May 2, 2026
One stick, infinite chaos
Show HN: Stop playing my matchstick puzzles, start building your own in seconds
This brain teaser maker has people hooked, nitpicking bugs, and flexing weird giant-number chaos
TLDR: Mathstick 2 turns classic move-one-match puzzles into a fast puzzle maker that lets anyone create and share brain teasers. The community loved the idea, but quickly jumped into bug reports and "I broke it" bragging, making the comments as fun as the game itself.
A cute little matchstick puzzle game just wandered onto Hacker News, and the crowd immediately did what the internet does best: play it, praise it, break it, and then tell everyone about it. The project, called Mathstick 2, lets players solve those classic "move one match" brain teasers, but the real crowd-pleaser is the new Puzzle Maker, which allows anyone to build their own puzzle in seconds and fire off a shareable link to torment friends. Creator trangram practically begged people to try making puzzles first, arguing that it helps you "learn by doing" instead of just smashing your head against harder levels.
The comments quickly split into three glorious camps. First came the wholesome fans: people saying "nice job," admitting they had no idea matchstick puzzles were even a whole category, and cheering for the game to be submitted to HN Arcade. Then came the bug hunters, because no online toy survives first contact with users. One commenter reported a classic drag-and-drop disaster where a match can get stranded off-screen forever, turning a relaxing puzzle into a tiny tragedy. And then the chaos goblins arrived. One player said they "broke it a little" by messing with INT64_MAX—basically an absurdly huge number—and claimed the puzzle maker was handing out a bunch of supposedly identical solutions. Translation: the internet found a way to turn a neat brain game into a stress test.
So yes, the app is charming. But the real entertainment is watching the community alternate between teacher mode, QA tester mode, and full gremlin mode.
Key Points
- •The article presents a matchstick puzzle experience titled "Fix It By Moving One Stick."
- •The interface includes options for gameplay, a puzzle maker, and settings.
- •The title highlights that users can build their own matchstick puzzles quickly.
- •User progress is stated to be saved locally on the device.
- •The page is credited to Derek Liu with a 2026 copyright notice.