As an IT undergrad at the University of Moratuwa, I’ve built my fair share of projects. Recently, I looked back at an old project of mine—a traditional Node.js Crossword App and realized it was time for a complete teardown.
The old app worked, but the architecture felt dated. I wanted to modernize it, improve the performance, and implement a cleaner, editorial-style UI. Instead of just refactoring, I decided to reverse-engineer the core logic of my own app and rebuild it from the ground up using Next.js 16, Neon PostgreSQL, Better Auth, and v0 by Vercel.
Here is how I broke down the legacy system and engineered the new application, Crosshatch. You can check out the live deployment here: crossword-web-app.vercel.app
The Teardown: Reverse-Engineering the Core Loop
When reverse-engineering an existing app—even your own—the goal is to separate the underlying business logic from the legacy plumbing. I ignored the old routing and view layers and focused entirely on the data structures and the game loop.
