This site exists to make available a small collection of computer games - currently Sudoku, Kakuro, Sokoban, Minesweeper and Hangman - and to provide explanations of methods to solve these classes of puzzles. The programs can be downloaded for free and are very easy to install on Linux and Windows.
The site also describes and makes freely available the programs I've written to manage these web pages
Comments and suggestions about all the programs and web site are very welcome.
SourGumdrop is a Sudoku playing program that can help players learn
techniques for solving puzzles.
A typical screendump is shown below.
SourGumdropK is a Kakuro/Cross sum program with a wide range of hint methods and pop-ups to show the combination lists for all sums. A typical screen dump is shown below.
Sourkoban is a Sokoban playing program that can show animations of the solutions for all of its built-in maps and which remembers your solution for all puzzles. It also contains a graphical map editor/creator. A typical screen dump is shown below.
Minestein is a Minesweeper program that produces puzzles which can be solved entirely by logic and which have a user defined minimum difficulty rating. It also has a two stage hint system to help beginners.
A typical screendump is shown below.
Hangman_SG is a Hangman program with 55,000 words and 170 difficulty levels. A typical screen dump is shown below.
Site_Maker is a collective term for the three programs I've written to help me create and maintain this website. The first, make_menu, takes a simple textual description of a menu and generates the corresponding XHTML ready to form part of the web pages. The second, make_pages, takes a simple text file which contains a list of the site's files and generates completed web pages. This involves combining page content, menus, page-specific keywords, titles, banner images, social networking links and so on. The third program, check_pages, analyses the completed web pages to check that the pages addressed by internal and external links exist, and also sends the pages to the W3C validator site for checking.
These pages explain the methods for solving Sudoku puzzles and displayed as hints by SourGumdrop including: Simple filter, Singles, Hidden singles, Hidden pairs, Hidden triples, Locked candidates 1, Locked candidates 2, Naked pairs, Naked triples, Naked quads. Xwing, Swordfish and Jellyfish
These pages explain the methods for solving Kakuro puzzles and displayed as hints by SourGumdropK.
This page describes a way of using Sourkoban to learn how to solve Sokoban maps.
This page describes Minestein's hint mechanism. And this page shows a worked example of how to solve a Minesweeper puzzle.
January 20th 2010
Released a new game: Hangman_SG, a Hangman game with 55,000 words arranged into 170 difficulty levels.
January 12th 2010
Released SourGumdropK v1.04 which adds options to save and load partially completed puzzles.
January 6th 2010
Released SourGumdropK v1.03 which fixes a serious bug. Please report all bugs.
November 11th 2009
Uploaded yet another new release of the web site. This time all numerical values in the CSS are defined in em units which will help the partially sighted when using large fonts. Also I've added buttons for paging backwards and forwards through the pages. Note, as it is now reported that Firefox usage has at last overtaken that of Internet Explorer 6, I've finally abandoned trying so coax the web pages to work with that antique and its predecessors. Well, to be honest, it's really because I am thoroughly sick of it. The time I and so many others have wasted... Get Firefox, Opera or IE8.
The pages have been checked using Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, IE7, IE8 and Chrome.
September 4th 2009
Uploaded a new release of the web site. Included with the new design are pages describing the programs I've written to manage the site.
June 19th 2009
Python 3.0 was released recently. This breaks the programs because of the change to the print syntax. Users must install Python 2.6 otherwise the programs will not run. Thanks to Emile who emailed to point this out.
December 8th 2008
Version 0.03 of Minestein released: Expert mode logical puzzle creation time greatly reduced: it now takes 1/260 of the original time!
December 1st 2008
Version 0.02 of Minestein released: halved the time taken to generate puzzles that can be solved by logic - though it is still too slow for large grids with many mines. (Please see December 8th 2008).
November 1st 2008
Minestein a Minesweeper program released for the first time. Please report bugs and suggestions for improvements.
October 26th 2008
Python version 2.6 was released recently and unfortunately it contains a bug which broke SourGumdropK. This new version of SourGumdropK (v1.02) provides a workaround for that bug and also improves some of the related code. Though a workaround it is a permanent solution. Testing with 2.6 has shown that when Python moves to 3.0 the programs should all work.
October 7th 2008
New version (v1.01) of the Kakuro program SourGumdropK released. Fixes bugs in the parsing of external puzzles and the uniqueness check.
August 21st 2008
Noticed that Gordon Royle now has 47793 17 clue Sudoku puzzles so redid my statistical analysis.
July 31st 2008
Reorganised the website and switched to using zip files for downloads. The zip files contain the source code and an icon file for each program. A single page now handles all downloads but the original download pages have been left on the site to satisfy external links. PAD files are now available in the ./pad directory. All program version numbers upped to 1.0. Thanks to kls for the pretty new banner and the gumdrops.
July 2nd 2008
Sourkoban v0.04 released. Bug fix: undo, redo did not update the move counter. In fixing this I removed the count of the number of pushes.
May 30th 2008
Sourkoban v0.01, a Sokoban program released.
April 20th 2008
SourGumdropK v0.02 released. Added the cell count and the sum to the pop-up menus which provide the row and column combination lists. Added configuration options.
April 16th 2008
SourGumdrop v0.64 released. Search strategy selection not working. Fixed.
April 10th 2008
SourGumdropK v0.01, a Kakuro program based on SourGumdrop released.
April 3rd 2008
Version v0.63 released. The default hint search strategy is now "simplest hint". The main change this release is embarrassing. While working on SourGumdropK, a Kakuro program, based on SourGumdrop, I noticed that the SourGumdrop puzzles had, at some stage, lost their difficulty ratings. This has been rectified. Please note that the prefered contact email name has now changed to rodg.
January 30th 2008
Version v0.62 released. Norman Hall requested the ability to group algorithms and to have a hint search strategy to find the simplest hint. He also wanted more control over the amount of information displayed about hints. His encouragement also got me round to adding the ability to save and read partially completed puzzles with their candidates. The "?" button in the Toolbar can now be used to execute hints (i.e. delete the candidates found) which means I can now click through a whole puzzle without moving my mouse - useful for testing! This latter change is not reflected in some screendumps used in the website. All these additions have been made and the documentation updated accordingly.
January 1st 2008
Ian Millington The R'n'D Guy pointed out that my locked candidate 1 figure was ill chosen so I've replaced it. Thanks.
May 19th 2007
SourGumdrop v0.60 released. Sudoku16 and Sudoku4 now possible: ie 16x16 and 4x4 grids. See: Alternative grid sizes
May 13th 2007
SourGumdrop v0.54 released. Since v0.5 I have tidied up the configuration code, fixed a bug in which the wrong causes were shown for hidden triples, and another in the directed guessing solver. Added the option to colour candidates using the middle mouse button. Thanks to all those reporting bugs. None known at present.
April 30th 2007
SourGumdrop v0.5 released. This is a complete rewrite of the program. New features: simpler, cleaner default look, but with a new configuration option which enables users to alter almost every component of the interface; new hint levels including the ability to show the candidates which form the pattern; simpler menu arrangements; timer; bug found and fixed in swordfish and jellyfish.
