Madison Yarbrough to talks to two East Finchley residents who turned a family game into an online hit

Two man dressed in black, one of the left is bald with a moustache, the other (on the right) has ginger hair — Stuart Miller (left) and Matt Robinson (right)

Griddable is a new online puzzle game that has emerged from East Finchley to take on the world.

The online head-scratcher – based on a game Stuart Miller’s father played in the 1950s – was developed by Stuart and his brother-in-law Matt Robinson using AI.

The game goes as follows: you’re provided eight random letters each day and the opportunity to select eight letters of your own in order to strategically fill out a grid.

The goal is to get the most words within the grid, scoring the most points. There are both individual play and competitive rounds to play with friends. It also features a competitive leaderboard. Players currently range from the US to the UK to part of Asia.

For Stuart and Matt, who both live near East End Road, taking the game from pen and paper to online presented many challenges. The two reached out to several coders with no luck in achieving their vision. Matt, who works with tech and keeps an eye on new and upcoming AI platforms, had seen some settings where AI could code for you.

Matt explains: “I just thought, having not had success with asking some people to code it, I’d give one of these platforms a go and see if someone like me who has no coding expertise could talk to an AI and get it to build the thing we wanted”

After painstaking attempts to guide AI to their vision for the game, the two finally reached their goal of creating a usable online platform and, so far, the results have been promising.

“What we’re finding is that people, once they start playing it and give it a couple of goes, they finally get into it and they keep playing it. So it’s really gratifying to think that every day there’s lots of people getting enjoyment out of the game. At this point, really, we just want to try and get it out there to as many people as possible,” adds Matt.

Now that its available, the pair predict a bright future for the game. Stuart says: “I think it’s unlike anything out there. You know, a lot of what daily puzzles are is you solve the puzzle or you don’t. With this one, it’s got that element of scoring, which makes it quite interesting.

“It’s so simple to learn and then quite difficult to resist.”

Play Griddable for free here: https://griddable.co.uk/

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