puzlink.js

Tool to find patterns among sets of words. Use it online at cjquines.com/puzlink.

Inspired by cosmologicon's puzlink, rdeits's Collective.jl, and obijywk's fork of the latter.

Usage

Install with npm install puzlink. This is an ESM only library.

import { Puzlink } from "puzlink";

const puzlink = await Puzlink.download();

puzlink.link(`
  BATED, TANK, BUSINESS, ETC, OVER, ELVIS, CAR, COW, MARS, PARIS, AIRLINES
`);
// {
//   name: "10/11 can insert h",
//   score: 30.8,
//   description: [
//     "bated insert h = bathed",
//     "tank insert h = thank",
//     "etc insert h = etch",
//     "over insert h = hover",
//     "elvis insert h = elvish",
//     "car insert h = char",
//     "cow insert h = chow",
//     "mars insert h = marsh",
//     "paris insert h = parish, pharis",
//     "airlines insert h = hairlines"
//   ],
// },
// ...

Why?

puzlink used to be online on puz.link, but the website has been down for maintenance for a while now. While I've used the library locally, nothing can beat the convenience of a web app. I'm a believer in client-side solving tools, so I wanted to make it run client-side too; that's partly why I wrote cromulence a year ago.

Collective.jl is a huge design influence. I liked the idea of applying the binomial distribution to boolean word properties, which I used for computing many linker probabilities. A lot of the test cases in scripts/evals are from Collective.jl too.

Development

Node 22 required. Clone the repo and run npm install. Some ways to contribute:

1. Add an eval:

   $ npm run test:evals -- --add name_of_puzzle
   #                    ^^ note the dashes
   $ npm run test:evals -- --watch

   Then, edit scripts/evals/name_of_puzzle.ts. See the other examples in that folder for details. The test:evals script has several other flags; run it with --help for more info.

2. Add a category. Edit src/data/categories/txt/nameOfCategory.txt. Then npm run build:categories, and edit src/data/categories.ts.

   Adding tests would be nice too. You can add a unit test by running npm run test:watch, and editing src/features/substring.test.ts. You can also add an eval, as above.

3. Add a feature. See existing feature implementations in src/features. Run npm run build:knownLogProbs before running evals.

4. Fiddle with the app. To set up the app, run npm run build:tsc from the root, then cd app and npm install. From there, npm run dev to start the dev server.

   You will need to rerun npm run build:tsc every time you make a change not in the app.