Projects
13 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)
Jane Street posts a new puzzle monthly. Participants may submit one solution before the end of the month to have their names featured.
- •February 2026, Subtiles 2. My solution in March.
- •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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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!