croco-puzzle

Links to puzzle sites all around the web
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sf2l
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croco-puzzle

Post by sf2l »

[Admin edit]:
Daily puzzle: http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Ue-Raetsel/ue-raetsel.php
English version of the applet instructions: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=279
[end edit]

This site is created and managed by Bernhard Seckinger and is one of the training camps of the German puzzle team

it offers a variety of puzzles, including a weekly price competition (Preisrätsel), a daily puzzle competition based on excellent java applets for the solution online (Überraschungsrätsel), and which generates a Karate-like ranking system. The best I've seen.
It requires a registration (which is free) afterwards it's possible to purchase puzzle magazines (which are despatched instantly in pdf format), or simply play for fun for free (click on Rätselspaß
Also, usually during the Advent and at Easter, there are special competitions with the system of "treasure hunting". Most of these competitions of past years (Advent Calendar; Ostereiersuche = the quest for the Easter eggs) are still online for anyone wanting to complete them.

There are two problems. The first one is the language; only a minor part of the site is translated into English; here is the link http://www.croco-puzzle.de/Shop/englisch.php. The second one is that there is a player, with the nick "uvo", which often ends the daily competition at the top and is very hard to beat. A section of the site informs that he is not cheating, he is only 7 times world champion and therefore is very very strong. :D :D :D
Anyway, here is the link for the starting page.
http://www.croco-puzzle.de

Stefano
dickoon
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

Mmm, looks interesting; thanks for sharing the link with us. Is it possible to play the daily Überraschungsrätsel puzzles from previous days, to try the various Java applets out without having to wait for them to come around and be the daily puzzle of the, er, day? I speak rudimentary board game German, at best, and have not been able to stumble across the appropriate link. I guess that it's possible to try the previous weekly prize puzzles by going Rätselspaß > Preisrätsel and then clicking on the linked names of the puzzles, or use the Rätsel von 200x links in the top-list to bring up the prize puzzles from previous years.

I managed to complete Japanese Summen 11/2010 in about 10-15 minutes and Magnetplatten 3/2003 quite slowly as well, but other applets give me the error "Fehler beim Starten des applets. Bitte versuchen sie es nochmal." which not unreasonably translates to "Error when starting the applets. Please try again."

Now I've just got to work out how to register for the site!
PuzzleScot
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by PuzzleScot »

Chris. Register here, and click link in confirmation email: http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Benutzerkon ... rieren.php

Keep this link open in a handy tab too: http://translate.google.com/#de|en

I used to frequent this site long ago, then I'm sure it became subscription-based. There were enough puzzles out there to sate my puzzling desires, so that was that. Glad to see it again, albeit somewhat different from first time round.
sf2l
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by sf2l »

dickoon wrote: Is it possible to play the daily Überraschungsrätsel puzzles from previous days, to try the various Java applets out without having to wait for them to come around and be the daily puzzle of the, er, day?
I am not 100% sure but I believe not.
If you DO NOT register/login and try playing the Überraschungsrätsel, you will play with the puzzle of THE DAY BEFORE. This is to avoid cheating of cours.
dickoon wrote: I guess that it's possible to try the previous weekly prize puzzles by going Rätselspaß > Preisrätsel and then clicking on the linked names of the puzzles, or use the Rätsel von 200x links in the top-list to bring up the prize puzzles from previous years.
this is correct.you can also use THESE puzzle as practice to try the various Java applets.

