I really liked Zen Puzzle Garden back in the day. I spent a lot of time playing it when I ought to have been working on my PhD, and I even ended up writing a paper on it. [0]
It’s interesting that Gwern explicitly mentions ZPG as an inferior predecessor, because – for reasons I cannot clearly articulate or explain – I find it much more enjoyable to play than Samon. The player experience feels a lot more polished.
For a while, you could upload your own ZPG garden designs to the Lexaloffle BBS, where they would be playable on the web. I designed a few brutally difficult gardens, which were unsolved for years. Good times.
Surprisingly deep and seems quite in line with the underlying concept of Zen gardens.
ballmerpoint 19 hours ago [-]
Not at all. Karesansui almost never exhibit Hamiltonian paths and rarely feature ninety-degree turns.
The process is intended to be meditative, but this maximalist, AI-designed GUI and the “puzzle” framing both obstruct that.
contingencies 17 hours ago [-]
Ideas for elevated difficulty and more complex mechanics: animal interactions, precipitation, water interactions, wind interactions, directional and variant lighting, mirrors, earthquakes, plant/fern/bryophyte interactions (volunteer plants, spreading plants, pop-ups, seasonal flowering, seed dropping), plants that respond to nutrient/sun/seasonal conditions, littering humans.
gwern 17 hours ago [-]
Mm, most of those sound like they would just add complexity, rather than fun. You find the optimal raking and then a squirrel RNG scampers across the grid? Fluid mechanics can be fun, but I have no idea how I would integrate them...
If you have ideas, you could try vibecoding them and see if they work. The page should be fully self-contained and have everything an agentic LLM could need.
contingencies 16 hours ago [-]
I have a real garden, no need for the virtual one :)
Core mechanic was that you have to achieve a defined end state and the interactions can help you to do so with additional complexity.
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.
quuxplusone 18 hours ago [-]
FWIW, I wish you'd spent a few minutes cleaning up the first dozen pages of Claudespeak. You have some human text at the bottom of the post, but first you force your readers to wade through (or skim, or just close the tab) stuff like "Solver experiments show the bare rule is loose" — "is a chore with the shape of a puzzle:" — "test candidate mechanics on thousands of random gardens with an exact solver, a constraint-programming optimizer, and a deductive difficulty grader" — "the only U-turn-free raking among 12 par rakings of 6,310,226. Ripple stones and wave bands, the obvious “pattern” constraints, add texture but not tightness" — ...
You do see how that's all garbage, right? So why not just delete it? Keep the good part, delete the bad part.
The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
... Wait, as I scroll down again in composing this complaint, I realize I'm wrong about there being any human text at all. It's all garbage. This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
gwern 18 hours ago [-]
> But first you force your readers to wade through (or skim, or just close the tab)
FWIW, I do not force anyone to, because the URL I shared on my Twitter/Substack/Reddit has the '#play' hash-anchor to skip to the prototype game, and leave Claude's writeup for those who care. Take it up with OP if you dislike where they pointed the submission to. I provided the necessary standardized metadata for readers to skip to the part they want (clearly hyperlinked at top), the rest is up to them.
> You do see how that's all garbage, right?
I don't, because that's not true. There's a lot of interesting stuff in just the parts you quote as 'garbage'. For example, I was surprised by the exact solver and constraint optimization that Claude chose to do, which led to some of the more interesting features of the puzzle like the hinting feature or the 'par' challenge (and the existence of multiple solutions but some of which are optimal, and challenging you to reach optimal rakes, is one of the things that distinguishes it most from similar puzzles like 'Cardinal Chains' or ZPG). And this is one reason the title is 'Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', as opposed to just 'A Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', because Claude/Astra took it in some interesting directions compared to my original proposal, due to their coding and algorithmic prowess. Had it just been me, I probably would've gone for a unique-solution approach like everyone else.
> The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
Not sure what you mean. I just opened it up on my Pixel phone and it looks entirely playable on one screen to me. Are you referring to the level table of contents at the bottom or the poems...? Obviously there's no problem with those taking up more than 1 page because you don't need to consult them to play. (Anyway, I'll note for the record I've been tweaking it since the first uploaded version to streamline the UI/UX a bit based on Said Achmiz's feedback, so the latest version may be more to your taste.)
