
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection - tgragnato
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
======
rspeer
"Galaxies" is the one I keep coming back to. It has the property that
computer-generated instances of it are often satisfying, with distinct "aha"
moments where everything falls into place.

That's not true for all logic puzzles -- many Nikoli-style puzzles can be
clever when designed by humans but are tedious when designed by computers.

------
lelandbatey
If you'd like to play these games on your phone, Chris Boyle packaged them up
as a no-networking, ad free, and $0 app for Android! It's on the play store
here:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles&hl=en)

I think "Untangle" is the game I've put the most time into, though other
favorites include "Map" and "Flood".

~~~
jayrhynas
And for iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/simon-tathams-portable-
puzzl...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/simon-tathams-portable-puzzle-
collection/id622220631?mt=8)

~~~
ghewgill
Author of iOS port here. Thanks for the plug!

~~~
jayrhynas
I've probably spent more hours in this game than any other game on my phone,
over its lifetime.

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theunamedguy
When you read the word "portable," you'd better believe it. The entire project
is designed for elegance and simplicity, and the developer docs are a pleasure
to read.

[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/devel/](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/devel/)

~~~
notspanishflu
So portable that even several of these games were ported to Ubuntu Phone
(R.I.P.).

Edit:
[https://uappexplorer.com/apps?q=tatham&sort=relevance](https://uappexplorer.com/apps?q=tatham&sort=relevance)

~~~
theunamedguy
Heck, I personally ported them to Rockbox so they run on my MP3 players now!

[http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,51577.0.html](http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,51577.0.html)

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Retr0spectrum
The topic of Minesweeper seems to come up on HN quite often, so it might be
worth noting that Simon's implementation ensures that "you are guaranteed to
be able to solve the whole grid by deduction rather than guesswork."

------
DanBC
I love this puzzle collection, and it's one of the first things I install on
new computers.

Simon Tatham has been mentioned a few times on HN before.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tatham&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tatham&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
ehsankia
Not sure about computer, but I'm installed this on every single phone I've had
since my HTC Dream (very first android phone).

It honestly is the perfect "portable" game to kill 15m here or there. I've
been playing it for over 8 years now and I still keep cycling through. And the
controls on phones are pretty well made too.

I love almost all the games in the pack. That feeling you get when you solve
your very first Sudoku, and then the next 10 when you slowly discovery new
"strategies"? Well you can have that feeling many many times over with this!
That's how I introduce this to people.

------
archagon
I remember being so excited to play this on my GBA as homebrew! Good times.
Sadly, smartphones have ruined the joy of these fun, simple games for me. I
miss the days when installing custom puzzles on your mobile device felt like
an adventure.

~~~
pricechild
This is the one game (apart from maybe Super Hexagon...) which has always been
reinstalled on new phones/installs.

It's definitely because they are both fun & simple?

Smart phones these days may be more capable, but great graphics don't make a
great game.

------
thedjinn
From the guy that wrote PuTTY

~~~
tgragnato
I visited his website exactly because he released a new version of putty just
yesterday.

------
112233
somebody please finish the sokoban.c from the "unfinished" folder :) .
whatever is done by autosokoban [1] is really good, but there is no source.

[1]
[http://www.linusakesson.net/games/autosokoban/index.php](http://www.linusakesson.net/games/autosokoban/index.php)

------
matt_morgan
This is the only "game" I have on my phone. Years later I'll still sometimes
stumble on a strategy I never noticed before, in one or another of the
puzzles.

~~~
krallja
I see 39 games.

------
twelvechairs
I love this collection and have worked my way through most of them. It ranges
from the easy and instantly enjoyable (untangle) through to those which even
after a lot of playing the higher levels can be frustratingly hard to solve
(eg towers). In the middle are some you can learn the tricks for (eg maps) and
others where theres always something different (eg galaxies). Theres also a
good mix of the familiar and unfamiliar.

------
eridius
If you like this, you might want to check out Nikoli
([http://www.nikoli.com/en/](http://www.nikoli.com/en/)). They're a Japanese
puzzle company and they put out new puzzles every single day, all designed by
humans. The only real downside to their site is it uses Flash.

