Find a Big Word: The Bluesky Bot

This is most of the backend for @findabigword.bsky.social. It posts a new grid every eight hours.

  • postToBluesky.ts is a chron val that does the posting. Requires environmental variables for Bluesky user/password.
  • scramble.ts and retryFill is where seeded words get turned into puzzles.
  • viewBoardSolutions is an endpoint for bigwordbot.val.run/ that just works as solver for 4x4 orthographic grid games. Give it 16 characters as a route: https://bigwordbot.val.run/ALEXWEINISNTCOOL
  • createTableBotWords.ts takes a list of seed words and creates a SQLite table to power the bot. A sample word list is included rather than the list currently being used for the bot.
  • templates.ts has grids with black spaces in (some) aesthetically pleasing configurations. It was made using gridEdit5x5 is a janky vibe-coded editor for creating grids with black spaces.

older versions

Until 2025-11-28, the bot was powered by the Vals below.

  • bluesky_bot_template previous version of the bluesky bot.
  • gridRetryFill contains the core function for taking a word and embedding it in a grid.
  • fabwbogglelike calls gridRetryFill and uses Observable plot to create an svg. This version swaps out Observable Plot for vanilla SVG.