Show HN: Approximatr: The daily game of spatial intuition
approximatr.comApproximatr uses your built-in ability to gauge sizes, distances, alignments, angles etc to see how good your eyes are!
I've been building this for a few months, and it's been fun discovering what types of puzzles humans are good at, and terrible at - for example we're pretty good at finding the middle of something, and terrible at comparing geometric areas. It's remarkable sometimes how I'll prototype a new puzzle, and find it absolutely impossible to achieve a good result reliably even with practice, or find I'll be able to get bang-on 100% of the time - discovering the balance between the two has been quite a journey.
I’ve played it — I really enjoyed it! It’s easy to get the hang of. I have a question, though: there aren’t that many types of puzzles (angles, lengths, areas, midpoints of line segments). Aren’t you worried that you might run out of ideas? Or do you have a way of coming up with something new?
Thank you! There are ~18 distinct puzzle types at the moment, and some have 3-4 variations - eg the midpoint one can be a straight line, an arc, or a combination like today's. It keep things pretty fresh, as it can be 3-4 days before the same type comes up again (with the exception of Set The Angle, which is every day).
I often wonder if I'll run out of ideas, but inspiration appears from nowhere and suddenly I've got 2-3 types more to try out. That said, there are quite a few ideas that have gone in the bin - it's surprising what the human mind can do effortlessly, or not at all - it can be very hard to find the right balance of difficulty or intuition. At the moment I'm adding 1-2 new types a week; I'm sure that'll slow down eventually.