Cracking the Cryptic
Check it out >- design
I first came across the Cracking the Cryptic youtube channel just randomly. I subscribe to a bunch of weird channels off and on, and one of them is Numberphile where they explain interesting things about numbers and formulas. The Youtube algorithm knew me well and recommend a video by CtC where they were solving a new kind of Sudoku puzzle with rules that I had never heard of. Turns out there‘s this whole scene around “variant sudoku” where the puzzle setters add rules to the normal Sudoku rules so that you can solve a puzzle with logic alone and not necessarily any given digits to start.
My wife and I watched the channel a lot and eventually started to try to solve the puzzles ourselves. We still do, we‘re quite invested in variant sudoku these days. Anyway, one of my favourite ways to find freelance clients when I‘m in the mood to build something is to cold email shmedium sized Youtube or Twitch channels to see if they need any help with their website. Well I did that, and they said “no thanks”. But a few weeks later, they emailed to ask if I could work on a T-shirt design for them. One of the solvers, Simon, had developed this catch-phrase and their community had been asking for a shirt design and they wondered if that was something I could do even though I mainly do web design/development. I‘m proud of the result, and I think the shirt sold pretty well even though they do a terrible job pushing their merch.