So, after you register, after you login, you can play the daily puzzle. When you are finished, click on TESTEN (remember wrong submissions are penalized with 5 minutes). The time taken is displayed and then used to create a daily classification. You can see how fast you are with reference tot he oters by clicking on Highscoretabelle (this German sounds nearly undestandable, isn't it?)
It's worth spending a few words on how the ranking (which appears by clicking on Ratingliste) is calculated. I believe it's similar to the ELO score of chessplayers.
The daily classification is converted into a daily score by assigning 3000 points to the fastest solution, 0 points to the slowest (or for failing to submit a solution), 1500 points to the median time and by interpolation for all other scores. This daily score is then converted into an incremental score to be added (or subtracted) to the current ranking score of the player. This increment is calculated keeping into accout the current score of the player (the expected score is therefore higher for players with high ranking) and can go from a maximum of +60 to a minimum of -60 points.
So, for example, a new comer has a current ranking score of 0, so the expected score is zero. Any correct solution will give points. A very fast solution can give a maximum of 60 points. When the player climbs up also the expectation increases, so when the newcomer has reached, say, 500 points, even the fastest solution will give no more than, say, 45 points, while a non-solution will lose, say, 15 points.
Uvo is expected to score very high every time. So, if he has the fastest score, he will gain only a handful of points (asintotically aiming towards 3000), while is he fails to submit he will lose probably 55 points or so. In todays puzzle I scored the same time as flooser, who is second in the rank. I gained 8 points, he lost 7

hope it's clear.
Stefano
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

A week in, and I'm really rather taken by this site; the existence of the high-score mechanism has inspired me to try some puzzles that I wouldn't normally try - just to see the cause-and-effect of solving a puzzle, earning some points and moving up (or, eventually, down) in the world rankings. I learnt how to solve fillominos, which I had not previously done, in order to play a daily Überraschungsrätsel (which I would translate as "overall ranking puzzle"); I managed to complete a Fences puzzle with a 2x2 fence for the first time and today's puzzle is a very cute 7x7 irregular sudoku. The puzzles are not that hard - indeed, I reckon that a UK team contender would regard them primarily as speedwork, with the difficulty generally set to take world-class solvers around a minute - and you can get an inclination of how hard today's puzzle is before you try it by looking at the daily high-score table.

The one little trick to the site (I'm still getting to grips with most of the German) is that by default you'll be shown yesterday's Überraschungsrätsel. In order to get today's Überraschungsrätsel. and to get your performance rated and scored, you not only have to register (see Alan's link above!) but you also have to go back to the account page, tick the "Highscoretabelle: Ich möchte die Überraschungsrätsel auf Zeit lösen und meine Ergebnisse dürfen in der Highscoretabelle stehen." box, re-enter your password in the Passwort box second bottom and press the big blue button at the very bottom. Your Überraschungsrätsel participation from then on will start to be rated.

A question for veterans: does it make a difference whether you complete the day's Überraschungsrätsel at the start of the day or the end of the day? Suppose you complete the Überraschungsrätsel early on in the day when there have been only 20 solvers and you come 20th, and so don't earn many rating points. However, over the rest of the day, it turns out that all the solvers at the start were the fastest of the whole day, and once 200 solvers have taken part, you're still 20th. Is the quality of your earlier participation rescored more favourably? (I think it is, based on solving today's sudoku during the night shift...)
Chris
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by Chris »

I've just had a look at this site (my curiosity was aroused because 30 years ago I got a degree in german and so I was as much interested in seeing how much german I could still understand as in the puzzles themselves!). My understanding is that Überraschungsrätsel translates as 'surprise puzzle' - in other words I suppose they mean 'puzzle of the day'. It sounds as though you are enjoying the site. I am a bit pushed for time this weekend so have only had a very quick browse so far, but just wondered whether the puzzles were manageable for the enthusiastic amateur as well as expert puzzlers like yourselves! I could be tempted to give it a go just for the sake of combining both my interests if so and can live with the fact that I wouldn't be anywhere near top of the rankings!!! As a matter of coincidence I have just bought a book by Stefan Heine from Amazon which contains all the puzzles from the german 2009 world championship, from the training puzzles and qualifying round puzzles to the the actual championships themselves. It's totally in german but I am enjoying working my way through the puzzles - just takes me about 5x as long as it should to solve everything!

Anyway, if I can be of any assistance in translating anything I can try my best!

