ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think, because it doesn't figure out how to take the core idea of raking and twist it into more interesting puzzles, which is the classic puzzle approach: find a clean core mechanic, and then escalate on it.
I know we're all shocked that a 1-page web app with the author byline "Gwern, Claude-5.5-opus" (and matching HTML metadata) may have had LLMs involved; good work by Pangram there exposing the imposture.
If you like this, I happen to think Cardinal Chains is a more interesting take on the same overall concept: https://danijmn.itch.io/cardinalchains
Surprisingly deep and seems quite in line with the underlying concept of Zen gardens.
It’s not exactly the same, but Zen Puzzle Garden (https://www.lexaloffle.com/zen.php) has been around since the 90s.
Yeah, I came up with the original idea entirely independently back in 2023 (https://gwern.net/idea#zen-sand-garden-puzzle-game) and postponed it until LLMs could code it up for me (ie. now), and Claude/ChatGPT turned that up as prior art while researching it: https://gwern.net/doc/design/2026-10-03-gwern-samon.html#mec...
ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think, because it doesn't figure out how to take the core idea of raking and twist it into more interesting puzzles, which is the classic puzzle approach: find a clean core mechanic, and then escalate on it.
https://www.pangram.com/history/cfc9ee7e-b1f5-4ce0-8377-6102...
No surprise there.
I know we're all shocked that a 1-page web app with the author byline "Gwern, Claude-5.5-opus" (and matching HTML metadata) may have had LLMs involved; good work by Pangram there exposing the imposture.
That aside, did you enjoy the game?
Yeah that’s why I said no surprise there.