Projects
17 entries · 2023–2026Articles, puzzles, and things I built. Click a line to open it.
Over the last few years, I have been writing short reviews for the movies I watch, and rating them against one another.
I am excited to share them with you here!
A short packet of eleven puzzles, written after I noticed that Wellfleet, MA hides both ELL and LEE in its spelling.
Every answer conceals one of two mirrored letter patterns: ABB / BAA, as in w-ELL-fl-EE-t, or AAB / BBA, as in bi-TTE-rsw-EE-t. The locations are marked in advance, but not which of the two to use, and no pattern is reused across the packet.
M. Abate, "The Wellfleet Puzzle Packet," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #12, pp. 5 - 7, Feb., 2026.
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #12 pp. 5 - 7 (Hub Site)
Handstands is a word game inspired by hangman.
Locations of repeated letters are marked in advance. When you reach six failed guesses, a person performing a handstand is drawn to signify the failure.
M. Abate, "Handstands," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #9, pp. 5 - 6, 20 May., 2025.
Read the Submission
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #9 pp. 5 - 6 (Hub Site)
Headbutts are words formed by moving the first letter of a word to the end of the word (E MANATE → MANATE E).
Read my article, or play my Headbutts puzzle set.
M. Abate, "Headbutts," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #8, pp. 38 - 41, 17 Feb., 2025.
Read the Submission
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #8 pp. 38 - 41 (Hub Site)
A list of 400K+ words to aid in creating word games and crossword puzzles.
Checkout my wordlist and read about my scoring approach on GitHub.
This project and video was for "Demo Night (NYC 2)," March 15, 2025. Email me for future events.
Daybreak takes two time intervals and partitions them into subintervals of equal length. Even though the lengths of the initial intervals differ, it is sometimes possible to create slicings where the clock times of the slicing events are the same in both.
two stretches · same steps · same times of day, reordered
5 days, every 13 h 20 min · 2 days, every 5 h 20 min
| 1 | Mon 0:00 | Sat 0:00 |
| 2 | Mon 13:20 | Sat 5:20 |
| 3 | Tue 2:40 | Sat 10:40 |
| 4 | Tue 16:00 | Sat 16:00 |
| 5 | Wed 5:20 | Sat 21:20 |
| 6 | Wed 18:40 | Sun 2:40 |
| 7 | Thu 8:00 | Sun 8:00 |
| 8 | Thu 21:20 | Sun 13:20 |
| 9 | Fri 10:40 | Sun 18:40 |
| 10 | Sat 0:00 | Mon 0:00 |
I exploit this idea in my article Puzzle Poetry (Journal of Wordplay, Issue #5), where I use a slicing of the calendar week (five business days, two weekend days) to develop two poems that employ the same lines, only rearranged.
Example code is available on GitHub.
A caterpillar is two line poem where the second line comes from moving the spaces in the first.
I have code available on GitHub for making your own Caterpillars using my wordlist.
Goof-Offs is my first original puzzle collection!
A Goof-Off is a linear crossword puzzle where certain clues correspond to words formed by taking every other letter of other answers.
To get a feel for how this looks, just think about the phrase "Goof-Off": When you take every other letter, you get "Goof-Off." Cool right?
M. Abate, "Goof-Offs," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #7, pp. 7 - 9, 25 Nov., 2024.
Read the Submission
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #7 pp. 7 - 9 (Hub Site)
An Autogram is a self-referential statement, that lists the frequencies of its own letters and symbols. Here are two examples:
- and -
Check out my article for some autograms and autogram puzzles.
My composite autogram chain made it onto autograms.net!
M. Abate, "Autograms," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #4, pp. 54 - 59, 19 Feb., 2024.
Read the Submission (better formatting)
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #4 pp. 54 - 59 (Hub Site)
“My punishment? I'm glad you asked...”
Thus begins Matthew Abate's remarkable work... Designed around the work week and weekend, Abate's poem is a new way to experience the endless cycles of time.
--Review by T. Campbell
M. Abate, "Puzzle Poetry," The Journal of Wordplay, Issue #5, pp. 32 - 34, 20 May, 2024.
Read the Submission (better formatting)
Read in The Journal of Wordplay Issue #5 pp. 32 - 34 (Hub Site)
From September 2024 to March 2025, I worked through the Puzzmo insiders program to record solution videos to Puzzmo Puzzles.
Checkout my youtube channel Puzzles with Matt for the solution recordings.
When I joined, Brooke Husic wrote a very nice newletter about one of my crossword videos.
Jane Street posts a new puzzle monthly. Participants may submit one solution before the end of the month to have their names featured.
- •July 2026, ‘Pent-Up’ Frustration 3 / Knight Moves 7.
- •June 2026, Regional Artwork.
- •May 2026, Arch Madness.
- •February 2026, Subtiles 2. My solution in Google Sheets.
- •June 2025, Some Ones, Somewhere. My solution in Google Sheets.
- •July 2024, Many Happy Returns. My solution in Google Sheets.
- •June 2024, Altered States 2. My solution on GitHub.
- •May 2024, Number Cross 4. My solution on GitHub.
- •May 2024 Special, Bug Byte. My solution pdf.
- •April 2024, Robot Capture-the-Flag. Sixth Solver. My solution pdf.
- •March 2024, Hooks 10. My solution on GitHub.
SIGBOVIC is an annual conference at CMU, known for featuring bizarre academic-style research. My group (which was rather large) contributed an article studying card shuffling algorithms.
My main addition was a study on how shuffling affects the distribution of the letter E in a deck, when written out as a string. See what I mean... bizarre research.
Several interesting distributions and decks are presented.
P. Mallory et al., "We Found the Best Shuffled Deck," Proceedings of SIGBOVIK 2024, pp. 70 - 82, 5 Apr., 2024.
Read the Submission
Read in Proceedings of SIGBOVIK 2024, pp. 70 - 82 (Hub Site)
Supporting code on GitHub
A little script I wrote for writing in a font on a Möbius strip.
March – April 2024. The letters are hand-drawn polygons, punched out of the strip and spun for the camera.
Code and the GIF on GitHub.
This Python script scrapes startup information from provided URLs of Y Combinator (YC) companies.
March – April 2024. Rewritten in September 2026, after a redesign of the YC site broke the original.
Code on GitHub.
Sator is a tool for finding word squares — square grids where every row and every column is a word. Try building your own below.
type letters · Sator fills the rest
loading the word list…
Example code is available on GitHub, using my wordlist from 2025.
Latex editor with an AI agent that knows your papers.
April - May 2023. Project no longer active.
Watch the demo here!