Christine
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

Chris, I definitely defer to your kindly-supplied translation. A degree trumps "rudimentary board game German, at best" by a factor of several thousand. :mrgreen:
The puzzles are not that hard - indeed, I reckon that a UK team contender would regard them primarily as speedwork, with the difficulty generally set to take world-class solvers around a minute - and you can get an inclination of how hard today's puzzle is before you try it by looking at the daily high-score table.
I'm glad I put the last clause about looking at the high-score table in as Sunday's puzzle (for, of course, it is already Sunday in UTC+1 Germany) has taken even Ulrich Voigt well over 12 minutes to solve the puzzle of the day, throwing my claim that the puzzles are "not that hard" a million miles wide of the mark. Marvellous!
PuzzleScot
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by PuzzleScot »

Some day somebody will mash this [Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection] up with croco-puzzle to permit people to practice the rated puzzle formats on demand before taking a rated puzzle.
Actually, I found the 2008 Advent competition a bit of fun. See TL menu at http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Ue-Raetsel/ue-raetsel.php
Not explored the other mini-contests, but I'm guessing more of the same. You can select level of difficulty too. I did 'sehr Leicht' (very easy) to get the hang of it. Will try simply 'leicht' tonight...
dickoon
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

OK, gang, I'm a big fan of croco-puzzle.de. I've recently blogged about how I'm getting back into puzzles, with croco-puzzle.de as a major focus for my renewed interest. I've also produced an English-language walkthrough of the croco-puzzle.de site, mostly focused around taking part in the daily Überraschungsrätsel competition.

I think there's a high chance that most, if not all, of you would enjoy the site; I would enjoy seeing more familiar names taking part in the competitions. Who here should I be looking out for? Obviously I recognise PuzzleScot and sf2l, but are there other names that I should be following as well?

I have enjoyed seeing a run of new members joining this forum, not least one uvo, presumably because joining the site is a prerequisite for eligibility to take part in the UKPA Sudoku Championship. Welcome, everybody!
nickdeller
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by nickdeller »

dickoon wrote:I think there's a high chance that most, if not all, of you would enjoy the site; I would enjoy seeing more familiar names taking part in the competitions. Who here should I be looking out for? Obviously I recognise PuzzleScot and sf2l, but are there other names that I should be following as well?
Thanks for the walkthrough! I've joined as oenomel, and made a good fist of yesterday's Killer Sudoku followed by a total hash of today's Sternenhimmel. Now actually understanding all the rules of the puzzle, I'll hope to do better on future ones. :D
berni
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by berni »

This morning I checked out links to my website (which I do once or twice a year) and run into this thread, which made me extremly happy. :D

First I want to appologize for not having english language support. Actually we had the first two or three years, but after my friend (Immi) dropped almost out, it was too much load to keep it going and finally I had to decide to drop it completely. Anyway, from now on I'll try to keep a constant look at this thread, so if you have any questions I'm happy to help you here.

Thanks a lot to Chris for writting his walkthrough (it's indeed all correct there and very well done!) - I linked it from the Ü-Rätsel-page. (I'm thinking about moving this language-issues to a more prominent place, but for the time being I think this place is best.) Maybe you are interested in some of the history of the "Überraschungsrätsel" (=surprise puzzle, we often call it only Ü-Rätsel): In advent 2004 there was a surprise: A new puzzle online everyday. As this was so much fun, after the christmas-break I continued this in January 2005 and the name "surprise puzzle" sticked to it. Later in the year the highscore table was added and I-don't-know-when some extended highscore table appeard, the fore runner of the rating. Some years later I had to drop this extended table, because of memory extended problems (It was too much data). When I finally rewrite the whole code I tried to make it "better", and in February 2009 the new rating went online (which is almost, what is there now - in Autumn 2009 I made some more important changes and also invented the kyu/dan-system).

One really difficult question was the factor by which the daily puzzle changed the rating. Too low and it takes years to be at ones level to high and the rating starts to do heavy zigzag-courses. Finally I decided, that one should be at ones level about a year after starting (which means about 500 days to get ones grade correct). This looks like a long time at first, but from the experience I had before, one cannot improve this factor much without having other real drawbacks. Still, for people new to the site, there is a rating guess at the top right of "Fragen zum Rating". This shows up, when you tried at least 2 puzzles and vanishes again, when you did 300. It's not that accurate and quite often a little bit lower than your final rating, because it doesn't incorporate the fact, that you will improve your solving skills during time.

