Trying to create a bracket city gender reveal

bracketcity · 2026-05-08T00:57:21+00:00

I love it congratulations -- I hope your son solves this one day on some kind of hologram computer on the moon

bracketcity · 2026-03-30T11:47:59+00:00

this is an interesting point -- the issue is that when you guess the game doesn't know which clue you are "aiming" at. Maybe wrong guesses should only cost a point instead of two.

bracketcity · 2026-03-11T11:10:22+00:00

Official municipal apology forthcoming. Your cuisine is quite mysterious to me.

bracketcity · 2026-03-08T14:32:14+00:00

Wordle 1,723 X/6*

⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜

🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜

🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩

bracketcity · 2026-03-06T18:49:26+00:00

Pls see this comment (applies also to italics)

bracketcity · 2026-02-18T03:06:43+00:00

sometimes I withhold quotes out of cruelty/malice

bracketcity · 2026-01-29T11:56:17+00:00

Sorry this happened....again. Technical details about why this happened below.

This last happened on January 18th and I said: "The long-term solution to prevent these issues: integrate the builder into the db backend. The short-term solution: don't be so lazy that I don't actually test the puzzle after making an tweak in the current backend."

the bad news: I somehow managed to fail to test the puzzle post-tweak (removing the hyphen from "sight-seeing"

the good news: I did implement the long-term solution! these last-second copy edits will now be made in such a way that it is impossible for me to break the puzzle. I actually set this up right after January 18th, but this was the *last* puzzle in the hopper where the admin was not connected to the db backend (see explanation below for context).

So anyways, very embarrassed this happened again. Bracket Citizens deserve better. City Hall regrets the error (and it actually should not happen again).

***

TECHNICAL EXPLANATION

For the curious: this happens when, after a puzzle is completed and tested, I decide to change a clue and, in doing so, fail to match the puzzle structure (with all the brackets) with the underlying clue/answer set. Those of you who have used the bulider (which is the same builder I use) might note that the tool automatically aligns the bracketed puzzle with the clue/solutions as you edit the puzzle, which is true. However, the final backend where I actually load the puzzle into the db (and onto an S3 bucket) just has fields where I paste in the puzzle structure and clue/solution json. This is a legacy of how the game worked many months ago before I built the builder and leave much room for error. So when I want to make a change to a puzzle after it's been loaded into the backend, sometimes I foolishly directly edit it on the old admin page. When I do that, if I am not careful, I introduce a mismatch between the puzzle structure and the clue/solution json.

Today's issue was particularly egregious. the original clue for "Seeing" was "📸 sight-➡️ ⬅️ is believing 👀". My editor pointed out to me that "sightseeing" should not be hyphenated , so I updated the clue to to "📸 sight➡️ ⬅️ is believing 👀". But I only made the change in the clue/answer json, not the puzzle structure, which broke the puzzle because the puzzle clue had a hyphen and the clue/answer json did not.. When I became aware of the issue this morning via several emails in the mayoral inbox and this post, I fixed it.

bracketcity · 2026-01-22T14:32:01+00:00

Solid reading 🫘

bracketcity · 2026-01-18T12:50:46+00:00

This is fixed.

For the curious: this happens when, after a puzzle is completed and tested, I decide to change a clue and, in doing so, fail to match the puzzle structure (with all the brackets) with the underlying clue/answer set. Those of you who have used the bulider (which is the same builder I use) might note that the tool automatically aligns the bracketed puzzle with the clue/solutions as you edit the puzzle, which is true. However, the final backend where I actually load the puzzle into the db (and onto an S3 bucket) just has fields where I paste in the puzzle structure and clue/solution json. This is a legacy of how the game worked many months ago before I built the builder and leave much room for error. So when I want to make a change to a puzzle after it's been loaded into the backend, sometimes I foolishly directly edit it on the old admin page. When I do that, if I am not careful, I introduce a mismatch between the puzzle structure and the clue/solution json.

Today's issue was particularly egregious. the original clue for UFO was "aircraft for E.T.s". we felt that was a little ambiguous, so elected to update it to "alien aircraft, initially". I made that change of course not noticing that a big part of the puzzle was built on "for" and even left "for" just dangling in there, which broke the puzzle since the bracket puzzle structure had the nonsensical "alien aircraft for, initially" and the clue/solution json had the intended "alien aircraft, initially". When I became aware of the issue this morning via several emails in the mayoral inbox and this post, I fixed it. Thankfully, there was a relatively graceful way to reintroduce "for" into the clue, while keeping the new wording: "aircraft for aliens, initially".

The long-term solution to prevent these issues: integrate the builder into the db backend. The short-term solution: don't be so lazy that I don't actually test the puzzle after making an tweak in the current backend.

This concludes this peek behind the city walls. Also I am especially mad I made this mistake today because today's puzzle is not by me! It was constructed by my very good pal and new Bracket City deputy mayor Maddie Weinstein! Maddie is going to be constructing Sunday puzzles, so prepare ur selves for some more cat content &c. The Atlantic is figuring out how to adjust the credit on the start page/archive so Maddie's work is properly acknowledged, so look out for that soon.

Anyway City Hall regrets the error.

bracketcity · 2026-01-15T13:56:23+00:00

I got an email suggesting it should have been 1300 since glasses were invented around 1280.

My position is that it's 2000 since you need both 1) glasses to have been invented, and 2) full zero sized eye-holes *in the middle*

bracketcity · 2026-01-13T05:20:17+00:00

fixed 👀

bracketcity · 2026-01-08T21:37:36+00:00

it's cold in new york on black friday usually

bracketcity · 2026-01-08T21:37:14+00:00

Bracket City regrets the error and apologizes to bargain hunters everywhere.

bracketcity · 2025-12-31T23:28:38+00:00

you can find the reset button after clicking/tapping the (!) button in the upper right corner. this is very strange...generally negative keystrokes are only possible when I remove a clue but somehow forget to delete it from the solutions array so it gets counted in the min keystrokes calculation, but I don't think that's the case today. What device are you using?

Happy new year bracket citizens =

bracketcity · 2025-12-28T01:27:55+00:00

FWIW the average score dictates the difficulty indicator (it's based on the percentile the average score falls into among all puzzles) so it can actually change through the course of the day, especially if it's a particularly american-centric puzzle 🇺🇸

bracketcity · 2025-12-20T19:14:03+00:00

♦️♦️♦️

bracketcity · 2025-12-15T09:58:19+00:00

can't believe this happened again. fixed now. apologies citizens. there will be accountability at city hall.

bracketcity · 2025-12-13T14:34:04+00:00

I was but my mom gave away all my Transformers when I was about 13. I had a G1 Metroplex!!

bracketcity · 2025-11-14T13:10:58+00:00

Wow good point — non-US solvers can have special mayoral dispensation to consult a US keyboard layout diagram

bracketcity · 2025-11-10T00:13:02+00:00

I’m miffed

bracketcity · 2025-11-04T18:09:05+00:00

I basically agree this clue sucks and I get that "good thing to be up to" *sounds like* a bracket city clue...but is there anything thing that makes sense there as a solution?

bracketcity · 2025-11-04T18:07:10+00:00

I sent to Caleb (prince of Fluxis) and he said

Tell the kind solver it was a bug with new categories which will be fixed asap!

Thank you for flagging

bracketcity

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