nonogram/picross etc
I have long enjoyed the "japanese number crosswords" which are known by various names, including nonograms. Yesterday, I wondered how hard it would be to make one. So I did.


Here is the puzzle as displayed in Simon Tatham's implementation of a nonogram puzzler, called "Pattern".



For those not in the know, the way a Nonogram works is the numbers on the left and top edges indicate how many regions of dark/filled-in blocks exist in that row or column. Regions must of course be seperated by some amount of non-filled in blocks. Some rows or columns are easy, where there's only one possible way to fill them in from the start eg. zero filled in, or 20 blocks and 20 filled in, or 20 blocks, and a 17 region followed by a 2 region. Others will take time and inferencing to determine.

The overall goal of a nonogram is to determine the state of each square as filled-in or empty, resulting in a low-resolution picture. This one isn't very difficult.

You can get the program I used as a package for your unix of choice, as source, for the mac, or windows. There's even a palm port (a seemingly ideal platform for little timesinks).

In any event, you don't need the program to solve it. Any graphics tool that lets you scribble on the boxes will do, as will printing it out and scribbling yourself. If you do get sgt's "pattern" program, you can reproduce it with the following commandline.

pattern 20x20:20/1.10.1/11.1.1/2.7.1.1/3.2.3.1.1/1.1.3.6/6.3.6/5.2.1.1.1.4/3.6.5/13.6/20/20/3.1.14/3.1.5.3/3.1.4.2.1/3.1.3.1.1/2.2.2/1.1.4/1.2.5/2.5.6/2.15/1.1.11.1/1.3.10/1.1.1.2.3.1/1.1.1.2.7/3.2.3.1/4.8.2/5.10.2/5.9.1/4.7.1/14/7.5/8.4/2.3/8.5.1/1.2.7.2/1.11.3/1.8.3/1.8.6/13.4

You can even ask pattern to solve the nonogram for you automatically, although I don't recommend it!