Modeling what makes paper-folding puzzles hard

(dailyunfold.com)

39 points | by astralasia 5 days ago ago

20 comments

  • astralasia 5 days ago ago

    Author here, happy to answer questions about any part of this. The scoring weights are hand-tuned from playtesting, not learned from data. Would love to hear from anyone with psychometrics or spatial cognition experience.

    • smitty1e a day ago ago

      By the third round, the submit button interfered with the puzzle on my S24 phone.

      • astralasia a day ago ago

        Thanks, I tried to make room for everything for all screen sizes but I guess I couldn't. I'll fix the layout.

      • astralasia a day ago ago

        should be fixed.

  • lifis a day ago ago

    I don't understand what is supposed to be "hard". It seems utterly trivial to me.

    In reverse order of the folds, just mirror all holes across the fold line.

    • astralasia a day ago ago

      You are definitely correct, and that is how I am solving all the puzzles as well. However, I've encountered many people that couldn't wrap their head around even the mirror across the fold line logic. For such people, the techniques I described help to come up with puzzles that feel "hard" for them. Thanks for giving it a try.

    • krackers a day ago ago

      You must be a shape rotator.

  • aeonik a day ago ago

    Is there a way to play previous puzzles?

    • astralasia a day ago ago

      I am planning on adding that feature as well in the near future, thanks for trying it out

      • aeonik a day ago ago

        No problem.

        Advice. Make the scoring more like http://enclose.horse/

        Score should be correct out of incorrect but medals for perfect, almost perfect, and some cutoff above.

        I missed one fold on the hard one (but 3 points due to this), and only 1 star feels a little harsh to me.

        • astralasia a day ago ago

          you are right, and that has been bugging me from the start and never got to fixing it. I tweaked it a bit to make it hopefully make much more sense now. Also I didn't know enclose.horse, and loved playing it, so thanks for pointing it out and for the nice feedback.

    • astralasia a day ago ago

      I added the archive feature, would love to hear your feedback on it as well

  • NooneAtAll3 a day ago ago

    something very wrong with brightness of the paper - it blends in with the background so much, it's impossible to play

    • astralasia a day ago ago

      increased the contrast, so it should be easier on the eye hopefully. Thanks again for the feedback.

    • astralasia a day ago ago

      thanks for flagging this, the contrast is definitely too low. I'll fix this.

      • jhanschoo 7 hours ago ago

        I think I have your new build(s) as I can play from the archive, but the contrast is still too low for me. Note that displays are different, so it's likely that things are more indistinct for me than for you. I've just played through the archive, and all my mistakes came from off-by-one errors because the grid lines were indistinct and I misplaced the holes.

        • astralasia 5 hours ago ago

          thanks for the detailed feedback and trying it out, I will be rechecking the contrast issue

  • jojobas a day ago ago
    • astralasia a day ago ago

      didn't know this, thanks for sharing.