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Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine
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There is a mobile game called DragonBox. It sort of tricks you into learning algebra by starting with very abstract manipulations of a puzzle that must follow rules... gradually the game teaches you more and more rules and also strips out the more abstract elements until on the last levels you are finally solving real equations. I loved it, it taught my kids algebra.... and it was just fun.Over the years I often thought that there should be a calculator for Algebra that works this way... something where you can drag terms around and cancel & distribute with gestures, but most importantly enter your own problems. It should also do more kinds of problems than DragonBox allowed. So I finally decided to build it.https://dicroce.github.io/wyrm/home.htmlHere's a video showing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STbS4zvIlU. If you'd rather just play with it: there's a limited in-browser demo (real engine, a few example equations, no download) on the landing page — https://dicroce.github.io/wyrm/home.html.The app can be found on iOS (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wyrm-math/id6782342042) and as of this week on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dicroce.wy...).I also decided to open source the underlying math engine so others could build on it: https://github.com/dicroce/wyrm_math. My goal for the engine btw is to build it all the way up to Calculus.Monetization is deliberately boring: the engine is free (MIT), and the polished gesture app is $4.99 once. No subscriptions, ads, accounts, or analytics.I'd love feedback on the engine design — especially from anyone who's worked on CAS or proof-assistant-adjacent problems. And if you played DragonBox as a kid and wished it went further: this is for you!
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Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine is a digital product or tool described as: There is a mobile game called DragonBox. It sort of tricks you into learning algebra by starting with very abstract manipulations of a puzzle that ...
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The initial public indexing or launch date for Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine within our tracked developer communities was recorded on July 11, 2026.
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The original author or development team describes the product as follows: "There is a mobile game called DragonBox. It sort of tricks you into learning algebra by starting with very abstract manipulations of a puzzle that must follow rules... gradually the game teaches yo..."
Community Voice & Feedback
I have always wanted to make this! Can it accept user-define algebra stuff? like group theory stuff so more rules can be implemented.
It doesn't seem like roots can be performed in the web version. Specifically, both x^3=8 and (x^2)x=8 seem unsolvable.It keeps trying to either subtract x^3, or divide by x. I can't get it to create a sqrt no matter what I drag or where.Edit: it seems to create a sqrt only if I drag one of the x-s over to the other side first in order to make one side only x^2, but then I get a sqrt(8/x) which I can't do anything at all with.In x^-1=2, I can get to 1=2x but I can't get it to simplify any further. (Edit: I was able to end up with a fraction of -1/-2 which I guess is correct...)
Based. I tend to think of algebra as movement of terms, as opposed to only thinking in terms of operations. This could be really good for building intuition.
DragonBox Algebra has a similar concept but gamified. It has a cool progression: you get a new "power" each chapter, like factoring or negating. And it starts out with monster cards then gradually transitions to "x" and numerals. My kids have loved it, but it's hard to tell how much they learn when you can only make legal moves. When my older one learned the basic rules of algebraic manipulation and went back to it, it worked great at giving him a visual model to follow.That said, the game doesn't let you do arbitrary equations, so you cap out when you beat the game. Excited to try this app out!
Bought the app, this is great. Can I make a feature request? I’d love for it to include a sequence of “levels” or existing equations to try and solve in order of increasing difficulty, and maybe a way to generate a random interesting one. Would love to use this to teach others with a mechanism for regular practice.
What a fun idea. I can see this being one of those casual "games" that you fiddle with when you're bored. It feels more productive than doom scrolling or playing games. Thanks for sharing!
Very cool!Here's a demo of a library for interactively eliminating variables from sets of equations:https://youtu.be/7ysUdxTfKhU?is=lE5o9Besk1XNnggPSource:https://github.com/dharmatech/combine-equations.pyThe interactive gui part starts at 4:08. Before that is the setup and context of the example.If you ever move in the direction of supporting sets of equations and isolating variables, consider using colors to indicate known values and unknown values as is done in this library.I test this library on exercises you'd find in college physics (motion, constant acceleration, projectile motion, Newton's laws, etc.) since these involve sets of equations and eliminating variables so that you have expressions in terms of known values.The above demo uses a jupyterlite notebook, so everything runs client side in the browser. No server side kernel necessary.To use your interactive fluid style in this library to eliminate variables, I could see the user first isolating that variable. Then dragging that variable they want to eliminate over an instance of that variable in another equation. So that's effectively the user saying "replace this variable with this expression".
This is very cool! I'd like to see a version for theorem proving/equational reasoning as well because I think the ideas behind reasoning about functional programs and proving properties about them are just many cases of rule-applying but people don't staring at equations or jump straight to a theorem prover, whereas a visual interface might make the transition a lot easier.
This is awesome. Congrats on shipping!The nearest thing that I've heard of is Wolfram Alpha's step-by-step solution solvers, but the worry with those is always that it's too easy for the student to just keep clicking next step and not learn anything.I appreciate how this frames algebra as a puzzle instead of a problem :)The Wolfram thing: https://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/pro-features/step-by-s...Specifically this one: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=find+t+for+t%5E2+%2B+3t...
I watched the video. I think I've been wanting something like this recently but there's not really a name for this sort of thing that I know of.Relatedly, I've been working on a step-by-step solver/calculator but I just use sympy (via pyodide) + mathlive. But I'm starting to see the limitations of running Python in the browser and am starting to look at js libraries now.
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