, it isn't that hard (took me about 5 minutes to arrive at the 3 steps solution). Especially with a number like 486 which you might have met in school, when learning multiplication... Then again, I like the mental exercise :-) Edit: And another 6 minutes for the 'hard' version (4 steps).
- pingiun 5y agoLooks a lot like https://c.eev.ee/digitle/ https://c.eev.ee/digitle/
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoI clicked through and then immediately forgot the instructions so I tried to go back to read them. Now the button just says "Come back Tomorrow" and I can't even play. Stopping a person from playing again does only bad things for user experience. Please consider just not doing that instead of doing that.
- kirchhoff 5y agoI think you meant to post in the thread about the emoji game?
- BugsJustFindMe 5y agoYou are correct! Thanks!
- mrvenkman 5y agoThis is great!! I have to fit it to my screen a few times. But now I know how to fit it to my screen it’s fun!!
- mrvenkman 5y agoCould you maybe provide a times table for help?
- maps7 5y ago#Summle #7: 3/5 = = = This did not come naturally for me. Spent about 30 mins on it. After a long time, I opened my calc app and worked backwords. From there it only took a few mins.. EDIT: hints might be nice to make it more wordle like
- kirchhoff 5y agoToday's puzzle was difficult I admit. It's tough to find a balance, I'm still working on it!
- main_gi 5y agoWell hello. I was in the middle of making a game with a very similar premise lol, apparently a few of those are around, but I do think the Countdown gameplay of 6 numbers is 'too difficult', you can't make poor guesses and still win like in Wordle. How does the "app" feature work? Was it easy to make (given a static site)?
- kirchhoff 5y agoTo make the site work as an 'app' you just need it to conform to the PWA (Progressive Web App) guidelines, and handle the install prompt. There's a good guide here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Add_to_home_screen https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
- main_gi 5y agoNice, thank you. That's a nice feature that I didn't know about.
- main_gi 5y ago#Summle hard #8: 5/5 = = = = = Is "hard mode" based on difficulty judged by a solver? It feels like something that would more easily differentiate the modes would be adding extra numbers instead of 6 for all modes.
- lloeki 5y agonice! instant throwback to childhood watching Des Chiffres et des Lettres on TV a bit of feedback, can you make it so that if you type an operation on the first block of a line it takes the last result as the first item and fills the op as the second item? the thing that trips me up playing is thinking like: "50 plus 3 is 53, minus 7 is 46, times 3 is 138" so I'd type 5 + 3 - 7... i.e I press the operation right away instead of typing the last result before the op... oddly frustrating! and I keep on doing it over and over again! oh, and I second the request to clear the board, reloading just doesn't cut it: it's a full, slow enough RTT to the server that I type on all inputs to clear them up instead. plus when added to the home screen as a web app on iOS there's no way to reload except killing the app... a bit frustrating also!
- dopidopHN 5y agoYeah. I said « le compte est bon » to myself. I’m not specifically math inclined and I had fun playing.
- zwegner 5y agoI think I was a bit lucky, but solved today's (#8) optimally in a minute or two. Pretty cool puzzle, reminds me of this: https://blog.plover.com/math/24-puzzle.html https://blog.plover.com/math/24-puzzle.html
- motohagiography 5y agoGot very intersted, then lost interest because I couldn't reload and get a new number when I was sure I had taken the wrong path. Is there a feature to start again from a new random number?
- parentheses 5y agowith this game, you can entirely solve it on paper - which is cool as hell
- wforfang 5y agoI found a "normal mode" solution in a couple minutes after some trial/error. But then I spent 10 minutes trying to find a solution in "hard mode" to no avail. I ultimately gave up and wrote a recursive solver in python. Now I feel better about myself and can continue about my day.
- cookie_monsta 5y agoI really like this and find it much more engaging than mathler, which is my current favorite (nerdle doesn't really do it for me). The difficulty levels seem right for my level at least - kids mode was almost instant, regular took a bit of thinking, advanced still has me stumped:( Please consider a "clear all" button. I know you want to keep the UI simple and that I can refresh the page, but this seems like an omission considering how much trial and error I'm doing on advanced mode. Also, maybe an "I give up" button, hidden somewhere in a modal. I suspect I'm not going to have time to solve this before the next puzzle comes along, but I still want to know the solution.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jrace 5y agoI am enjoying this, thank you!
- smcin 5y agoThis is brilliant, but impossible to learn how to beat on Hard mode without programming brute-force recursion. Even when we factorize the target number and its neighbors. a) Can you publish daily solutions to yesterday's problems? I'd really like to see the solution to #8-Hard (1,6,7,7,50,100 Target: 875) b) Can you add links to archived previous problems?