Some more pointers that you might find useful:
  • uvo recorded some of his solvings and uploaded them on YouTube: e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_o4h-fR54k It's quite fun to see, at what speed he is solving the puzzles. And also you can learn there some solving techniques.
  • You can find english instructions to almost all of the puzzles used in the Ü-Rätsel in the puzzle-wiki: On CrocoPuzzle-site go to "Allgemeines", "Beliebtheitsumfrage". There you can see the result of the votings of the puzzletypes. Just click the names of the puzzles to get to the corresponding wiki-page, where you find a link to the english version. There are three exceptions: ABC-Box (the latest one) and two sudoku variants (Killer and Vergleichssudoku=comparison sudoku). (Apropos: There is a slight difference between killer and Gebietssummen (area sums): In the first, in the small areas same digits are not allowed, while in the second they are.
  • If you try the "Insel der Rätsel" (Island of puzzles), which is of rather gigantic size (top solvers needed about a week to get completely through) compared to everything else on the site (and rather difficult too), you can ask questions in the LM-Forumthread. A lot of people who allready solved the island are watching this thread and are willing to give you advise if needed (probably better than me, because I never solved it and meanwhile I've discarded almost all of my notes on it). You can write your questions in english, most people will understand it and noone will be upset (with maybe one exception, but well... :roll:). (One warning: On the island, you need to decipher secret writings, where the plain text is german. Yet, people not knowing German at all, managed to do this.)
  • For translating german http://dict.leo.org/ might proove helpful.
The answer to some questions chris rose in his walkthrough (or where rosen in this thread): "Rückgängig" is just German for "undo" and undoes the last larger change, that is if you cleared accidentally the wrong colour, your can undo this. You can also undo the undo itself.

It is not relevant, if you solve the puzzle at midnight or later. The rating is calculcated at midnight and recalculated in the morning at 5 o'clock of the following day (in case, someone startet shortly before midnight and took some hours to solve).

What happens with the three squares at the beginning? Before you pressed the middle square, you can safely remove the webpage without any consequences. After you pressed the middle square your result will count (a timer starts on the server). But as the timer on the server is not ideal (people with slow internet will suffer) there is a second timer in the applet which is started when pressing the right square. If you finish the puzzle, your time is send to to server and this time is used, but if your drop off and start over later, the time of the server is used instead.

As we had some people cheating (using one account to get the puzzle and solve really quickly with an other - e.g. we had someone who solved a magnets in 30 seconds where uvo needed 5 minutes), where are now some technical barriers as well as some monitoring by me (and others). One technical barrier implies, that the time between loading the webseite and starting the applet is not too much (else people can fake the applet and feed the server with wrong data). With slow connections you might run into the above mentioned "Fehler beim Starten des Applets. Bitte versuchen Sie es nochmal." (Error when starting the applet, please try again.) Try again, this should almost surely work, because this time, the applet-class-files are cached by your browser (make sure, that your browsercache is enabled), and therefore the amount of time between loading and starting gets much smaller.

Finally: After the first screenshot of the Heyawake in Chris' walkthrough, before he starts to use cyan: The square one to the right and one down of the black 2 cannot be an "X", because this would mean three consecutive areas of empty cells in that column. Therefore there has to be a black cell. ;)
PuzzleScot
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by PuzzleScot »

Berni, Thanks first of all for maintaining the croco-puzzle site. I'm sure it used to be a big collection of puzzles, then changed to a subscription service, then back to free for public. Am I right there?

