Threadet

Inspiration

I play NYT Connections every day, and the best part is finding hidden groupings between things that look unrelated. Reddit is that puzzle at scale: people have wildly different interests, yet communities always connect through the people they quietly share. Threadet turns that into a daily game. Take two subreddits with nothing in common, like r/knitting and r/formula1, and find the human bridge between them. There always is one.

What it does

Each day Threadet posts one puzzle into the feed: bridge subreddit A to subreddit B in six links or fewer, where two subreddits only link if enough real redditors are active in both. Every guess returns two readings: link strength (shared audience) and a trail signal (warmer or colder toward the target), so even misses are clues. Three sonar pings reveal nearby communities when you're stuck. You're scored against par, the best possible route on the whole graph, with a streak multiplier and a rarity bonus for routes nobody else found. Results copy as a spoiler-free strip that starts route arguments in the comments without ruining the puzzle.

How we built it

The board is Reddit's real community structure. I processed public audience-overlap embeddings (Stanford SNAP, 51k subreddits) into a curated graph of about 2,000 recognizable SFW communities and 23,000 weighted edges, bundled as a static asset. The app runs on Devvit Web: React client, Node/Hono server, Redis for daily state and streaks, all inside one subreddit with no external services. Scoring uses a sum-minus-rent scheme so short strong routes and long clever routes both stay viable, and par is computed exactly with dynamic programming. The cut-out paper UI is hand-built CSS/SVG: scissor-cut clip paths, hard offset shadows, pieces that stamp onto the board.

Challenges we ran into

Making the graph playable was harder than making it accurate. Mega-hubs like r/AskReddit overlap with everything and turn every route into the same tunnel, so I banned hubs and meta-subreddits and hand-reviewed all 2,000 names on top of keyword and embedding filters. Thresholding left topic islands like sports and crypto, so I reconnect them with a maximum-spanning bridge pass. Blind chain-building also playtested as frustrating, which is why the warmth compass and sonar exist: they turn wandering into navigating.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The whole game fits in a Reddit post and a phone viewport, and a first-time player gets it in seconds. Failed guesses feel like progress, not punishment. And since the daily pair, par, and warmth signals all derive from one bundled graph, the game generates fresh solvable puzzles forever with zero authoring.

What we learned

Devvit rewards designing around one community instead of fighting for global state. And retention is not a feature you bolt on; it is the loop itself.

What's next for ThreadetInspiration

Player-submitted daily pairs with community upvoting, a route gallery with rarity stats, and endpoints-as-teams: which community bridged better today.

Built With

• devvit
• hono
• node.js
• python
• react
• redis
• tailwindcss
• typescript
• vite