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Show HN: I made a little math game named Summle

189 pointsby kirchhoffabout 3 years ago
I made this game for my children to play, as they are heavily into Wordle, and I thought they&#x27;d also like something maths based!<p>Every puzzle is solvable and has at least one solution (usually more).<p>There is a kids mode in the settings, plus a hard mode for extra difficulty.

34 comments

gus_massaabout 3 years ago
&gt; <i>I made this game for my children to play</i><p>Mathematician here. It&#x27;s fun, but it&#x27;s quite hard! How old are your children?<p>[spoiler alert?]<p>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.<p>I don&#x27;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.
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smallerfishabout 3 years ago
Inspired by Countdown? Been a while but don&#x27;t they have 6 numbers? Might be nice to allow users to choose &quot;2 big and 4 small&quot; as well.
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dxbydtabout 3 years ago
Quite hard dude! I&#x27;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 &amp; quickly leads you down the wrong path. Awesome game. Pls compile stats on average solve time. I&#x27;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 )<p>You have +,-, * ,&#x2F;. But no ^. Why ?<p>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.
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Milner08about 3 years ago
Nice, very similar to countdown. If you&#x27;ve not seen it then &#x27;8 Out of 10 Cats does Countdown&#x27; is a great comedy version of the classic show on Channel 4 in the UK.
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akerrabout 3 years ago
Nice 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!
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ed_dbabout 3 years ago
Pretty 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. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;frGcWtL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;frGcWtL</a><p>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. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;IEFRFnT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;IEFRFnT</a><p>it would be nice to be able to get back to this screen once you&#x27;ve completed it even if you close the browser <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;DDkF7On" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;DDkF7On</a>
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lloekiabout 3 years ago
nice! instant throwback to childhood watching Des Chiffres et des Lettres on TV<p>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?<p>the thing that trips me up playing is thinking like:<p>&quot;50 plus 3 is 53, minus 7 is 46, times 3 is 138&quot;<p>so I&#x27;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!<p>oh, and I second the request to clear the board, reloading just doesn&#x27;t cut it: it&#x27;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&#x27;s no way to reload except killing the app... a bit frustrating also!
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foucabout 3 years ago
Nice. Summle seems a bit easier to get into than <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nerdlegame.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nerdlegame.com</a>
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NKosmatosabout 3 years ago
Nice one and an interesting twist from the classic Wordle. If I may one small suggestion, please add a clear and&#x2F;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 :-)
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mvladicabout 3 years ago
[Spoiler alert] Terrible brute force program in JS says there is (possibly, didn&#x27;t prove it) 6368 different solutions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;mvladic&#x2F;9b2f2025a8c54aca78649ce1776600b6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;mvladic&#x2F;9b2f2025a8c54aca78649ce17766...</a>
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wforfangabout 3 years ago
I found a &quot;normal mode&quot; solution in a couple minutes after some trial&#x2F;error. But then I spent 10 minutes trying to find a solution in &quot;hard mode&quot; 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_monstaabout 3 years ago
I really like this and find it much more engaging than mathler, which is my current favorite (nerdle doesn&#x27;t really do it for me).<p>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:(<p>Please consider a &quot;clear all&quot; 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&#x27;m doing on advanced mode.<p>Also, maybe an &quot;I give up&quot; button, hidden somewhere in a modal. I suspect I&#x27;m not going to have time to solve this before the next puzzle comes along, but I still want to know the solution.
cmeacham98about 3 years ago
Consider 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&#x27;t have to think about what operation I was going to use at all.
davabout 3 years ago
#Summle #7: 3&#x2F;5 = = =<p>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.
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smcinabout 3 years ago
This 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.<p>a) Can you publish daily solutions to yesterday&#x27;s problems? I&#x27;d really like to see the solution to #8-Hard (1,6,7,7,50,100 Target: 875)<p>b) Can you add links to archived previous problems?
main_giabout 3 years ago
Well 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 &#x27;too difficult&#x27;, you can&#x27;t make poor guesses and still win like in Wordle.<p>How does the &quot;app&quot; feature work? Was it easy to make (given a static site)?
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BugsJustFindMeabout 3 years ago
I clicked through and then immediately forgot the instructions so I tried to go back to read them. Now the button just says &quot;Come back Tomorrow&quot; and I can&#x27;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.
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latortugaabout 3 years ago
I 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.
blondie9xabout 3 years ago
Wasn&#x27;t that into it. I couldn&#x27;t feel the connections as easily as Wordle between the incremental guesses.
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arendtioabout 3 years ago
Actually, it isn&#x27;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 :-)<p>Edit: And another 6 minutes for the &#x27;hard&#x27; version (4 steps).
zwegnerabout 3 years ago
I think I was a bit lucky, but solved today&#x27;s (#8) optimally in a minute or two.<p>Pretty cool puzzle, reminds me of this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.plover.com&#x2F;math&#x2F;24-puzzle.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.plover.com&#x2F;math&#x2F;24-puzzle.html</a>
main_giabout 3 years ago
#Summle hard #8: 5&#x2F;5 = = = = =<p>Is &quot;hard mode&quot; 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.
neogodlessabout 3 years ago
It was not clear to me that &quot;the&quot; solution didn&#x27;t require all the tiles.<p>Or that there were multiple solutions.<p>In the end, I did all the steps in my head, and then refreshed the page to do it in 3 steps.<p>But it&#x27;s not really an &quot;iterative&quot; game.
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maps7about 3 years ago
#Summle #7: 3&#x2F;5 = = =<p>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..<p>EDIT: hints might be nice to make it more wordle like
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motohagiographyabout 3 years ago
Got very intersted, then lost interest because I couldn&#x27;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?
Lipseyabout 3 years ago
I built one less challenging in Java some years ago.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;teni&#x2F;sumgame" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;teni&#x2F;sumgame</a>
pingiunabout 3 years ago
Looks a lot like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c.eev.ee&#x2F;digitle&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c.eev.ee&#x2F;digitle&#x2F;</a>
mrvenkmanabout 3 years ago
This 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!!
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makachabout 3 years ago
Took a while, solved kids mode^^ I suck, thanks for rubbing it in. Incremental difficulty?
MandieDabout 3 years ago
Love it - did both the regular and the hard mode. You should add a fiendish mode!
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crobertsbmwabout 3 years ago
I’m a kids mode type player.
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mrvenkmanabout 3 years ago
Could you maybe provide a times table for help?
jraceabout 3 years ago
I am enjoying this, thank you!
parenthesesabout 3 years ago
with this game, you can entirely solve it on paper - which is cool as hell