News

The Lost Book microfiction competition Edinburgh's City of Literature guys are running a microfiction competition which revolves around a story started off by Jasper Fforde. There is the possibility - I think - of appearing at the Ed Book Festival if you are successful. But I could be wrong about that. http://thelostbook.net/get-involved/microstory-competition/ (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 01:25PM on Monday 16 February)

Registration now possible! Now is the time to take the opportunity by the horns and try out one of our many challenges. We know you want to! For those who have tried to register in the past, a small technical hitch has been fixed that will allow registrations to work... (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 11:54AM on Monday 12 January)

Confiction.org After many, many long months of loneliness on the great barren expanse of the non-web, we return! This site is now officially called confiction.org and inherits all that was once constrained.org. If you were once a user of constrained.org, all your user details should still be the same. (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 07:23AM on Friday 03 October)

Underground map Here's a witty anagrammatical take on the London tube map. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 12:34AM on Friday 10 February)

We reappear, cautious but ready to constrain The good ship constrained.org returns, after a brief sojourn in the Bermuda triangle of cyberspace. Apologies to those who may have missed their footing when trying to board. (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 11:24AM on Thursday 26 January)

A Dash of Seasonal Salt We have a seasonal lipogram for you this Christmas, for you to scratch your heads over. Or perhaps, if you fancy it, enter Epitaph with a seasonal theme - although perhaps that is more suited for Easter. (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 10:59PM on Sunday 18 December)

New logotype The new ambigram was designed by Hilary Wade. Thanks Hilary! (posted by Joe Halliwell at 04:59PM on Thursday 15 September)

Sponsored links By way of an experiment, I've introduced some discreet ads on the story pages. If you're unhappy about this for *any* reason please let me know. My contact details can be found in the FAQ. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 03:58PM on Monday 25 July)

Micro-graphic novel This project to caption a short sequence of instructional pictures has already attracted some interesting stories. Perhaps you'd like to try your hand? (posted by Joe Halliwell at 05:05PM on Friday 04 February)

Canongate's Book of Lists There's an interesting entry in Canongate.net's Book of Lists, which may interest those lipogram fiends out there. (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 08:24AM on Thursday 06 January)

Christmas at constrained There is a generous seasonal ghost story challenge for you all, if you feel sufficiently Victorian to attempt it... (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 12:41AM on Friday 24 December)

IFComp '04 Results This year's Interactive Fiction Competition has now ended and the winners have been declared. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 08:40PM on Wednesday 01 December)

A la mode Not everyone (Hello Mr. Anderson!) was happy with the redesign, so as a special bonus for firefox users you can now revert to the old look. (See View->Page style->Mondo on your menubar.) (posted by Joe Halliwell at 01:23PM on Monday 22 November)

Hitchhiker's Guide Competition There is a contest being run by the BBC as an advert for the release of new episodes. The challenge is to describe earth in exactly 264 words. (posted by Jarred Pickle at 06:06PM on Monday 06 September)

Self-referential questionnaire This is sheer genius. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 04:47PM on Sunday 05 September)

Closed Challenges Hello all. Just because a challenge is closed, doesn't make it dead. Feel free to enter a story in a closed challenge. You might not earn the accolades and cash prizes associated with winning an open challenge but it's still fun. (posted by Jarred Pickle at 09:19AM on Friday 03 September)

Comments on stories? We have some really good stories up on the site, and it would be fab if people posted some comments because I think the poor wee tales are getting a bit lonely. (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 09:44AM on Tuesday 03 August)

Constrained.org unplugged Last night our server got unplugged, losing the last couple of days worth of data. Sorry. The silver lining is that I've now implemented daily backups, so this sort of thing will have less effect in future. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 12:32PM on Sunday 13 June)

Interesting litererary exercise This caught my eye: http://www.apeinfinitum.net/alwaysbeclosing/index.html (posted by Joe Halliwell at 01:17PM on Tuesday 04 May)

New challenges Hi everyone. I've posted a few new challenges up, as has Joe. Hope these generate your overflowing enthusiasm :) (posted by Semyon Semyonovich at 03:14PM on Wednesday 03 March)

Site updates I've just added URL detection to the text styling. Common URLs should now be represented as hyperlinks, see this comment for an example. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 10:28AM on Friday 20 February)

Extensions I've just extended our challenges for a week. I'm not sure this can effectively counter lack of interest, but I'm willing to try ;) (posted by Joe Halliwell at 12:22PM on Saturday 07 February)

Starry night Moderations are now represented by (up to 5) stars. I think this is more intuitive -- let me know what you think. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 05:38AM on Wednesday 04 February)

Account validation I've added an e-mail validation step to the account creation process. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 05:41PM on Tuesday 03 February)

Syndication city I've added an RSS feed for the global story list. I'll probably add challenge-specific feeds in the coming days. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 04:07PM on Tuesday 03 February)

New challenge To get things rolling, I've created a new (week-long) challenge. Thanks to Dan and Steph for the idea. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 06:51AM on Monday 02 February)

New features It's now possible to delete comments. Some lucky users have also been granted administrator status. Finally, I managed to delete Stephen Potter's account. Again. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 05:20AM on Monday 02 February)

Live updates It's now possible to update the server code whilst it's running! This should further reduce the possibility of data loss. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 01:42PM on Friday 30 January)

Gamma release Welcome to the constrained.org gamma release! I've finally finalized the backend, so we shouldn't have any more messy data loss. (posted by Joe Halliwell at 05:49AM on Friday 30 January)

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