This week's dev log: the home page now opens on the Shikaku board instead of six game cards, and the forty-nine hand-copied headers became one nav. Also: three days of broken styling in Crazy Cleanup, fixed. Full post: https://lemmy.zip/post/74462547

Update: The home page no longer opens with six big game cards. The board is the first thing you see, the game grid below it is one block covering all thirteen games, and the header that forty-nine pages had each hand-copied is now a single shared nav. Less page between you and the puzzle.

Daily puzzle: today's Akari daily is live at https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily . One board a day, the same for everyone, no account needed, and a streak counter that starts at your first solve.

How to play Akari:

• Tap a white cell to place a light bulb.
• Every white cell must be lit. Light stops at black cells.
• Two bulbs can never see each other.
• A numbered black cell must touch exactly that many bulbs.
• Solved when every cell is lit and every number is satisfied. The Hint button points at the next logical move instead of guessing.

Also in this batch: Crazy Cleanup got its stylesheet back (it had been pointing at a path that did not exist since launch), taps on a scaled phone board now hit the item you actually tapped, and hints glow bright enough to find in a pile.

Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog Home board: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-home Crazy Cleanup: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-crazy

Day-to-day notes go to !gridpaw_dailyakari@lemmy.zip

Today's dev log on !dailygames covers Crazy Cleanup — a free fan-made sorting game with 20 rooms, from a 26-item study to a 207-item gadget store — plus GridPaw is now installable as an app (PWA). Full post over there: https://lemmy.zip/post/74295118

New this week on GridPaw: Crazy Cleanup, a free fan-made sorting game, is live with 20 hand-built rooms — and the site is now installable as an app (PWA, with an offline page). Both shipped Oct 30.

Daily puzzle: today's Akari daily is live at https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily — a fresh board every day, same puzzle for everyone, with streak tracking (keep a 7-day streak and a bonus board unlocks).

How to play Crazy Cleanup (this week's new game):

• Pick up items that aren't buried — anything overlapped by 15%+ stays put until you clear what's on top of it.
• Two buckets are open at a time; tap a matching item to send it home.
• Watch the 6-slot tray: uncollected items land there, and if it fills up, the room is lost.
• Tools: 💡 Hint (×3) points at a collectible item, 🔧 Pliers (×3) force a buried item out — neither refills.
• Empty every bucket to finish the room — 20 rooms total, from a 26-item study to a 207-item gadget store.

Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog Play Crazy Cleanup: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-crazy

This week's dev log: the daily leaderboards got cleaned up (regular-level wins no longer pollute them — server-side guard + ghost-row purge), and The Loop puzzle page now embeds today's answer, outage story included. Full post in !dailygames: https://lemmy.zip/post/74067271 · Today's Akari daily: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily

Update: The daily leaderboards had a plumbing problem — wins from regular levels were sneaking onto the daily boards. Six client paths that allowed it are closed, the server now rejects submissions that never started a daily run, and five ghost rows were purged. Also new: The Loop puzzle page now shows today's answer in a module on the page itself. Honest confession: the morning answer-refresh had been silently broken for two days — a stray non-JSON prefix was poisoning the pipeline. Fixed, with parsing made tolerant so one bad feed can't take the chain down again.

Daily puzzle: Today's Akari daily is live at https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily — a fresh grid every midnight UTC, and a 7-day streak unlocks a seeded 12×12 bonus round.

How to play Akari (Light Up):

• Place bulbs so every white cell is lit.
• No two bulbs may see each other — walls block the light.
• A numbered cell must touch exactly that many bulbs: a 0 forbids all four neighbours, a 4 forces them all.
• No account needed — guests get a persistent cat name, and daily runs are what count on the boards.

Links: Full changelog · Daily leaderboards · Today's Akari daily

Today's dev log: GridPaw shipped a Nonogram solver that replays its reasoning move by move, plus shareable stuck-puzzle links and an ad-layout fix on eight game pages. Full post over in !dailygames@lemmy.zip: https://lemmy.zip/post/73901315

Update: we shipped a Nonogram solver — enter any grid's row and column clues and it fills in the solution, then replays every deduction move by move, so you can follow the reasoning and not just the answer. When deduction alone can't finish a grid, the search-based steps are labeled honestly. A Copy link button packs your clues into the URL, so a puzzle that's been stumping you can be shared and it solves itself on open. The solving core was rewritten around a dirty-lines queue — a 20x20 grid now resolves in milliseconds. We also fixed an ad-slot layout bug that could swallow taps on eight game pages.

Daily puzzle: today's Akari daily is live at https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily — a new seeded grid every day with streak tracking, and a bonus 12x12 Daily+ round unlocks once your streak hits 7 days.

How to play Nonogram:

• Each row and column shows numbers: the lengths of its consecutive filled blocks, in order.
• Blocks never touch — at least one empty cell always sits between two blocks.
• Deduce which cells must be filled and which must stay empty.
• Fill every constraint correctly and a hidden cat picture is revealed.

Play Nonogram: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-nonogram Try the solver: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-solver Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog

Quick relay from this week's dev log in !dailygames: guests can now top the leaderboards (random cat name, no signup) and The Loop got a daily hints & answers page. Today's Daily Akari: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily

Full post: https://lemmy.zip/post/73693753

Update: two things shipped since the last dev log - guests can now top the leaderboards (your result goes up under a cat name picked for you, no signup needed), and The Loop got its own daily hints & answers page.

Daily puzzle: today's Daily Akari is live at https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily - a fresh grid every day, same for everyone, playable in the browser, no signup.

How Akari works: place bulbs so every white cell is lit, no two bulbs may see each other, and numbered walls tell you how many bulbs must touch them. Light every white cell to win. Step-by-step hints if you get stuck (no auto-solve - you still have to think).

Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog Badges & leaderboards: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-badges

More detail and discussion over at !gridpaw_dailyakari.

Update: This week GridPaw shipped two features: a badge wall with 11 badges and real rarity stats ("Ultra rare — only 7 cats" is computed from actual play data, not decoration), and a leaderboard with Today's Fastest + all-time Best Streak for 13 puzzles. Display names are editable now, and a 7-day daily streak unlocks a seeded 12x12 bonus board.

How it works: Solve the daily Akari to build a streak — 7 days = Star Cat tier and a bonus round same day. Badges derive automatically from your plays, including guest progress; sign in and it carries over to your account. Fastest times reset daily (UTC), streaks never expire.

Links: Daily puzzle · Full changelog

Feedback welcome — especially on the badge effects (four tiers: bronze/silver/gold/diamond) and whether the rarity numbers feel right.

Update: Murdoku's launch-week bug list is closed. Corner clues now count only the board edge as walls, rooms grow as one connected piece, and every room wears a unique texture-and-tint combo. The first-case tutorial is hands-on now - it points at the suspect to pick and highlights the tile to place. All of it started as player reports on Lemmy, so thanks for those.

How Akari works, for the new folks:

• Light up every white cell in the grid.
• Tap to place a bulb - it lights its row and column until a wall blocks it.
• No two bulbs may see each other.
• A numbered wall must touch exactly that many bulbs.
• A fresh grid lands every day at midnight.

Technique of the week - count the neighbors: when a numbered wall cell has exactly as many white neighbors as its number, all of them are forced bulbs. A 2 with two white neighbors, a 3 with three. Place those first and the rest of the grid usually deduces itself.

Play today's grid: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog