solo - puzzle game based on Sudoku

NAME

       solo - puzzle game based on Sudoku

SYNOPSIS

       solo   [--generate  n]  [--print  wxh  [--with-solutions]  [--scale  n]
       [--colour]] [game-parameters|game-ID|random-seed]

       solo --version

DESCRIPTION

You have a square grid, which is divided into as many equally sized
sub-blocks as the grid has rows. Each square must be filled in with a
digit from 1 to the size of the grid, in such a way that

â.
every row contains only one occurrence of each digit

â.
every column contains only one occurrence of each digit

â.
every block contains only one occurrence of each digit.

â.
(optionally, by default off) each of the square’s two main
diagonals contains only one occurrence of each digit.

You are given some of the numbers as clues; your aim is to place the
rest of the numbers correctly.

Under the default settings, the sub-blocks are square or rectangular.
The default puzzle size is 3Ã3 (a 9Ã9 actual grid, divided into nine
3Ã3 blocks). You can also select sizes with rectangular blocks instead
of square ones, such as 2Ã3 (a 6Ã6 grid divided into six 3Ã2 blocks).
Alternatively, you can select â.PP Another available mode is â.PP If
you select a puzzle size which requires more than 9 digits, the
additional digits will be letters of the alphabet. For example, if you
aâ, âbâ and âcâ. This cannot be selected for killer puzzles.
select 3Ã4 then the digits which go in your grid will be 1 to 9, plus
â.PP I first saw this puzzle in Nikoli
(http://www.nikoli.co.jp/puzzles/1/index_text-e.htm), although it's
Sudokuâ or âSu Dokuâ. Howard Garns is considered the inventor of the modern form of the puzzle, and it was first published in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games. A more elaborate treatment of the history of the puzzle can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku).
also been popularised by various newspapers under the name â.SH "Solo
controls"

To play Solo, simply click the mouse in any empty square and then type
a digit or letter on the keyboard to fill that square. If you make a
mistake, click the mouse in the incorrect square and press Space to
clear it again (or use the Undo feature).

If you right-click in a square and then type a number, that number will
be entered in the square as a â.PP The game pays no attention to pencil
marks, so exactly what you use them for is up to you: you can use them
as reminders that a particular square needs to be re-examined once you
know more about a particular number, or you can use them as lists of
the possible numbers in a given square, or anything else you feel like.

To erase a single pencil mark, right-click in the square and type the
same number again.

All pencil marks in a square are erased when you left-click and type a
number, or when you left-click and press space. Right-clicking and
pressing space will also erase pencil marks.

Alternatively, use the cursor keys to move the mark around the grid.
Pressing the return key toggles the mark (from a normal mark to a
pencil mark), and typing a number in is entered in the square in the
appropriate way; typing in a 0 or using the space bar will clear a
filled square.

(All the actions described below are also available.)

Solo parameters

Solo allows you to configure two separate dimensions of the puzzle grid
on the â.PP If you tick the â.PP If you tick the â.PP If you tick the
â.PP You can also configure the type of symmetry shown in the generated
puzzles. More symmetry makes the puzzles look prettier but may also
make them easier, since the symmetry constraints can force more clues
than necessary to be present. Completely asymmetric puzzles have the
freedom to contain as few clues as possible.

Finally, you can configure the difficulty of the generated puzzles.
Difficulty levels are judged by the complexity of the techniques of
deduction required to solve the puzzle: each level requires a mode of
reasoning which was not necessary in the previous one. In particular,
Trivialâ and âBasicâ there will be a square you can fill in with a single number at all times, whereas at âIntermediateâ level and beyond you will have to make partial deductions about the set of squares a number could be in (or the set of numbers that could be in a square). At âUnreasonableâ level, even this is not enough, and you will eventually have to make a guess, and then backtrack if it turns out to be wrong.
on difficulty levels â.PP Generating difficult puzzles is itself
difficult: if you select one of the higher difficulty levels, Solo may
have to make many attempts at generating a puzzle before it finds one
hard enough for you. Be prepared to wait, especially if you have also
configured a large puzzle size.

Common actions

       These  actions are all available from the â.PP (On Mac OS X, to conform
       with local user interface standards, these actions are situated on  the
       â.IP "New game (âStarts a new game, with a random initial state.

       Restart game
              Resets  the  current  game  to  its  initial state. (This can be
              undone.)

       Load   Loads a saved game from a file on disk.

       Save   Saves the current state of your game to a file on disk.

              The Load and Save operations preserve your entire  game  history
              (so you can save, reload, and still Undo and Redo things you had
              done before saving).

       Print  Where supported (currently only on Windows), brings up a  dialog
              allowing  you  to  print an arbitrary number of puzzles randomly
              generated from the current parameters, optionally including  the
              current  puzzle. (Only for puzzles which make sense to print, of
 it’s hard to think of a sensible printable representation of Fifteen!)
              course â.IP "Undo (âUndoes a single move. (You  can  undo  moves
              back to the start of the session.)

       Râ, Ctrl+âRâ)                                                      Redo
       (â.
              Redoes a previously undone move.

       Copy   Copies the current state of your game to the clipboard  in  text
              format,  so that you can paste it into (say) an e-mail client or
              a web message board if you’re discussing the game  with  someone
              else. (Not all games support this feature.)

       Solve  Transforms  the puzzle instantly into its solved state. For some
              games (Cube) this feature is not supported at all because it  is
              of  no  particular  use.  For other games (such as Pattern), the
              solved state can be used to give you information, if  you  can’t
              see  how  a  solution can exist at all or you want to know where
              you made a mistake. For still other  games  (such  as  Sixteen),
              automatic  solution  tells  you  nothing about how to get to the
              solution, but it does provide a useful way to get there  quickly
              so   that   you   can   experiment   with  set-piece  moves  and
              transformations.

              Some games (such as Solo) are capable of solving a game  ID  you
              have  typed  in from elsewhere. Other games (such as Rectangles)
              cannot solve a game ID they didn’t  invent  themself,  but  when
              they  did  invent  the  game  ID  they know what the solution is
              already. Still other games (Pattern)  can  solve  some  external
              game IDs, but only if they aren’t too difficult.
              The â.RE

              Qâ,
              Ctrl+âQâ)
              Quit (â.
                     Closes the application entirely.

Specifying games with the game ID

There are two ways to save a game specification out of a puzzle and
recreate it later, or recreate it in somebody else’s copy of the same
puzzle.
The â.PP You can enter either of these pieces of text back into the
program (via the same â.PP The difference between the two forms is that
a descriptive game ID is a literal description of the initial state of
the game, whereas a random seed is just a piece of arbitrary text which
was provided as input to the random number generator used to create the
puzzle. This means that:

â.
Descriptive game IDs tend to be longer in many puzzles (although
some, such as Cube (cube(6)), only need very short
descriptions). So a random seed is often a quicker way to note
down the puzzle you’re currently playing, or to tell it to
somebody else so they can play the same one as you.

â.
Any text at all is a valid random seed. The automatically
generated ones are fifteen-digit numbers, but anything will do;
you can type in your full name, or a word you just made up, and
a valid puzzle will be generated from it. This provides a way
for two or more people to race to complete the same puzzle: you
think of a random seed, then everybody types it in at the same
time, and nobody has an advantage due to having seen the
generated puzzle before anybody else.

â.
It is often possible to convert puzzles from other sources (such
"
as â.IP "âRandom seeds are not guaranteed to produce the same
result if you use them with a different version of the puzzle
program. This is because the generation algorithm might have
been improved or modified in later versions of the code, and
will therefore produce a different result when given the same
sequence of random numbers. Use a descriptive game ID if you
aren’t sure that it will be used on the same version of the
program as yours.
(Use the â.RE

A descriptive game ID starts with a piece of text which encodes
the parameters of the current game (such as grid size). Then
there is a colon, and after that is the description of the
game’s initial state. A random seed starts with a similar string
of parameters, but then it contains a hash sign followed by
arbitrary data.

