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Malcx | on: Ask HN: What are you working on? (November 2026)
A series of actually hard puzzle books, so far sudoku, killer sudoku and some fiendish wordsearches that only use 5 letters per grid.

https://extremepuzzlebooks.com

A sample wordsearch is available as a pdf here: https://extremepuzzlebooks.com/assets/sample/extreme-wordsea...

I'm quite proud of this wordsearch concept as I've not seen it done before.

All the logic puzzles have an online solution to show step by step how you can complete them.

https://extremepuzzlebooks.com/walkthroughs

I've been working on the software to generate, test and verify these for a couple of years and finally built up enough puzzle stock that meets the difficulty requirements to properly launch.

Now the work is on every hackers favourite part... Marketing!

eps | parent | next
Not everyone's cup 'o tea, but there's a letter search puzzles too:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084QLSJVF

kristiandupont | parent | next
Neat!

Somewhat related, I built a browser-based version of my favourite deduction game: https://github.com/kristiandupont/sherlock

epiccoleman | parent | next
Haha, I really love the word search. All my usual tactics fall apart - the limitation on the letters is adversarial in an oddly satisfying way. Cool idea.
Malcx | root | parent
Thanks, yeah I like the way it's effectively a kids game, but made very hard by one simple change.

Placing the words/extra letters in a way that you don't accidentally make duplicates was a challenge involving a _lot_ of tree walking.

epiccoleman | root | parent
Oh interesting, I hadn't considered that, but of course that would be quite the challenge haha, with relatively short words like you picked
sevenseacat | parent
oooh if you ever do logic grid puzzles I am so there
Malcx | root | parent
I have several more puzzles in the works, is there a particular type of one you're interested in?