Puzzles

Puzzles. Everyone loves puzzles. Puzzles come in different shapes. Some present themselves as a daily dilemma to solve. Others mimic to be a work assignment. More you find on the last page of the local newspaper. Some exist between different media, like the green owl app. Most come in a shape of a videogame these days. Even the “professional community” LinkedIn has a Games tab and encourages you to play a puzzle of the day.

In 2023, an indie game developer Daniel Benmergui released an amazing videogame Storyteller. It is a puzzle. But it is more what’s in the name, a Storytelling experience. I played it together with my partner who is a writer, and we both enjoyed the flow of building stories. With this game, Daniel clearly established himself as a master of visual storytelling.

In 2025, Daniel put this mastery to use for puzzle building. He has published a small piece of art, disguised as a videogame. Dragonsweeper is “A minesweeper game that requires observation”, and that’s the perfect description. I leave the link here and encourage everyone to play it for more than 10 minutes, possibly for more than one session. Just remember: “it requires observation” (because it obeys more than JUST the Minesweeper rules).

Can’t wait for more puzzles from this man.

Just avoid the spoilers in the comments. And if you need an opening hint, it is in the monsternomicon.

15, 16, many

I use “seventeen” as a “very large number”. “I’ve done this like 17 times”, etc. Why 17? It just feels right. My theory is that it is because 17 is the first to pass a sieve. Digits 1-9 are obviously too small to be big. Starting from 10, composite numbers consist of smaller bits, so they can be simplified. That doesn’t sit right with the idea of representing a “very large number”, does it? So, I am left with primes above 10, that is 11, 13, 17, 19, and so on. But 11 and 13 feel… too familiar? Eleven in English is so common it even got a personal name (instead of “oneteen”), and 13 has a broad use in culture. Since they are both familiar, they can’t be unfathomably large either. Thus, 17 is the first number that works - so “seventeen is a very large number” indeed.

Tech nerding

Comparing GitFlow with Trunk-based development, it is well-known that:

• GitFlow is slower, which helps build larger features, and also each release has more time to be tested,
• Trunk Based development (with canary testing) is faster, which makes it easier for small features, but real-world testing must be allowed.

Doesn’t it suggest that GitFlow works better for B2B projects, while TBD suits B2C?

Additional reading

• My six stages of learning to be a socially normal person - Different perceptions of connecting with people, all in one person.
• Maybe you’re not Actually Trying - “It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it”, has a loaded intro.
• Where Do the Children Play? - “For most of our evolutionary history, childhood wasn’t an adult affair. Independent worlds and peer cultures were the crux of development. Today, digital space is the only place left where children can grow up without us.”

Closing remarks

You know why the world is falling apart? Because of plastic.
Plastic pollutes oceans. This kills turtles. And the world, as we know, used to stand on three turtles, who are now dead.