The Path is the location at which the puzzle is stored - it gives the drive, directory and filename. To change the name/path, you would use the File | Save As... option from the Main Menu.
The Title identifies the puzzle by name - for example Cryptic Crossword 1 - as you type in the text box, you can see the name being reflected on the Caption for the main (grid) window. Note that if the title is left empty, this caption will show the name (not path) instead.
The Author identifies the puzzle compiler - for example Simon Huggins - You may wish to put something like an e:mail address in here, if you wish people to be able to contact you in case of problems.
The Notes text box is a large space, which gives you ample room to put any extra notes. If the length of your notes goes past the end of the box, you can scroll up and down using the scroll bars on the box. Some examples of information you could include: Copyright Notice, Email address, Web site address, Postal Address, Description of the type of puzzle (e.g. Cryptic, themed on Science Fiction Series).
These options relate to various methods of customizing how the grid appears on the screen, and in the case of background images, on the printed page.
For distributing puzzles, the latter (Top-Left) is the best option, as it minimizes the risk of part of the puzzle being obscured to the right or bottom of the screen if the user has a lower-resolution screen than you.
Your can enable/disable this facility (some may find it annoying), by clicking on the check-box to the left of the Show ClueTips option on the Grid tab from the Puzzle Properties dialog box.
A second option, Show Alt. Clues in ClueTips will include the alternative sets of clues in the clue tips as well when checked.
- Ensure that you have clicked on the Grid tab from the Puzzle Properties dialog box first.
- Click on the Grid... button to set the font for the letters that appear on the grid. This includes effects such as typeface, bold, italic, underline, style and colour.
- Click on the Num... button to set the font for the numbers that appear on the grid.
Note that the size will be ignored in both of these options, as this is automatically calculated according to the style of font, size of square, and relative size between number and letter.
- Ensure that you have clicked on the Grid tab from the Puzzle Properties dialog box first.
- Click on the Grid Bgnd... button to set the colour for the squares on the grid that can contain letters. You can choose either basic colours, or set-up your own custom colours.
- Click on the Out Bgnd... button to set the colour for the squares on the grid that do not contain letters (ours).
Note that custom colours are saved with the puzzle file, so can be reused later.
Alternatively, you can set the background to be invisible by clicking on the Transparent checkbox to put a check in it. This means that the grid will have no colour at all. Note that this is not necessarily the same as having a white background - for example, if you place a picture behind the grid, then setting the squares to be transparent will enable the picture to be visible below the letters and borders of the grid squares, whereas a white background would obscure such a picture.
- Ensure that you have clicked on the Grid tab from the Puzzle Properties dialog box first.
- To use a previously saved bitmap image for a grid space (where a letter goes), click on the Grid Image... button, and select a picture from the Image Organizer. You can select a picture, or choose to disable using an image from here. You can also change the contents of the image organizer by adding images either from disk or from the clipboard. Click here for more information on the Image Organizer.
- To use a previously saved bitmap image for an out (where a letter cannot go), click on the Out Image... button, and select a picture for the background from the Image Organizer.
Various sample files are provided with WordPuzzle Pro to get you on the way to producing puzzles of your own, and also some samples to try out for yourself.
The files for the images are kept in the application's own directory, in the following subdirectory:-
- Clipart
disc_mbl.bmp - A 3D disk in marble effect
mbl_turq.bmp - Turquoise marble
wd_sq_dk.bmp - Dark wood square tile
wd_sq_lt.bmp - Light wood square tile
xword.bmp - WordPuzzle Pro logo
- The Word Focus selects the word that is currently selected. This is shown when you click on, or otherwise move to a square on the grid with a number on it - ie. the start of a word. Click on Word Focus... button to change the colour.
- The Cell Focus
selects a square on the grid, and denotes the place on the grid where text will appear if
you start typing. It is the equivalent of a cursor in a word-processor or similar
environment.
The Cell Focus can be defined as being a different colour for spaces on the grid (Grid Focus) and outs on the grid (Out Focus). Click on the corresponding button to change the colour.