> This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
I'll fetch the smelling salts, but I'm surprised at this reaction to a prototype game implementing an idea I had.
akd 15 hours ago [-]
I think that because you made your name through the quality of your writing and the excellence of your web design, an unrefined output like this jeopardizes your brand. Perhaps there should be a link saying, "I didn't have the time to do a full writeup of this, but click this link to show some Claudeslop explaining it in further detail."
rpdillon 9 hours ago [-]
For what it's worth, I really enjoyed this submission and looked at it for a while with my son last night. Yes, it's AI-generated, but I think there's quite a bit to extract that's interesting, so I appreciate you posting it.
fwlr 16 hours ago [-]
For what it’s worth, I too was a little surprised and disappointed by the quality of the prose, until I double-checked the url and realised this was more like “a design doc artifact hosted on gwern.net” than “an article posted on gwern.net”.
> I'm surprised at this reaction to a prototype game implementing an idea I had.
Just ignore it Gwern.
There is a vocal minority here who like to complain about any output generated by AI as if all writing is some sanctified art form rather than a means of communication.
I love your writings. I also found the AI writeup of the project well structured and easy to read.
jere 9 hours ago [-]
> I'm surprised at this reaction to a prototype game implementing an idea I had
Seeing a gwern comment get downvoted is a first for me. An odd sight.
I feel like I might have a unique perspective here. I absolutely hate slop, but I've also experimented a lot this year with AI game dev. I was shocked at the negativity (being told snidely to "learn to code" despite having made games for decades).
This seems like a clash of an extremely AI pilled person coming into contact with the often irrational and overwhelming backlash against AI, which is common even on HN these days.
Slop is only an issue is when it's implied to be handwritten. Because then someone is asking me to waste my time reading something they didn't spend time writing. That's not the case here since you've called out the AI contribution, but I bet a lot of people are skimming over it.
The real problem I see here is that Claude often doesn't have a sense of what's interesting. In the 30,000 word write up, I don't see anything particularly new and interesting about the prototype.
I see: using turns as a score, Hamiltonian paths, and a reference to a "wide rake" and "no u-turns" which either I don't understand or doesn't show up until late into the game. If there is something interesting in there, Claude hasn't convinced me of it!
Where the audience starts getting rightly annoyed is an irreverence to the existing prior art and an overestimation of how unique/interesting this prototype is (presumably fueled by discussions with Claude), particularly these statements:
> I came up with the original idea entirely independently [an idea that is predated by 20 years]
> ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think
Let me state: you've made something neat! I like the concept, I like the heightmap aesthetic. Fwiw, most of my vibe coding experiments were about digging in sand using voxels.
However, people are hypersensitive to anyone easily impressed by AI output while simultaneously downplaying the value of human creativity.
mcphage 10 hours ago [-]
> ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think
It’s been around for 30 years—I think it’s got some legs.
TZubiri 17 hours ago [-]
If you transpile convert this to CSS with some turing complete JS to CSS transpiler, you could submit this to that Zen Garden CSS zine
vortegne 11 hours ago [-]
The game is a fun exercise
However, I find that Gwern's stuff in general has gone downhill ever since he has seemingly contracted mild-to-medium AI psychosis. Wish he'd go back to writing.
ballmerpoint 6 hours ago [-]
I don’t think there’s any “going back” now. This is simply who he is going forward, and we need to update on that.
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?
duhhhhh1212 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah that’s why I said no surprise there.
verdverm 18 hours ago [-]
your constant need to do this is more annoying than the original post
if you don't like the content, flag it and move on please
Rendered at 22:32:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It’s interesting that Gwern explicitly mentions ZPG as an inferior predecessor, because – for reasons I cannot clearly articulate or explain – I find it much more enjoyable to play than Samon. The player experience feels a lot more polished.
For a while, you could upload your own ZPG garden designs to the Lexaloffle BBS, where they would be playable on the web. I designed a few brutally difficult gardens, which were unsolved for years. Good times.
