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Puzzle Quarry

The Skyscrapers Archive

Nothing here is stored. Every past daily is built again from its own date the moment you ask for it, which is why none of these links can rot.

Puzzle #34 Hard Time 0:00 Filled 0/25

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A hard 5×5 board with 6 numbers round the rim. Pick a cell, then a height — or press the pencil to write candidates.

Check this before you rely on it. This skyscrapers puzzle generator is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.

Pick a day

Made again, rather than looked up

A conventional archive is a directory of saved files and it fails in the ordinary ways directories fail: something gets pruned, a migration loses a month, an old link comes back holding a different puzzle from the one somebody remembers. There are no files here. Each entry is a date, and the date is enough to rebuild the board exactly, because every choice the generator makes is driven by it.

That has a consequence worth naming. Rebuilding a past daily repeats the entire carve — the same city is laid out, the same rim numbers are proposed for removal in the same order, and the same ones are put back. What you are handed is not a copy of that day’s board; it is that day’s board, made the same way a second time.

So there is no maintenance and no expiry to worry about. The list simply runs back to the very first daily and stops there, because no date before it had a skyline of the day to be — which is a different thing from a file having been deleted.

What the back catalogue is actually good for

An archived board counts as a board played: it lands in your history and it can take your fastest time at that side. What it cannot do is repair a streak. A streak is a count of consecutive days you actually appeared, and a count you can go back and fix is a count of nothing.

The archive is far more useful as a practice ground than as a list to clear. Each weekday carries a fixed difficulty, so if what you want is drill on reading both ends of a street, work through Mondays; if you want to get comfortable testing a height against a view, take a run of Tuesdays. Choosing by weekday is the thing this archive can do that a folder of saved boards cannot.

Common questions

How far back does the skyscrapers archive go?

To the first daily and no further. Every date since is available, and each is built again from the date itself rather than loaded from anywhere.

Will a link to an old daily skyline still work later?

Indefinitely. Nothing is stored for it to point at: the date and the code between them determine the board, so the same address keeps producing the same city for as long as the site exists.

Can playing old boards bring back a broken streak?

No — it is a count of days you turned up on, and going back afterwards is not turning up. The board still counts towards your history and your fastest time at that side.

More Skyscrapers pages