elect.horse
A new daily web puzzle, elect.horse, asks players to rig hex‑grid electoral districts so an underdog “horse” candidate wins more seats despite losing the popular vote, illustrating how gerrymandering can distort outcomes. Many players enjoy the concept and see potential for education, but others criticize the game as a near‑carbon copy of the earlier gerrymandle.com, raising concerns about originality, LLM‑generated text, and “rip‑offs” in indie game design. Accessibility issues such as hard‑to‑distinguish party colors, especially for color‑blind users, are also a recurring point of feedback.
Gameplay & Mechanics
- elect.horse is a daily gerrymandering puzzle: players draw equal-sized districts on a hex grid so the “horse” wins more districts despite losing the popular vote.
- Ties mean a district counts for nobody, which is unintuitive for some players and criticized as unrealistic.
- Only districts matter; initial numbers are just counts of individual voters per party. Several comments show confusion between popular vote counts and district wins.
- Hints and resets are available; performance is measured mainly by hint usage, which some see as weaker than the competitive metrics in enclose.horse.
- A tutorial page exists and is recommended as the real starting point; without it, some players report having “no idea” what to do.
Reception & Difficulty
- Many find the puzzles fun, clever, and satisfying, especially using deductive logic on harder levels.
- Others describe it as “basic” or suitable even for younger kids.
- Difficulty is mixed: some breeze through expert levels quickly; others find them “really hard” and are unsure if that’s intended.
Copying vs Originality Debate
- Major thread: elect.horse is seen by many as a near-1:1 clone of gerrymandle.com, down to hex grid, UI layout, and key mechanics.
- The current owners of enclose.horse reportedly tried to buy gerrymandle; after refusal, elect.horse appeared, which the gerrymandle developer publicly calls disappointing.
- Some argue this is a shameless rip-off and liken it to joke stealing or asset-flip cash grabs, worsened by perceived LLM-generated copy and ad focus.
- Others defend it, arguing that games routinely build on predecessors (numerous examples cited) and that “execution matters” more than originality.
- There is secondary debate over whether both games themselves are derivative of earlier board and newspaper gerrymandering games.
Accessibility & Color Choices
- Many users, especially those with color vision deficiencies, struggle to distinguish horse vs donkey colors and criticize the palette as not color-blind–friendly.
- Others say the hues are clearly distinct on their displays and suggest that difficulty implies color blindness or display issues.
- A technical back-and-forth touches on color contrast ratios and accessibility standards; a bookmarklet hack to hue-shift the page is shared.
- Some view complaints as valid accessibility concerns; others see them as overblown, causing friction in the thread.
Educational & Political Aspects
- Several see it as an excellent, concrete illustration of gerrymandering and suggest using it in schools.
- Others argue it oversimplifies real-world risks, omitting uncertainty and backfiring effects seen in actual elections.
- A tangent develops around “both sides” politics in the US, partisan differences, and longstanding structural issues (including gerrymandering and prison labor), reflecting broader polarization rather than consensus.
Related Games & Puzzle Ecosystem
- enclose.horse is frequently mentioned as a beloved earlier game; some are happy to see a “sequel,” others say this clone reduces their respect for enclose.horse’s new owners.
- Gerrymandle is widely praised and contrasted with elect.horse; some prefer elect.horse’s friendlier aesthetic, others gerrymandle’s originality and colorblind mode.
- Users share links to many other daily puzzles and “-dle” games (word, geo, and logic variants), noting the surprisingly large ecosystem of small web puzzles.