Via Hacker News: “Making Explainable Minesweeper” (July 2025). By “explainable Minesweeper,” the blogger means that we generate a Minesweeper level that is guaranteed solvable by perfect play — that is, for which the solution never requires “guessing” at an unknown cell (and possibly losing the game at that point). The blogger describes a procedure for creating partially explainable levels: simply generate a random level, then simulate solving it with a computer player that know...| Arthur O’Dwyer
In October’s Overload magazine Chris Oldwood muses on Italo Calvino’s definition of what makes a book a “classic” (“Why Read the Classics?”, 1986). Calvino’s essay suggests fourteen different ways of describing the elephant that is “a classic,” including:| Arthur O’Dwyer