It would also be nice if I could position pieces freely outside of the board so I could test out potential matches.
In the end, it became easier to just keep trying to place pieces on the board until they stuck together automatically.
I'll take a look at free positioning pieces outside the board too, but I just want to give that a little more thought.
BTW- This was really fun to solve! (And I rarely play games or solve puzzles.) Thanks for sharing it!
I actually initially envisioned this the way you described with monospaced font and one-letter-per-square, but I found that it wasn't possible because the puzzle became prohibitively wide to such a disproportionate extent that it A. couldn't fit on a mobile screen, B. looked very odd, C. involved so many pieces that the challenge was elevated to a tedious level.
It would be cool if I could kind of place things "wherever I want" because sometimes I want to test if this fits here or not, and the easiest way is to place the piece there and drop it. Because the borders are less distracting/smaller after dropping it. But if I do that in a place that is not valid, it snaps back to the original position.
I once had to drag two completed chunks sequentially to one side of the puzzle area before I could test a piece I was looking at and discover it was wrong.
Is that intentional or a sneak peek?