You can also set the colour that a clue number displays, if the clue(s) for the clue number has not been entered yet - useful when creating a puzzle to see at a glance where you haven't yet created clues. Change the colour for numbers of uncompleted clues by clicking on the Incomplete... button.
For example, if you wanted the numbers to be the same size as the grid letters, you would set the value to 0 - i.e. the numbers would be 0% smaller than the letters - the same size!
If you wanted the numbers to be half the size of the letters, you would set the value to 50 - i.e. the numbers would be 50% smaller than the letters.
Usually, a value of 60 is about right.
To change the colour, click on the Border... button and select a colour for the border to be.
To change the thickness of the border, fill a number into the edit box to the right of the Border... button and to the left of the caption % of grid size in thickness. The value can be between 1 and 100, although above 50 is meaningless (as 50% of the size of the square would obscure the entire square as 50% would be taken up with top, and 50% with bottom, obscuring 100% of the square, etc.) A sensible value would be anything up to about 10%.
The size of this bar can be set using the text box that appears to the right of the Barre... button and to the left of the caption % of grid size in thickness. Fill in a value between 0 and 100, where 0 would mean that bars are invisible, and 100 would mean that bars would cover the entire cell. Generally, a value between 10% and 15% is fine. Note that this value is also used to denote the width of the two bars that are shown at the current cursor position on the grid to denote the current direction (two horizontal bars denote across, two vertical bars denote down).
The colour of the bars can be set by clicking on the Barre... button and selecting a colour from the selection given.
To turn this facility on, click on the Hide squares when empty check-box that it is checked. Uncheck it again to turn this facility off by clicking on it again.
This controls how far away from the edge of the square letters and numbers should appear. In general, about 4%-10% is recommended. Note that this also affects the spacing between GridClues if more than one GridClue appears in the same out, and also how close to the edge the GridClue is shown.
This can be used in conjunction with the templates facility, so that you could have standard puzzle template that was opened every time you start the application, upon which all new puzzles will be based. That Template can then automatically open a standard Pool and Word list .
This can be used in conjunction with a template to give a standardised look to your puzzle, or you can use it to memorize the last puzzle you were working on, and automatically go back to it when you next start the application.
To automatically re-open the last puzzle or template that you opened every time you start the application again, click on the File menu and select the AutoLoad option. To stop anything from being opened automatically when the application starts, repeat this procedure again to take the tick off the AutoLoad option.
To do this, first open the pool that you wish to have linked to the puzzle. Then click on the Pool menu, and click on the Link to Puzzle option. To unlink again, just click on Pool | Link to Puzzle again.
To do this, first open the word list that you wish to have linked to the puzzle. Then click on the Word List menu, and click on the Link to Puzzle option. To unlink again, just click on Word List | Link to Puzzle again.
To define what these headings should be, from the Puzzle Properties dialog box, ensure you have clicked on the Other tab, and enter the headings into the appropriately titled text boxes.
Note also, that if you are going to distribute the file as an encrypted distributable, it is worth giving the puzzle a password. This means that the puzzle cannot be altered unless the person completing the puzzle has both a full version of WordPuzzle Pro and also the password.
To set the puzzle, from the whereas the alternative set might be called Cryptic.
To define what these headings should be, from the Puzzle Properties dialog box, ensure you have clicked on the Other tab, click into the edit-box to the right of the Password heading, and type out the password for the puzzle. The password will appear as stars to ensure the password cannot be overseen when typing it in.
In general, it is good practice to avoid a word appearing twice in a puzzle, and especially with unkeyed puzzles, where you can easily have 80 or so clues in a 15x15 grid, it can be difficult to keep track of this rule.
Luckily, there is a setting which can be set through the Other tab on the Puzzle Properties dialog box to enable (or disable) this option in the puzzle - click on the Check for duplicate words on refresh check-box.
When the grid is refreshed, any duplicate words will be listed in a dialog box, otherwise no dialog box will be displayed.
on a word from either a Clue Pool or Word List, then normally the word
will only be placed on the grid if it fits EXACTLY in the space indicated
- i.e. you need to denote the end of the word with an out or a bar.
