I’ve said before that I’m aiming to make Creativity Hacker my only online presence, and in addition to “no social media,” I also mean, “no newsletter,” but I still want to run some sort of regular puzzle club for Maranga users. Here’s how I’m going to make that happen.
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In Maranga, a “bag” is a particular sequence of letters. So if two people play the same bag, they’ll each get the same group of letters coming out of the bag in the same order. What letters are in there, and what order they come out in is determined by the bag’s “name,” which can be any word or phrase you like.
So to challenge a friend, just pick a bag name and both of you play the same one. Now the challenge is to see who can do better given the same sequence of letters to work with.
Years ago, when I first started playing, I kept track of “interesting” bags: the ones that generated high scores, the ones that had tricky sections where there weren’t many playable words available, etc. The plan was to use that list to offer regular challenges in a Maranga newsletter. But two things have changed since then.
First, I no longer like the idea of offering challenges to other people that I can’t enjoy myself. If I already have a solution to a given bag, where’s the fun in playing it again myself?
Second, as mentioned above, I’m no longer thinking in terms of a “written” newsletter. Instead, I’m leaning toward writing a script that regularly comes up with a random bag name and posts it on this web site. You can either visit that page to get a new bag every day, or follow the RSS feed specifically dedicated to the daily challenge. Then play the game. When you’re done, come check the discussion threads on that day’s post and see how other people did. Maybe even post your own result if you feel like sharing.
With this setup, I can play too, and it’ll be just as new to me as it is to everyone else. (There are trillions of different bags to try. Chances are rare that anyone will ever see the same bag twice, unless they do so intentionally.)
Anyway, that’s the plan, but I’m really curious to know if anyone likes the idea. Would you play? Why or why not? Hit me up in the comments and let’s hash this out.