Secondly, thanks for the lengthy article above! All very interesting indeed :)
dickoon
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

Berni, thank you for your long reply! I am glad that you liked my walk-through, and thank you for clearing up the points where I was unsure, and a few other fine distinctions that I hadn't made. Your site is tremendous and I hope that more people from around the world start to solve there. I look forward to exploring the rest of the site over time: island, wiki and all.
berni
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by berni »

PuzzleScot wrote:Berni, Thanks first of all for maintaining the croco-puzzle site. I'm sure it used to be a big collection of puzzles, then changed to a subscription service, then back to free for public. Am I right there?
Not at all. ;) In the very beginning (2003), Immi and I we decided to give it a try and run our own business with selling puzzles. We had allready connections to one larger company selling puzzle magazines and hoped to use this as a reference for finding others (as a site note: this worked greatly). Among other things, our business-plan contained the goal of running a website and getting a high google rank. To attract people, we programmed some applets (fences, magnets and kakuro as far as I remember) and published a weekly puzzle. Later, when we started to run the onlineshop, and therefore had some prizes to offer, this became the prize puzzle. From the very beginning, for us it was important to be "friendly" to all our visitors, which meant, that all stuff should be doable without an account and without payment.

In the first three years I got some financal help from the job office, but at the end of 2005 my income was less than my expenses and so I tried to find a way to continue as a puzzle author. One thing I tried was the onlineshop and the denksel magazins you can buy there; but this didn't work well: I still only earn there about the amout I'm paying for the webserver. But there were two things that helped me out: First, Immi dropped out more and more (which in the end gave me a larger part of the cake of what we had to divide before), and second the sudoku hype at just the right time.

For me, beside getting new business customers, the site is meanwhile some place to play arround with puzzles (The dictionary tells me, that what I actually wanted to write instead of "play arround" is "to let off steam", but I'm not sure if this in this context means the same as in German...). I mainly gave up the idea to earn money with the website (although at some times I still hope, that the onlineshop might give some more money in the future... And I also have some other idea in my mind, but it's too early to speak of it yet.)

The number of visitors is still strongly increasing (from about 200 a year before to now about 300). And incidentially I think, that this thread here was the cause that the number of solvers of the prizepuzzle stepped over the 300 last week. At the moment I'm on reworking the applets completely. A lot changes behind the scene, but some stuff will be visible, like better usage and a real trial-and-error-tool. At the moment I plan the change to the new applets at end of november. But one never knows...
dickoon
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

Congratulations to Nick for overtaking my overall ranking in just seven puzzles, when it took me twenty-one to gain my 140... :D
nickdeller
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by nickdeller »

dickoon wrote:Congratulations to Nick for overtaking my overall ranking in just seven puzzles, when it took me twenty-one to gain my 140... :D
Thank you! There've been a couple of puzzles in the last few days that really hit the sweet spot for me, especially the Skyscrapers which I whipped through in, oooh, barely three times as long as uvo. ;-) On the other hand, the Pillen was an exquisite torture yesterday - three attempts, three different logical fallacies, none of which made themselves apparent until the final stages of the solve when it was too late to unpick them.

Now to start chasing down on the Scot!!!! ;)
ronaldx
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by ronaldx »

OK I just did the Preisrätsel Japanese Sums (1-9), and was astounded that anybody could complete it in 15 minutes, let alone 4 minutes and 6 seconds.
Then I realised that they high score the Überraschungsrätsel Japanese Sums (1-7)... ok... not tooo bad... at least I got some good practice in, and took my traditional placement of exactly half way up the high scores.
nickdeller
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by nickdeller »

Congratulations to Chris for shooting straight back off into the distance, which probably serves me right for my hubris! :-) When I muck up a puzzle, it stays mucked up!!!!
dickoon
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

:oops:

I think the Pyramide puzzle format is pretty high-variance; there aren't so many entries you can logically deduce before you have to start bifurcating, and an early bifurcation that turns out to be correct can lead to a very good time. It would be interesting to measure the degree of correlation between (croco-puzzle results for individual puzzles) and croco-puzzle overall rating, averaged over several different examples of one particular puzzle type.

If ever someone wanted to start a croco-puzzle career but has been put off by the perceived high difficulty of the puzzles, today's is definitely a good place to start.
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by dickoon »

Congratulations to Stefano for being awarded his 9k title!