0. https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2104
The process is intended to be meditative, but this maximalist, AI-designed GUI and the “puzzle” framing both obstruct that.
If you have ideas, you could try vibecoding them and see if they work. The page should be fully self-contained and have everything an agentic LLM could need.
Core mechanic was that you have to achieve a defined end state and the interactions can help you to do so with additional complexity.
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.
You do see how that's all garbage, right? So why not just delete it? Keep the good part, delete the bad part.
The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
... Wait, as I scroll down again in composing this complaint, I realize I'm wrong about there being any human text at all. It's all garbage. This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
FWIW, I do not force anyone to, because the URL I shared on my Twitter/Substack/Reddit has the '#play' hash-anchor to skip to the prototype game, and leave Claude's writeup for those who care. Take it up with OP if you dislike where they pointed the submission to. I provided the necessary standardized metadata for readers to skip to the part they want (clearly hyperlinked at top), the rest is up to them.
> You do see how that's all garbage, right?
I don't, because that's not true. There's a lot of interesting stuff in just the parts you quote as 'garbage'. For example, I was surprised by the exact solver and constraint optimization that Claude chose to do, which led to some of the more interesting features of the puzzle like the hinting feature or the 'par' challenge (and the existence of multiple solutions but some of which are optimal, and challenging you to reach optimal rakes, is one of the things that distinguishes it most from similar puzzles like 'Cardinal Chains' or ZPG). And this is one reason the title is 'Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', as opposed to just 'A Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', because Claude/Astra took it in some interesting directions compared to my original proposal, due to their coding and algorithmic prowess. Had it just been me, I probably would've gone for a unique-solution approach like everyone else.
> The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
Not sure what you mean. I just opened it up on my Pixel phone and it looks entirely playable on one screen to me. Are you referring to the level table of contents at the bottom or the poems...? Obviously there's no problem with those taking up more than 1 page because you don't need to consult them to play. (Anyway, I'll note for the record I've been tweaking it since the first uploaded version to streamline the UI/UX a bit based on Said Achmiz's feedback, so the latest version may be more to your taste.)
> This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
I'll fetch the smelling salts, but I'm surprised at this reaction to a prototype game implementing an idea I had.
Just ignore it Gwern.
There is a vocal minority here who like to complain about any output generated by AI as if all writing is some sanctified art form rather than a means of communication.
I love your writings. I also found the AI writeup of the project well structured and easy to read.
Seeing a gwern comment get downvoted is a first for me. An odd sight.
I feel like I might have a unique perspective here. I absolutely hate slop, but I've also experimented a lot this year with AI game dev. I was shocked at the negativity (being told snidely to "learn to code" despite having made games for decades).
This seems like a clash of an extremely AI pilled person coming into contact with the often irrational and overwhelming backlash against AI, which is common even on HN these days.
Slop is only an issue is when it's implied to be handwritten. Because then someone is asking me to waste my time reading something they didn't spend time writing. That's not the case here since you've called out the AI contribution, but I bet a lot of people are skimming over it.
The real problem I see here is that Claude often doesn't have a sense of what's interesting. In the 30,000 word write up, I don't see anything particularly new and interesting about the prototype.
I see: using turns as a score, Hamiltonian paths, and a reference to a "wide rake" and "no u-turns" which either I don't understand or doesn't show up until late into the game. If there is something interesting in there, Claude hasn't convinced me of it!
Where the audience starts getting rightly annoyed is an irreverence to the existing prior art and an overestimation of how unique/interesting this prototype is (presumably fueled by discussions with Claude), particularly these statements:
> I came up with the original idea entirely independently [an idea that is predated by 20 years]
> ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think
Let me state: you've made something neat! I like the concept, I like the heightmap aesthetic. Fwiw, most of my vibe coding experiments were about digging in sand using voxels.
However, people are hypersensitive to anyone easily impressed by AI output while simultaneously downplaying the value of human creativity.
It’s been around for 30 years—I think it’s got some legs.
However, I find that Gwern's stuff in general has gone downhill ever since he has seemingly contracted mild-to-medium AI psychosis. Wish he'd go back to writing.
No surprise there.
That aside, did you enjoy the game?
if you don't like the content, flag it and move on please