NYT Letter Boxed Puzzle Solver

A full-stack, ready-to-deploy template for solving the New York Times Letter Boxed puzzle. Built with FastAPI (backend) and plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (frontend). The app fetches daily puzzle data from a connected GitHub repository and computes 1-, 2-, or 3-word solutions on demand.

🚀 Features

• Two-Column Responsive Layout

  • Left panel: Interactive 3-letter-per-side puzzle grid + solution controls + social links.
  • Right panel: Dynamic solution display.

• Dynamic Puzzle Fetching

  • /api/puzzle endpoint pulls the latest puzzle JSON from GitHub.

• On-Demand Solver

  • /api/solve?words={1|2|3} returns valid word chains covering all 12 letters.

• Loading & Error States during solution generation.

• NYT-Inspired Styling with a clean serif font and minimal palette.

• Render Deployment

  • Configured for Render.com Free Hobby plan.

• Developer-Friendly

  • if __name__ == "__main__" block for local testing.

---

📁 Project Structure

letter-boxed-solver/
├── assets/icons/       # Optional icon assets (site-favicon.png)
├── src/                # Python solver and scraper for letter-boxed puzzle
├── main.py             # FastAPI application
├── requirements.txt    # Python dependencies
├── static/             # Frontend assets
│   ├── style.css       # CSS styles
│   └── script.js       # JavaScript logic
├── index.html          # Main HTML template
└── README.md           # Project documentation

🛠️ Installation & Local Development

1. Clone the repository:

     $ git clone https://github.com/code-archived/letter-boxed-solver.git
     $ cd letter-boxed-solver

2. Install dependencies:

      pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run locally:

     uvicorn main:app
   

Open in http://localhost:8000 browser.

☁️ Deploying on Render (Free Hobby)

1. Push your code to GitHub.
2. Log in to Render.com and click New → Web Service.
3. Connect your GitHub repo letter-boxed-solver.
4. Configure:
   • Environment: Python 3
   • Plan: Free (Hobby)
   • Build Command: pip install -r requirements.txt
   • Start Command: uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT
5. (Optional) Add environment variables:
   • GITHUB_PUZZLE_URL: URL to your raw puzzle JSON in GitHub
   • GITHUB_TOKEN: if fetching from a private repo
6. Create Web Service and wait for deployment to finish.

⚙️ Configuration

• Puzzle Source: Update get_puzzle() in main.py to point to your GitHub raw URL.
• Solver Logic: Replace the placeholder in /api/solve with your custom algorithm.