Emphasising that the grading scheme refers to accomplishment rather than ability, noting the tremendous potential of solvers like misko, I think there are three big promotions in grading schemes of this type. 1st dan is a huge one, obviously, because the difference between dan and kyu is always tremendously significant in a dan-and-kyu ranking scheme. 20th kyu is a big one, because demonstrating enough devotion to get any sort of promotion at all represents the difference between someone who has just played around and someone who has displayed enough dedication to get started with climbing the ranks. Inherently, the concept of "a dan-ranked solver" immediately signifies "exceptionally accomplished"; the concept of "an unranked solver" immediately signifies "not yet particularly accomplished". Between them, if we are to categorise people's accomplishment into more than one level at all, the only immediately obvious difference in status is "double figure kyu" against "single figure kyu". You're now no longer a DFK, Stefano, and perhaps you are well on your way - with further improvement - to being dan-ranked.

Probably overthinking this,
Chris
ronaldx
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by ronaldx »

I agree that the dan-and-kyu ranking system is exceptionally well-thought out, and is really very comparable to the success of the Japanese equivalents they mention.
ronaldx
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by ronaldx »

How do people solve Killer Sudoku so quickly? They make my brain ache, for me I did that one relatively fluently and still ended up way down the list.
jadelicosner89

Re: croco-puzzle

Post by jadelicosner89 »

whew.. that was quite along read.. thanks for the fruitful discussion guys.. :mrgreen:
sf2l
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by sf2l »

Thank you Chris
While at the beginning I was trying and playing just for fun, (which means, if I could not see an easy solution to a puzzle I would probably give up) recently I have started playing more committed to avoid giving away points easily. When you have a no finish you probably will lose what gained in the last week. Or longer if you are a high rank (of course, japanese masters do not give up). Dan level is a dream for me but I do believe a score of 2000 is (slowly) achievable.

A question for everyone that can help (maybe Berni??). I have looked at Uvo's solution technique displayed on Youtube, in particular to a Magnet puzzle. He first marked all fields he was sure about with double symbols. Then, once he was sure of the attribution of one of the cells, magically all the connected cells were instantly attributed the correct sign. I cannot do this on my computer, (I have tried Ctrl-click, Ctrl-left click, clicking both mouse buttons at the same time) so I need to go over all cells and click on the plus sing to have the sign attributed. Also he seems to have a single click command to put the double sign on a cell while for me the double sign requires 4 clicks. Is there a particular set of computer commands I am not aware of?

Stefano
Calavera
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Re: croco-puzzle

Post by Calavera »

sf2l wrote:Thank you Chris
While at the beginning I was trying and playing just for fun, (which means, if I could not see an easy solution to a puzzle I would probably give up) recently I have started playing more committed to avoid giving away points easily. When you have a no finish you probably will lose what gained in the last week. Or longer if you are a high rank (of course, japanese masters do not give up). Dan level is a dream for me but I do believe a score of 2000 is (slowly) achievable.

A question for everyone that can help (maybe Berni??). I have looked at Uvo's solution technique displayed on Youtube, in particular to a Magnet puzzle. He first marked all fields he was sure about with double symbols. Then, once he was sure of the attribution of one of the cells, magically all the connected cells were instantly attributed the correct sign. I cannot do this on my computer, (I have tried Ctrl-click, Ctrl-left click, clicking both mouse buttons at the same time) so I need to go over all cells and click on the plus sing to have the sign attributed. Also he seems to have a single click command to put the double sign on a cell while for me the double sign requires 4 clicks. Is there a particular set of computer commands I am not aware of?

Stefano

Hi Stefano!

The magic combination is pressing "F" (shift is not required - I just made it capital so that it's easier to read) while being on a cell with definit symbols that is adjacent to a one with double symbols. Also the double symbol can be entered by pressing "." and +, - and N result in plus, minus and black cell (half)s. There are one or two other shortcuts in the applets all of which can be found (in German unfortunately) under "Anleitung". Another really handy one is "#" in any puzzle with cells in which you have to enter letters or digits. This switches on and off a candidate list for this cell.

Calavera
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