Here are the threads I could find with 20 or more comments. Smaller threads are listed in a collapsed reply. These are in chronological order for a change:
This corroborate well with my memory of 2048 being absolutely all over HN for a while, heh. It was so fun with all the variants popping up, really a cultural phenomenon for a while.
But also made me think: what other "fads" have we seen?
Some that come to mind is a wave of "{x}, a {y} written in rust", or more recently the wave of things being thin wrappers/prompts on top of some llm/transformer. Was also a time it felt like it daily was a new js library on the front page. It would be cool with a history of hn of sorts, about what's been in vogue at times.
2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7373566 - March 2014 (410 comments)
2048 AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379821 - March 2014 (189 comments)
2048 – multiplayer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7384974 - March 2014 (113 comments)
2048 x 2 = 4096 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7396134 - March 2014 (24 comments)
2048 in the terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7398011 - March 2014 (88 comments)
2048 with Leaderboard and achievements, with Kivy (Python/OpenGL) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404515 - March 2014 (25 comments)
Show HN: 2048 in 2048 bytes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406605 - March 2014 (54 comments)
2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416777 - March 2014 (66 comments)
2048 in 4D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7418219 - March 2014 (113 comments)
Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7431047 - March 2014 (121 comments)
Show HN: Logarithmic Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7432448 - March 2014 (64 comments)
HN Plays 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7433524 - March 2014 (81 comments)
Show HN: 2048 Tetris - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435569 - March 2014 (60 comments)
2048 for physicists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7438567 - March 2014 (33 comments)
2048 Numberwang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439444 - March 2014 (110 comments)
Show HN: 2048 without numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443166 - March 2014 (46 comments)
Dropbox 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443379 - March 2014 (2 comments)
8402: 2048 from the other side - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446139 - March 2014 (53 comments)
2(048) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453543 - March 2014 (46 comments)
2048 in sed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7464294 - March 2014 (35 comments)
2048 game to the Atari 2600 VCS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7466097 - March 2014 (22 comments)
2048 Solver - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7473486 - March 2014 (38 comments)
Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484106 - March 2014 (208 comments)
2048 As A Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510670 - April 2014 (52 comments)
2048 implemented in 487 bytes of C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535666 - April 2014 (45 comments)
2048 in 3D - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543483 - April 2014 (51 comments)
Flappy 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637009 - April 2014 (32 comments)
2048 in Famo.us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7660206 - April 2014 (21 comments)
2048, success and me - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704800 - May 2014 (222 comments)
Show HN: 2048 in Swift - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7845441 - June 2014 (34 comments)
Implementing 2048 in 90 lines of Haskell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896187 - June 2014 (24 comments)
243 Game – inspired by 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991773 - July 2014 (36 comments)
Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030413 - July 2014 (80 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15327837 - Sept 2017 (46 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States by Exhaustive Enumeration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15894126 - Dec 2017 (22 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790338 - April 2018 (43 comments)
Show HN: 2048.cpp – Play 2048 in directly your terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897283 - Sept 2018 (45 comments)
The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28310842 - Aug 2021 (50 comments)
Show HN: 1024, a 2048 Puzzle Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32405510 - Aug 2022 (48 comments)
Show HN: Exponentile – A match 3 game mixed with 2048 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39897112 - April 2024 (40 comments)
Show HN: King Thirteen: 2048 with chess pieces, in under 13 KB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623814 - Sept 2024 (80 comments)