Inspiration
What it does
How we built it
Challenges we ran into
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
What's next for Hunch: which got more views?
Inspiration
We wanted a quick, repeatable puzzle that fits naturally into a Reddit community's daily routine. The idea came from the public Wikipedia page-view statistics, which can be turned into a simple guessing game.
What it does
Hunch is a daily Reddit game with ten short questions. Each shows two English Wikipedia articles and a month (for example "In March 2024, which got more views?"). Players tap the article they think received more views; after the pick, the real view counts appear next to a bar showing how the crowd voted. The questions get harder through the round, from a clear gap in views to near coin-flips. At the end the player sees a score out of ten, their percentile for the day and their streak, plus a spoiler-free grid and one-click buttons to post the result as a comment or join the subreddit.
How we built it
tools/build_pairs.pygenerates 400 daily question sets from Wikimedia's monthly top-articles data (CC0).- A blocklist file (
tools/pairs_blocklist.txt) excludes titles that must never appear. - View counts stay on the server and are sent to the client only after a pick, one round at a time, so the answer is hidden until the player commits.
src/server/core/game.tsuses Redis (hSetNX) to allow one answer per round, tally crowd votes and keep a daily score histogram that gives percentiles without scanning every player.- A scheduler posts a new Hunch every day at 00:05 UTC; moderators can also post it manually.
Challenges we ran into
- Keeping the true view counts secret until a pick is made.
- Computing percentiles efficiently with a histogram instead of scanning all player records.
- Curating the question pool safely with a blocklist.
What's next
- Expand the question bank beyond the current 400 daily sets.
- Add view-count data from other Wikimedia language editions for more question variety.
New and existing
This project was created entirely during the Submission Period (started 12 November 2026, after the hackathon opened on 11 November), built from scratch on Devvit Web.
