Puzzles Feedback

I genuinely believe that the Puzzles Section on OGS is one of the most innovative and helpful additions to OGS that many other servers don’t have. However I think it could use a few touch ups to make it even more useful.

1: The Search function. If you want to find a particular theme of puzzle, you need to think of a word that will help you find it. Maybe you want to find problems related to Attack and Defense. Well, right now, if you search for “Attack” or “Defense”, you won’t find anything. If you’re patient enough to think of the word “Middlegame” you will manage to find 2 very good problem collections, but there are still many more on OGS related to that topic that you will miss.

I think that every puzzle needs some form of tag related to it, the more the merrier. Preferably not for every single puzzle within the collection, but for collection itself.
Tags like…

Tactics, Tesuji, Strategy, Theory, Opening, Joseki, Fuseki, Attack, Defense, Tsumego, Haengma, Honte, Endgame, Shape, Technique, Invasion, Reduction.

You don’t want every single word, but you want something that covers all the basics. You want something to help make it easier to find relavent puzzles, instead of wading through the hundreds and hundreds of tsumego uploads that are currently available.
Or even subgenres

Opening (Joseki, Fuseki)
Tactics (Honte, Proper, Common, Shape)
Technique (Tesuji, Haengma, Tsumego)
Strategy (Attacking, Defending, Invasion, Reduction, Theory)
Endgame (Counting, Calculation)
Miscellaneous (Assorted, Untagged)

And some form of filter that helps sort/search through those, and maybe each puzzle uses an optional max 2 tags.

Because right now I believe it’s a bit muddled, but some of these puzzles are far more accessible and interactive than some books are, but they are so difficult to find and it seems like a huge loss, even something rated at 4 stars may never been seen by anyone.

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:+1: Yes, that would be very helpful!

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It would also be nice if there was an option to periodically recommend a puzzle, that can be toggled wrt relative strength, categories, and frequencies of refill/replacement, etc, for people who want to do them in small bites. But categories are more fundamental, I agree.

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That’s a good idea, having some kind of, weekly showcase for a puzzle would be nice, from the mods or something. Possibly at the top of all the puzzles, like a pinned post, And then it just changes weekly. It would probably incentivise new problems being made.

This sounds a bit more complicated but, considering OGS has a huge database of games, they could probably do some kind of whole board AI best move problem generator, like chess.com does. Best easy puzzles like connecting against a peep would be rated easy because most people would get them right, and harder problems would rise to the top as more people get them wrong.

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On a different note, I’ve been thinking about a hypothetical problem of teaching the game to a complete beginner with a series of interactive problems, starting only with the rule that a stone must be placed at an intersection. Interactive tutorial was useful for me when learning a programming language.

The following features would be useful for such effort:

  • Explicitly showing illegal moves (e.g. red ‘X’).
  • Integrating scoring in some problems; it might be easier to start with stone-counting, which helps in explaining seki and dead groups, and transition to one of the conventional counting methods later.
  • Creating a problem from an existing problem, as many problems can be revisited by removing a move; keeping the trail of crumbs close together might facilitate assimilation and reduce the need for explanation.
  • This is already available but indicating the last move by the opponent at the start of a problem would help make a problem feel like a real game.
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