I created an interactive version of the Zebra puzzle (Einstein's riddle) - I would appreciate your feedback!

My mom brought me this puzzle a long time ago — printed on a piece
of paper, because the adults at her work couldn't solve it. I don't
remember how long it took me, but I remember really liking it. Years
later, I decided to build a proper interactive version of it:
RiddleHouses.

What the puzzle actually is

If you haven't seen it before: it's the classic "Zebra Puzzle,"
sometimes called Einstein's Riddle (there's no real evidence
Einstein had anything to do with it — that part is just an urban
legend that stuck because it sounds more exclusive than it is). Five houses, five categories, fifteen clues, one correct answer — no guessing, just logic.

Why build it instead of solving it on paper again

On paper, you don't find out you made a wrong move until much later, when everything stops making sense and you have to backtrack. So the one thing I really cared about was real-time conflict checking — place a card, and if it breaks a clue, you know immediately instead of twenty steps later.

And even the intro screen is a tiny jigsaw puzzle you assemble before the game loads, just because it felt like a nice way to start.

What I actually want right now

Just honest feedback. Did it feel good to use? Was anything
confusing? Was it actually fun to solve this way?

One heads-up: it's best on a desktop or laptop right now — mobile
works, but I'm still smoothing it out.

It's free, no accounts, no ads — just an optional "buy me a coffee"
button if you want to support it.

👉 riddlehouses.com

Thanks for reading — and if you try it, I'd love to hear how it is
went.

Comments

[Parsai]

Memorable intro - the logo puzzle gives the game personality. Two concrete fixes from a desktop/keyboard pass:

• The copy says "solving it unlocks the game," but Skip bypasses it. I hesitated over whether skipping would lose anything. "Solve the logo or skip to continue" and "Skip intro puzzle" would remove that ambiguity.
• Chromium's accessibility tree exposes all 15 clue toggles as unnamed checkboxes. The adjacent clue sentence is a sibling, not the control's accessible name, so a screen reader hears "checkbox, unchecked" 15 times. Wrapping each pair in a label or using aria-labelledby would fix it.

A positive detail: the draggable cards themselves are named and include dnd-kit keyboard instructions.

[Andrii]

Thank you very much for this feedback, and for the details for improvement. I will definitely fix it!

[Parsai]

Glad it was useful. Fixing those two points should make the first-play loop much clearer. I'm looking forward to the next version.