a month ago
- The author is a software engineer who created a word game, Motplot, inspired by crosswords, where players deduce letter placements without guesswork.
- Developing the game was challenging because generating deducible puzzles proved unexpectedly difficult due to confusability between cells, an issue related to Shannon's information theory.
- The breakthrough came by applying Claude Shannon's concepts of signal noise and confusability graphs, allowing the generator to avoid ambiguous moves and produce thousands of solvable puzzles.
- The game highlights how adding context resolves ambiguity, turning potentially unknowable letters into clear deductions, emphasizing simplicity without guesswork.