You can turn off this restriction by clicking on the check-box marked Allow dragging into space too large. This is useful if you wish to build up a puzzle first, and then add outs afterwards. If you do use this method, then it is impossible to use auto-matching of Clues to the grid until outs/bars have been placed, as the program does not know where words end.
You can turn off this automatic numbering process and manually number the squares individually according to your precise requirements by clicking on the Automatically Number On Refresh check-box to check the item.
You can (optionally) number all the squares first by clicking on the Refresh button having laid out the outs/bars for your grid, and the switch numbering off, so that you can make small alterations according to your needs.
One type of puzzle has each square numbered according to the letter occupying that square - e.g. 1 for A, 2 for B etc. You can automatically number squares according to this scheme by clicking on the Number Letters by Code check-box. When you next click on Refresh, the squares will be numbered accordingly. You can alter the codes used for each letter by changing the code against each allowable letter, or alternatively, allowing the computer to shuffle the codes.
However, you may wish to switch this off if your puzzle does not use clues, but is based entirely on the grid - e.g. a codeword. Alternatively, you may wish to switch off this clue matching generally, but switch it on for selected clues. To do this, you would switch back on clue matching for the first letters of individual clues.
To switch off clue matching, click on the check-box labelled Refresh will match clues to grid.
A grid contains a list of allowed letters / other characters, one character per row on the grid. The first column identifies the allowed character, the second character identifies the code for that character when the Number letters by code option is selected, and the third column identifies the bias or probability (between 0 and 1) that the character could be chosen when searching for possible words to fill in during the AutoFill process. The list of letters is not normally changeable if you choose one of the standard lists.
The standard lists are available by clicking on one of the options marked in a box with the title Letter Sequences. These are Alphabet+Digits for the letters A..Z and the digits 0..9, Alphabet for the letters A..Z, and Digits for the digits 0..9.
Click on the Sort button to sort the list alphanumerically according to the ordering within the extended ASCII character set (eg. A..Z, 0..9)
Click on Min Bias to set the bias for all letters to be 0, and Max Bias to set the bias for all letters to be 1.
Note you would need to have the AutoFill with Biases option checked for the biases to be used by the AutoFill function at all.
This functionality is described further in the section on Auto-Filling.
The first page of information is arranged in a grid, so that you can find the information for Across clues/words, Down clues/words, and a combination of both (overall totals/averages for the whole puzzle):-
- Word Count: Number of words in the puzzle. This does not treat multi-part clues as one word, so literally refers to the number of words on the grid.
- Clue Count: Number of clues in the puzzle. This treats multi-part clues as one clue.
- Av. Word Len: Average length of a word in the puzzle.
- Av. Clue Len: Average length of an answer in the puzzle. For multi-part clues, the length is taken as being the length without spaces or other padding.
- Outs: Number of outs, or black spaces, in the puzzle.
- Outs Ratio: Ratio between spaces for letters (non-outs) to outs, in terms of 1:n where (for American Style Puzzles), the ideal is to get n as close to 6 as possible.
- Letters on Grid: Letters (in alphanumeric order) that appear on the grid. Note that if you check the Show Letters In Code Order check-box, then these letters will be displayed in the order by code (e.g. letter for code 1, letter for code 2 etc.) This is useful if you wish to put a solution grid onto the grid itself in code order. Simply Copy the first n letters from the Letters on Grid edit field onto the clipboard, where n is the width of the grid, and paste them onto the grid. Then repeat for the next n letters until all letters have been pasted onto the grid. It may be worth offsetting these squares by making them a different background colour, or placing an image behind them. The puzzler can then use the letters to write in what they think the correct answer is. If they are solving the puzzle on-line, then an incorrect letter will be displayed in the current mismatch colour to indicate an incorrect guess. See puzzle example 5 for an example of this methodology.
The second page, entitled Statistics 2, shows two charts that show the number (bar chart) and proportion (pie chart) of words with a certain number of letters in the grid. You can turn on or of either of these charts by clicking on the checkboxes at the top of the page.