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Dennis Persson
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Posted on • Originally published at perssondennis.com

I Created a Programming Puzzle Game

Halloumi! I made a new puzzle game. It's a four-question pyramid quiz game. It's for all those brainiac unicorn developers who can't say no to a challenge.

If you aren't one of those, don't worry, there are puzzles of different experience levels. With this release today, there are four puzzles from beginner level to heroic level. You can find all game levels here, or maybe you want to skip directly to the heroic one, Turning coffee into bald hair.

Turning coffee into bald hair
Developer (noun): a person turning coffee into bald hair

Are you a cheater? I'm no one to blame you, any method to solve the puzzles is allowed, googling is what we developers do!

Perssons pyramid game question
Answer questions to reach the top of the pyramid

Cheater or not, let's look at the game. Each level consists of a pyramid. You can click on any of the numbered triangles in the pyramid to answer programming questions. The two topmost triangles are locked until you have solved the triangles below them. The goal is to unlock and find the answer to all four questions in the pyramid.

Perssons pyramid game level unlocked
Solve the two bottom triangle puzzles to unlock the third triangle above

Let me know if the levels are too easy, I can make them harder. If they are too difficult, you can google harder. Let the game begin!

The game is available here.

Top comments (15)

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schemetastic profile image
Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

Wooow! I had so much fun playing this, I played the "I know stuff" pyramid, and for sure I'm no t a senior but I made my way out of it...

Honestly, with the IP question I cheated and Google the answer cause I had things like "router", "local address", or things like that.

With the long URL I decoded the URL and luckily I'm a fan of JS.

With the Python one, I do not know how to program in Python but I'm a terminal user and I have python3 in my computer, so it took me a while to figure it out, but at the end I had a laugh.

In the last one... I don't understand much of regular expressions... so I took my shot with my favorite animal (or one of my favorites)... and I had it at my first try, hahahaha.

It was so funny to play, a bit like a Slumdog Millionaire experience, haha.

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perssondennis profile image
Dennis Persson

Thanks for a detailed answer😀Great choice of favorite animal😄

To play around with the Python question is actually a great way to learn bash I think. The question mainly consists of bash scripting, and by learning how pipes, grep, sed and awk work you can do a lot of bash processing :)

Regular expressions is something I enjoy and think is useful if you use it for the right things, so you will see more levels with that, maybe with some guidance.

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schemetastic profile image
Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

How to use Regular Expressions for bad things? Haha.

That is something I have considered to learn but I find it quite tedious but at the same time useful, any place you recommend to learn about it? Or maybe you have posts about regular expression or plan to write about it?

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perssondennis profile image
Dennis Persson

Haha I have never thought about what the wrong way of using regexes is, but I was just thinking that many people claim to have practiced regex but never found any use of it.

If you like puzzles I know there are crosswords with regex, a fun and thereby good way. Personally I learnt it by googling it every time I could see a reason to use it. Pretty slow way to learn it, although a good way to get the mindset to use it.

I will write an article about it and hopefully release it in November. Got a few ideas I have to prioritize among 😄

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schemetastic profile image
Schemetastic (Rodrigo) • Edited

Hahaah, I think of it like for forms validations... or string validations in JS.

I Google a lot too, hahaha, I agree, is like a very slow way to solve a puzzle, and from time to time I misplace a piece in the wrong place, but is still a different kind of gained experience that might not be acquired in a different way.

Great! Let me know when you post that article, I'll be happy to read it!

You can email me at hello@schemetastic.com, but anyway I already put a reminder to that on November 30.

Shows a reminder in a day 30 of a digital calendar

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perssondennis profile image
Dennis Persson

Oh, thanks for the deadline. Now I'm motivated to prioritize that article 😄 Hope you will enjoy it!

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schemetastic profile image
Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

Hahahahha

You said “hopefully release it in November” so I had to choose a merciful date to read it.

😂😂

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phlash profile image
Phil Ashby

Nicely done - although you may want to obfuscate the map of questions and answers in the page source.. Ctrl-U is my friend 😄

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perssondennis profile image
Dennis Persson

Haha ya cheating was allowed, maybe that was the most fun way to cheat 😄

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Ben Sinclair

Hmm the only one I could do without searching was the "I know stuff" level :)

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Dennis Persson

That's good of you :) It's a bit tricky to decide an experience level for the questions since everything is googleable.

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Afonso Lima

I loved the game! This is perfect for practicing problem solving, even though some questions are very straightforward. I'm going to share this with my friends 🤓

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Dennis Persson

Thanks for sharing. I think I will continue adding more levels. Good to know that many of them seemed to be too easy :)

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tobias_korsbck_16c6bbddd profile image
Tobias Korsbäck

I din't know #3 on Heroic level. Had to know the answer so I cheated, sorry :)

Fun game!

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Dennis Persson

My bad that you could cheat! Glad you liked it :)