What program(s) should I use?

OwenKL · Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 12:45 am Post subject: What program(s) should I use?

The puzzles I make are at http://cerrillos.org/pseudoku.htm .

As you see, they have two gimmicks to them, they use letters and a secret word (like wordokus), and the givens are arranged to form a shape (reminiscent of nonograms, but the 9x9 limit makes them pretty crude).

My problem is, getting the givens arranged is trial and error, and sometimes take an awful lot of trials and errors!

I do the construction in three stages: First, using numbers, I try to create a puzzle with the picture and secret word solution together:

(picture is tan, solution is purple). I use SudoKlue to do this, which tells me when I've got a viable set of givens, or one away from a viable set, but gives me no hint if I'm 2 away or 80 away! Sometimes this is fairly easy, but most of the time, it takes an hour or longer!

Then, once I have that, I use Simple Sudoku with just the picture part of the givens, and verify that it can not be completely solved without the secret word, but that it can be partially solved to the point that 2 or 3 additional letters of the secret word will be revealed. This is another trial and error process. Usually it's simpler than the first one, but if the combination won't work (either entirely solvable, or reveals none of the secret word positions), then I have to go back to SoduKlue and redo the first process over again.

The third step is the easy one, replacing the numbers with letters. I use Sympathy, a crossword puzzle construction program for that. I then work the puzzle myself to make certain I didn't make any transcriptions mistakes.

So my question is, is there any construction program available that would make this process easier? If the program could say, as each number is entered, "there are 235 possible solutions", as SoduKlue does when I'm down to just one left, or as Simple does when I start a puzzle, then it would be easy.

Morozov · Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 10:06 am Post subject:

The program "Cross+A" allows to create Wordoku. This is the shareware-program, but sudoku generator is available in the unregistered version also.

The user may set letters instead of digits and define a "hidden" word. The generated puzzles may contain 7 kinds of symmetry.