6 ms·
Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts
- srameshc 4mo agoI love the idea .. how you changed an important issue into a game and probably that would bring awareness. I am not an expert but such decisions probably affect a lot of people and no one spend time and learn about it. This is a fun way to learn. Thank you !!
- realmofthemad 4mo agoGlad you enjoyed it!
- coder97 4mo agoI think I did not understand this game well. May I suggest adding a few introductory levels of increasing difficulty for beginners.
- realmofthemad 4mo agoI'm sorry you've found it a bit difficult to pick up! There is an introduction below the game, but it can still be a bit hard to follow since it's all text. I'll see about adding an additional, optional, interactive tutorial.
- Brendinooo 4mo agoI LOVE this game, but it took a little while to pick up, mostly because I didn't realize that ties were a part of the mix.
- MarkusQ 4mo agoI won't let me complete the final district (YRBY+" "s) in today's puzzle. (firefox/linux) If I try to do it earlier it auto includes unwanted cells.
- realmofthemad 4mo agoI'm not sure I understand what you mean, would you mind sending over a screenshot or video of where you are stuck?
- MarkusQ 4mo ago[spoilers] https://snipboard.io/NZ8sa7.jpg https://snipboard.io/NZ8sa7.jpg
- realmofthemad 4mo agoThat helps a lot, thank you! A district is a connected group of hexes. With the other districts you have drawn, there is no way to create a connected group of hexes containing all remaining colored ones
- MarkusQ 4mo agoConnected hexes meaning "connected _occupied_ hexes"? It certainly seems to let you select empty hexes. Is it that the "size" of a district is based on area, rather than population (as in the real world)? No, that's not it. Is it that some empty hexes (not just outside the map, but inside as well) are mysteriously not allowed?
- pavel_lishin 4mo agoThis felt very satisfying to win! (Day 39) I'll try to remember to keep coming back. I think what made me quite confused at the start is mis-reading the instructions that every district could have no more than four houses; I thought I had to split the land into equal areas. Once I understood that, the solution felt much easier.
- convolvatron 4mo agovery basic issue, its not clear to me how to start a new district, it just extends the old one. I managed to do it accidentally a couple times, but I don't know how
- applfanboysbgon 4mo agoBy default, you work on one district at a time. Clicking adds tiles to the current district until the current district is full, then clicking will create a new district. District size is determined per round, described at the top as eg. "draw 5 districts of 4 populated tiles". You can also click a square in the "Districts" section of the header to switch to a different district, including an empty one to create a new one.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- TSiege 4mo agoI’m on mobile and that works for me sometimes but other times it just decides the district I’m working on is done and starts a new one. It’s not clear to me why or how to get that to not happen Cool concept tho! Would like to play it if I could only understand how
- realmofthemad 4mo agoDistricts are connected regions that can contain at most 4 houses. If you click on a house that is too far away from your started district, it might not be possible to span the distance. In that case it creates a new region instead Sorry this isn't super clear. I'll try to think of a way to make it more intuitive.
- cyode 4mo agoI could see this being a great activity in a high school civics class. Very creative. One rule that tripped me up is: > If two parties tie in a district, nobody wins it. This isn't realistic as ties don't happen in practice in elections, and some party will end up representing it. But the spirit of the gerrymandering concept is conveyed well enough.