If you enter a descriptive game ID, the program will not be able
to show you the random seed which generated it, since it wasn’t
generated from a random seed. If you enter a random seed,
however, the program will be able to show you the descriptive
game ID derived from that random seed.

Note that the game parameter strings are not always identical
between the two forms. For some games, there will be parameter
data provided with the random seed which is not included in the
descriptive game ID. This is because that parameter information
is only relevant when generating puzzle grids, and is not
important when playing them. Thus, for example, the difficulty
level in Solo (above) is not mentioned in the descriptive game
ID.

These additional parameters are also not set permanently if you
type in a game ID. For example, suppose you have Solo set to
â.SH "The â.PP The â.PP The â.SH "Specifying game parameters on
the command line"

(This section does not apply to the Mac OS X version.)

The games in this collection deliberately do not ever save
information on to the computer they run on: they have no high
score tables and no saved preferences. (This is because I expect
at least some people to play them at work, and those people will
probably appreciate leaving as little evidence as possible!)

However, if you do want to arrange for one of these games to
default to a particular set of parameters, you can specify them
on the command line.

The easiest way to do this is to set up the parameters you want
using the â.PP If you run the game with just that parameter text
on the command line, it will start up with the settings you
specified.

Octahedronâ from the âTypeâ menu, and then go to the game ID selection, you will see a string of the form âo2x2#338686542711620â. Take only the part before the hash (âo2x2â), and start Cube with that text on the command line: âcube o2x2â.
For example: if you run Cube (see cube(6)), select â.PP If you
copy the entire game ID on to the command line, the game will
start up in the specific game that was described. This is
occasionally a more convenient way to start a particular game ID
than by pasting it into the game ID selection box.
(You could also retrieve the encoded game parameters using the
â.SH "Unix command-line options"

(This section only applies to the Unix port.)

In addition to being able to specify game parameters on the
command line (see above), there are various other options:

--game

--load These options respectively determine whether the command-
line argument is treated as specifying game parameters or
a save file to load. Only one should be specified. If
neither of these options is specified, a guess is made
based on the format of the argument.

--generate n
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, a number of descriptive game IDs will be
invented and printed on standard output. This is useful
for gaining access to the game generation algorithms
without necessarily using the frontend.

If game parameters are specified on the command-line,
they will be used to generate the game IDs; otherwise a
default set of parameters will be used.

The most common use of this option is in conjunction with
--print, in which case its behaviour is slightly
different; see below.

--print wxh
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, a printed representation of one or more
unsolved puzzles is sent to standard output, in
PostScript format.

On each page of puzzles, there will be w across and h
down. If there are more puzzles than wÃh, more than one
page will be printed.

If --generate has also been specified, the invented game
IDs will be used to generate the printed output.
Otherwise, a list of game IDs is expected on standard
input (which can be descriptive or random seeds; see
above), in the same format produced by --generate.

For example:

net --generate 12 --print 2x3 7x7w | lpr

will generate two pages of printed Net puzzles (each of
which will have a 7Ã7 wrapping grid), and pipe the output
to the lpr command, which on many systems will send them
to an actual printer.

There are various other options which affect printing;
see below.

--save file-prefix [ --save-suffix file-suffix ]
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, saved-game files for one or more unsolved
puzzles are written to files constructed from the
supplied prefix and/or suffix.

For example:

net --generate 12 --save game --save-suffix .sav

will generate twelve Net saved-game files with the names
game0.sav to game11.sav.

--version
Prints version information about the game, and then
quits.

The following options are only meaningful if --print is also
specified:

--with-solutions
The set of pages filled with unsolved puzzles will be
followed by the solutions to those puzzles.

--scale n
Adjusts how big each puzzle is when printed. Larger
numbers make puzzles bigger; the default is 1.0.