I built a crossword solver without React and survived to tell the tale 😅

For the past 3 years, my brain has been wired to: npx create-vite@latest useState, useEffect, useCallback components inside components inside components So when I decided to build a crossword puzzle solver the "vanilla way" — no framework, no JSX, no hot reload — I felt naked. But here we are. With raw 2D arrays, nested loops, and the humbling realization that I still struggle with grid[r][c+len]. The Slots Extractor (I'm actually proud of this) function extractSlots(grid)...