- realmofthemad 4mo agoYes indeed, not super realistic, since it would never happen. but it does make for a more fun puzzle :)
- Wowfunhappy 4mo agoIt's a major factor in today's puzzle, but it doesn't seem to come up as much in past puzzles. I think yesterday's is more fun and doesn't have the unrealism. https://gerrymandle.cc/game/2026-06-17 https://gerrymandle.cc/game/2026-06-17
- shagie 4mo agoThere's a board game from a few years ago that I'd recommend for such a situation: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/252997/mapmaker-the-gerrymandering-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/252997/mapmaker-the-gerr... - it was a kickstarter and available beyond that for a few years: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the-gerrymandering-game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the... The designer diary: https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/111646/designer-diary-mapmaker-the-gerrymandering-game-ta https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/111646/designer-di... We're three siblings from a gerrymandered district in Austin, Texas, and this is the story of how we designed a board game about gerrymandering — and ended up at the Supreme Court with 82 copies of Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game. ... and a review of it in context: https://civiceducator.org/review-mapmaker-gerrymandering/ https://civiceducator.org/review-mapmaker-gerrymandering/
- sfRattan 4mo agoI picked up a copy on ebay a while after the Kickstarter! Mapmaker is a great game for tabletop veterans and newbies alike, although the first playthrough can be a little opaque even to regular gamers (especially the first few moves when there are no established district boundaries yet). It definitely benefits from repeat play, goes quickly once you know the rules, and has you doing only one thing each turn. Definitely a game that has earned a permanent place in my collection.
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago> Error Code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG Can't view it at all.
- gnerd00 4mo agogreat idea to make Gerrymandle! congrats on the alpha US/California etc gerrymandering is dramatically illegal IMHO. I see the recent gerrymandering in the USA as a kind of political cancer actually....
- realmofthemad 4mo agoPersonally I've been very surprised with the public support for the increase in political gerrymandering. I know that people think it is worth it for the short term gains, but it still seems like a bad idea to me.
- naet 4mo agoBoth US Republicans and Democrats are successfully selling to their constituents that the other party is guilty of egregious gerrymandering, so those constituents will support aggressive redistricting efforts to "even things out". I think the average member of either party generally understands gerrymandering to be bad, but with an redistricting arms race escalating nobody wants to be left behind. I think gerrymandering generally is abhorrent and anti democratic. At this point we need a new, more fair redistricting aggressively enforced from the top down to change course, and I'm not sure how we can get that through when it would likely take a 2/3rds majority in congress to pass... but significant members of congress benefit from gerrymandering and would lose their position in the next cycle if it were taken away, so they are unlikely to support the measure.
- thechao 4mo agoI know your threw an "etc" in there; but, all fingers point to my home state: Texas. We need two legislative changes at the federal level: (1) uncap the house from 435 to at least cube-root or (better) max 500k; and, (2) you can't be sworn in unless your district was from an ICRC or statistically equivalent object.
- aureate 4mo agoLovely game! Takes a bit of fiddling to get the hang of it, but so do most puzzles worth doing. The instructions are clear, the presentation is great and I like the decision to prioritise a fun game over representing real Gerrymandering accurately. It looks like a lot of thought has gone into this.
- Terr_ 4mo agoFrom a didactic perspective, it would cool if the result-screen illustrated how some voting-reform would have solved the sneaky win... but I guess that's not practical, since it'd rely on additional data which would detract from the ludic experience. For example, one can't show how ranked-choice voting would reduce the dodgy win of X without also knowing how the Y/Z populace breaks down in terms of voting for the other side over X.
- bhouston 4mo agoI do believe the solution to gerrymandering in general is to move towards proportional representation so that the individual boundaries of a distinct are not as influential. Maybe add that as an option to the game? I sort of think that the increasing drive to gerrymander everything to the extreme may eventually show that First Past the Post voting is fundamentally broken and we have to replace it with proportional representation - or at least that is my hope.
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoThe number of voting members has been strictly capped at 435 since the passage of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. In 1930, there was an average of 294k citizens per Rep. In 2020, there was an average of 761k citizens per Rep. At some points in U.S. history, the ratio was 30k:1. I am not sure whether having very small districts would help or hurt gerrymandering, because it all depends on spatial constraints and spatial/density autocorrelation. I do think it would be good for the Republic if our representatives cam from a local community where you reasonably expect that might have gone to school with them, or have met them at the coffee shop before, and where they can run a campaign by personally knocking on doors, which can be done if the ratio was like 80k:1.
