I have the habit of start my coding musings by branching away from other people's proposals.
In this case I found myself looking at this video, where the author codes the snake game in 4'30''
The video is very good and the code is purposefully and relentlessly hacky. And the game indeed works after that time. While I was looking at it I was thinking, wow, I cannot beat him at his own game, but is it really so much different between that