decoded: Skyscraping

[!Note] This is part of my decoded series, a collection of lessons learnt from each major project I’ve undertaken.

• Talking about puzzles is really, really hard.
  • Specifically, talking in a way that simultaneously strikes being 1) precise 2) concise 3) intuitive 4) generalisable. I posit it might be impossible to achieve all 4.
  • I ended up standardising some jargon in Glossary because I was losing my mind. Unfortunately, now a lot of the writing on Skyscraping reads like arcane magic, but it’s sort of an unavoidable side effect of introducing jargon.
• Formatting puzzles efficiently is quite hard.
  • Markdown tables, using italics for pencilmarks, weighted for highlights, strikethroughs for contradictions and CSS to heavylift all the puzzle formatting is the most efficient solution I’ve found.
• Writing up solutions to puzzles takes a really, really, really long time.
  • It’s genuinely kinda horrifying. I am going to end up moving at a diabolical pace through writing up solutions to interesting puzzles.
• Distinguishing between a $\LaTeX$ digit and plaintext digit is surprisingly useful.
  • Compare “5 skyscrapers” with “$5$ skyscrapers”.
  • Well, I’ve ended up using hyphens for clarity anyway. The more visual difference, the better; “$5$-skyscrapers” reads very differently to “5 skyscrapers”.
• Writing about solving Skyscrapers – as well as developing an automated algorithm to solve them (Ascendant) – I feel has noticeably improved my skyscraping skills. Sparse 6x6s now feel doable most of the time!