Topic: Crosswords is a computer game for solving crossword puzzles for Windows or *NIX

[Software Santa]

Crosswords is a computer game for solving crossword puzzles for Windows or *NIX platforms!

General Information

A crossword is made of a rectangle of adaptable size. Most of rectangle elements are blank and have to be filled up with alphabetic letters. These letters make words defined by the rest elements showing hints. Words can be written either horizontally or vertically next to the blocks defining them. Few of words or word phrases remains undefined and are supposed to be guessed according to words crossing them from the other direction. Undefined phrases are signed as Secret phrases.

Crosswords is a computer game for solving crosswords. Once it is generated, you can fill up all the missing letters to get the desired secret phrase(s). A game is finished when the secret phrase is found or better when all letters are filled up successfully.


The Application

1. Main Window

The program application consists of main menu and a picture of crossword, which is currently active. Most of functions in main menu can be invoked also by pressing a specific key.

After the program starts, the first crossword is generated and you can fill it up. Crossword elements with white or yellow background are supposed to be filled. Yellow background indicates the secret phrase. Elements with black background contains a word definition. Sometimes one black element can contain both horizontal and vertical definitions. In these cases the horizontal one is written in the upper part of the element and the vertical one in the lower part of the element. Both are divided by a line.

The active position in a crossword field is marked by a rectangular frame, which can be blue or pink (see later). The frame can be moved either by cursor keys or by clicking the mouse at the desired position. When the frame is on a white or yellow element and you press alphabetic key (A-Z), the element is filled with this letter. You can delete this letter by pressing Space key.

Once the crossword is succesfully solved a message appears. This message tells whether all elements are correctly filled up or whether just a secret phrase is correct.

2. Game Modes

There are two modes of game. The first one is a classical mode, when you are filling the crossword as if you solve it on a paper. The second one is a hint mode. It tells you immediatelly if the written letters are correct or not. Correct letters are shown by the black color, while incorrect letters are shown by the red color. Those modes can be toggled by pressing F5 key. When the game is in classical mode, the frame indicating an active element is blue. When the game is in hint mode, the frame indicating an active element is pink.

Moreover, you can definitely cheat by pressing F6 key. Then, the whole crossword with correct letters is shown. This key toggles revealing or not revealing a solution.

3. Generating Crosswords

At any time, you can generate a new crossword. When you press the F9 key, a new crossword with the same size is generated. When you press CTRL+F9 keys, you can choose also the width and the height of the new crossword.

The progress of generation is shown in a modal dialog. If the process seems to be too long, it can be stopped by clicking Cancel button or by pressing the Escape key, and invoked once more. This can occur sometimes, because the process of generation is based on random algorithm and so the times of generation can vary. The generation time depends also on a CPU speed.


4. Settings

You can invoke the settings by pressing the F8 key. Here, it is possible to set the width and height of crossword elements in pixels and the size of font used in word descriptions.

http://crosswords.sourceforge.net/
or
https://sourceforge.net/projects/crosswords