- summarybot 4mo agoThe House of Representatives is already a cacophonous, boisterous coliseum.
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoThe House is a group of individuals that are so afraid to defy the president because the President can send a bunch of money to primary any one who disagrees with them. Big districts require a lot of money to run a campaign. Small districts mean you don't need a lot of money, and heck they might already know you. A larger house means more political independence from the bully-pulpit. And the House is MEANT to be cacophonous and boisterous. Objections based on convenience and space, are not serious in terms of the meaning of the House. Within a decade or two, it will be 1M citizens per House Rep. Adn everyone of them will bought, because you have to be bought to get elected.
- summarybot 4mo agoIt'd be interesting to run some numerical simulations to see at what number of Reps coordination becomes unfeasible or leads to perennial grid-lock. The Senate, on the other hand, is the "saucer" for the hot tea of the Lower House. Back in the day, people would pour tea from the tea cup straight into the saucer to cool it down, and sup from the saucer directly. Which means that the saucer "cooled down" the ferocity and fiery intensity of the "discussions" in the Lower House. Does this relationship still hold if the Lower House is significantly more populated? Probably. But that might also be worth investigating.
- WalterBright 4mo agoSome mathematicians worked out a way to fairly do districting, similar to having one kid cut the cake and the other kid gets first choice: "A partisan districting protocol with provably nonpartisan outcomes" by Wesley Pegden, Ariel D. Procaccia, Dingli Yu https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781
- collinmcnulty 4mo agoAn interesting mathematical curiosity, but kinda seems to ignore the political realities that make gerrymandering happen in the first place. If you had the will to make this happen, why would you not just do proportional representation? The modern point of having districts is to gerrymander.
- Georgelemental 4mo agoBecause local representation is important too?
- collinmcnulty 4mo agoThen run a hyperlocal party if you really have a constituency that cares deeply about their local issues and win enough votes to get a seat.
- jrmg 4mo agoTesselation Games’ ‘Berrymandering’ tabletop game is also a fun way to depress yourself - and a fun way to introduce the idea of gerrymandering to friends and family who don’t ‘get’ it - and depress them too! https://www.tessellationgames.com/ https://www.tessellationgames.com/
- throwaway81523 4mo agoCan I redraw the districts to look like a Gerrymandlebrot set?
- davidhaggstrom 4mo agoLove this! It would be amazing to see daily puzzles built from actual historical maps. Letting people redraw a real gerrymandered district.
- verteu 4mo agoI'm getting SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG on Firefox.
- gweinberg 4mo agoI get the same error, and chrome fails also.
- blharr 4mo agoThe controls are really frustrating on mobile. Clicking a new tile sometimes adds it to my district. Other times it makes a new district?
- realmofthemad 4mo agoIf a tile can be added to your district, it is added. Otherwise it makes a new district. Since todays puzzle heavily relies on empty space, it can be a bit confusing. I'll try to make this a bit more clear for new players
- VarunMenon 4mo agoI love the idea! Took a while for my gf and I to get used to it, but it's so much fun now!
- polnurfer 4mo ago[flagged]
- helterskelter 4mo agoThere has to be a better way of representing a population than our current system. There is just no way you can represent real, complex, demographics in a fair and proportional way -- there are an unlimited number of ways to categorize people, and by grouping them one way you will often exclude grouping them in other, and perhaps not less significant ways. What you end up with is a very skewed representation of a population that's only bounded to reality through our notions of which category they belong to.
- ChadNauseam 4mo agoSome cantons in Switzerland use a system called biproportional apportionment. They say "okay, party A got 25% of the votes, so they must get 25% of the seats. And district 1 accounts for 30% of the population, so they must get 30% of the seats." And so on. Then they do some matrix math to determine who gets what seats in which districts. The method ensures each party gets the right total number of seats while each district gets its predetermined seat count. You could in principle extend the method to handle three or more dimensions.