I have no affiliation with them, I've just been a happy subscriber for a long
time.

~~~
eridius
To clarify: A bunch of the puzzles in Simon Tatham's collection are also
puzzles that Nikoli does. I haven't checked to see if all of Nikoli's puzzles
are in the collection though.

------
lamby
I always referred to these as "Simon Tatham's Portable NP-Complete Puzzle
Collection"...

------
bobsgame
Shameless plug for my game that I've been working on for a long time:
[https://bobsgame.itch.io/bobs-game-puzzle-
game](https://bobsgame.itch.io/bobs-game-puzzle-game)

------
adito
What's your favourite puzzle HN?

Mine is Loopy, especially the Great Dodecagonal variant.

~~~
DCoder
I'm partial to Signpost and Towers.

------
JoshTriplett
I'm a huge fan of Slant; I like generating and solving huge puzzles with that.

There are some high-level reasoning rules you can use to solve Slant puzzles
more quickly. For instance, if you have two 1s orthogonally adjacent, the
slants on the opposite faces must not touch the 1s:

    
    
        / ? \
         1 1
        \ ? /
    

And if you have 3s in the same situation, the outside slants must both touch
the 3s:

    
    
        \ ? /
         3 3
        / ? \
    

There are several more rules like that, which make it much faster to solve.

------
maaaats
I really like "Loopy", but prefer the variant with hexagons/honeycomb. Got it
downloaded on my phone as "Slitherlink". Very nice, abstract game where you
constantly see new patterns.

For a more mix between a normal game and puzzle game (like the original Portal
game was) I can recommend Snakebird.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NoumenonGa...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NoumenonGames.SnakeBird_Touch)

~~~
jldugger
You realize that loopy has options for hexagons and more, right?

~~~
maaaats
Yes, but still not as good as a the standalone Slitherlink (which also has
lots if variants). What I miss the most is easy navigation with one hand,
different colors on the links so I know which ones belong together without
zooming out, marking the numbers differently when their constraints are okey,
and the ability to mark areas as outside or inside. I also feel something is a
bit off with the generated games, but that might be me being used to another
generator.

------
nemo1618
Some of these are seriously addicting, and it's no surprise that many of them
have been shamelessly copied and sold as smartphone apps. Galaxies is probably
my favorite.

------
real-hacker
I implemented the Towers Game on iOS a few years ago:
[https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/%E6%95%B0%E5%A1%94%E6%B8%B8%...](https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/%E6%95%B0%E5%A1%94%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F/id548616862?mt=8)

Very few downloads. Maybe it's the crappy graphics.

I am always wondering why some puzzle games get popular (Sudoku, 2048) whereas
others don't .

------
cpach
I was thinking about these just the other day, but couldn’t remember the
name/location. Thank you 'tgragnato for posting!

------
Chinjut
This is a silly question, but: some of these games have right-click actions,
which I find I cannot perform on a Mac OS X system by holding Control and
clicking. Is there some other way I should be trying to right-click?

~~~
gonewest
In the source he says its command-click:

* - see if we can do anything to one-button-ise the multi-button * dependent puzzle UIs: * - Pattern is a _little_ unwieldy but not too bad (since * generally you never need the middle button unless you've * made a mistake, so it's just click versus command-click).

~~~
Chinjut
Hm, that doesn't work for me. (To be clear, I'm using the JavaScript version
of the game, in case it matters.)

------
yoodenvranx
I spent more time than I am willing to admit on "Tents".

edit: "Fillings" and "Rectangles" are also super addictive for me.

------
sogen
Anyone have problems with the touch screen on iOS? I've been thinking about
contacting the author and describe the issues.

~~~
jayrhynas
One thing I've noticed, if you're on a phone with force/3D touch, you have to
hold much longer than usual on the left edge of the screen to do a hold
action, because of the app switching feature

~~~
sogen
Thanks, in some of the apps I've noticed the click-area is very small or
shifted, and sometimes clicking something doesn't work.