- sfRattan 4mo agoGermany uses mixed-member proportional representation. You cast two votes in each federal election: one vote for a registered political party at the federal level and one vote for among a list of local candidates from those parties. The ballots famously have the phrase "You have 2 voices/votes" ("Sie haben 2 Stimmen") on the top [1]. The seats in the Bundestag are parceled out in proportion to shares of the national vote among federally recognized parties, and each party has a list of candidates who may or may not get a seat from that party's resulting allotment, based in part on the popularity of those candidates in their local list elections. The math of it is a bit more complicated than that, but it works quite well to completely sidestep the gerrymandering problem. The flipside is that parties must be registered federally to participate, and this gives the government a great deal of implicit power to exclude parties it doesn't like. CGP Grey has a good YouTube video explaining it, probably better than I have here [2]. [1]: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/german-election-ballot-paper-card-federal-parliamentary-elections-bundestag-germany-99941627.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/german-election-ballot-paper... [2]: https://youtu.be/QT0I-sdoSXU?si=VInLvyvMlMJzIvoh https://youtu.be/QT0I-sdoSXU?si=VInLvyvMlMJzIvoh
- smeej 4mo agoThis reminds me of the plot some Libertarians had back in 2020 to win the U.S. presidential election by taking New Mexico or some other state. I can't remember how it was supposed to work mathematically, because NM doesn't have enough votes by itself to prevent either other candidate from getting a majority, but I remember having seen articles about it. (I tried searching to provide a link and can only find references to Texas, and I'm absolutely certain the articles I read were not about Texas.)
- bustadjustme 4mo agoMaybe you were thinking of Utah in 2016? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_McMullin_2016_presidential_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_McMullin_2016_presidentia...
- apparent 4mo agoInteresting to see "neighbourhood" and "centre" in a game about gerrymandering, focused on the US. Anyone know where the creator is from? Is he/she a transplant to the US, or someone from another country who has taken an interest in the subject (perhaps realizing there might be market interest in such a big country)?
- conartist6 4mo agoI LOVE that people are creating things like this. The best way to complain is to make things. More power to you!
- fogleman 4mo agoPolitics aside, this is a fun type of puzzle!
- jmpavlec 4mo agoI got a flawless victory in a landslide with 0 hints but the result screen is a bit confusing. There are players that used hints that are to the "right" of where it shows me. Makes me feel like those people did better than me... But actually they did worse since they needed a hint or 4. Fun little game. How do you curate the puzzle each day? Can you easily automate a bunch of puzzles then hand select them so back to back days aren't too similar? Or is it manual?
- realmofthemad 4mo ago> But actually they did worse since they needed a hint or 4. Hmm, that is interesting, I had not thought about that. I will see if it makes more sense to reverse the axis. Might just make it more confusing though > How do you curate the puzzle each day? Can you easily automate a bunch of puzzles then hand select them so back to back days aren't too similar? Or is it manual? It's mostly manual, but I have some tools to quickly create map layouts and fill them with various distributions. Just to speed up testing out new levels.
- tunesmith 4mo agoIt's interesting to think about how difficult it is to define "fair" with the current system. If a state's population is 60/40 and there are ten districts, do you want them each to be representative at 60/40, and thus 10-0? Or do you want six districts one way and four the other way? In other words, there's a real tension between "competitive districts" and "representative outcomes".
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4mo agoThis is missing the forest for the trees. You'd want them represented accurately at a local level along reasonable district lines, rather than intentionally being misrepresented with district lines so tortured that the shapes they make are said to resemble a lizard. Maybe that's hard but I suspect it gets a lot easier once the bad-faith decision-makers are removed from their decision-making power. In the context you present, "competetive districts" means precisely the same thing as "representative outcomes".
- sourcegrift 4mo ago[flagged]
- wildmental 3mo agoThis game is not boring! Better than most of the puzzle games in google play.