Web Paint-by-Number Forum
Topic #20: Solving puzzles on paper :-)
By Gitte Olesen (granny40)

#1: Gitte Olesen (granny40) on Oct 15, 2006

Hi everybody.
I`ve enjoyed your puzzles for quite some time. 6 months I think...To be honest.. I`m crasy about this kind of brain work. In Danish: hjerne-gymnastik= brain-gymnastics. Searcht for a long time at the internet, and this is the best site of them all. :-)) I`m just printing them out.. [Print Screen] and paste in Microsoft publisher. This way I can take my puzzles whith me everywhere... in bed.. on vacation... And I find it esyer to solve them on paper whith a ruler or something to keep focus on one row at the time. Thank`s for having this site. Love it. I`l do what I can to make some puzzles too. granny40 :-))
#2: Jan Wolter (jan) on Oct 15, 2006
Glad you enjoy them.

I've gotten so used to solving them on-line, I can hardly stand to do them on paper anymore.
#3: Mark Conger (aruba) on Oct 16, 2006
I find I have become somewhat dependant on being told by the little red dots when I make an obvious mistake. So it's hard to work on paper.
#4: Gitte Olesen (granny40) on Oct 17, 2006
LOL... I find it a bit annoying, that red dot. Never mind.. I found out to remove the check mark. On the other hand I`m nearly handicapped without any possibility of marking the numbers already used (colored ), and I`m really not good at, staying focused at one row at the time, when solving on-line. Even on paper it is much more difficult for me to solve the hard puzzles without using my paper or ruler. I will actually say, that it sometimes makes it impossible. Plus the problem whith a puzzle being so big, that scrolling up and down become annoying, is non-existent on paper. And printing out in Publisher, I prefer that 5 squares are about 1 cm to 1,3 cm. Easy to read the numbers, and I don`t use too much lead. :-)
#5: Jan Wolter (jan) on Oct 17, 2006
If working on paper works better for you, all the power to you. Unlike some sites I've seen, I've tried to keep the on-screen appearance of puzzle pretty close to the standard paper appearance, so doing print screens should generally work pretty well.

The "print" button generates a PDF, but I'm not immensely happy with those. They are, for one thing, absurdly large.

I should probably make some way for people who like to solve puzzles on paper to click on a puzzle and say "I have solved this one", so it doesn't keep getting listed with the puzzles you haven't solved.

I've seen some puzzle sights where they highlight the whole row/column that the cursor is currently in. I just put in the green dots that mark the clues instead, partly because at the time it seemed easier to program, and highlighting the whole row seemed a bit obtrusive. However, at this point it would be pretty easy for me to do whole-row highlighting as an user-selectable option.

Being able to click on clue numbers and have the grey out is another feature that I'd like to add.
#6: Gitte Olesen (granny40) on Oct 17, 2006
You are absolutely right about the nice appearance using PrintScreen. But i was wondering.. Is`nt it possible to set the layout on the printer, to print out in f.eks. 50% or any size you want??

Your suggestion about "I have solved this one", to the "paper-puzzlers" is ok. It will make it a lot easier to know solwed from unsolved. It might tempt some to cheat... but hmm.. it is free of choice how to use it. It would help me a lot. Printing out to my doughter and 2 girlfriends, I find it difficoult to remember solved from unsulved by name. But :-) I still have almost all of them.. somewhere.

Highlighting the rows... it sounds complicated..... I might find out something else...

But WEEE... grey out the numbers.. :-)))
I`m sure many will find it a nice move. That`ll be great.

If my choice of words are a little peculiar.. Just have in your mind that I`m from Denmark ;-) I`m doing the best I can.
#7: Jan Wolter (jan) on Oct 17, 2006
I have no idea how to scale printer output. It probably depends on your browser or your operating system or something. Honestly, I never print anything, and I only use Windows to test websites for IE compatibility. Maybe other people have some idea about this.

Your English is terrific - monumentally better than my Danish, or even my German, which is a language I actually sort of understand, my parents having been German immigrants. Anyway, I never think an accent is something to appologize for. I often like accented English better than unaccented English. It's fun, giving a glimpse of the structure and vocabulary of other languages, while pointing out some of the absurdities of English.

I'm not sure when I'll have another chunk of time to do another round of revisions ... there's always so much to do.
#8: Rea Aksglæde Karlsen (Rea) on Jun 12, 2008
I havent actually experimented with this but is it possible in print puzzle to determind the size myself. I printed out a semy large one and the numbers where so small I almost gave up streat away. Im going on vacation soon and I plan to take some with me and I dont just want small ones If i can help it.

PLEASE say its possible
#9: Nancy Snyder (naneki) on Jun 13, 2008
I bought a magnifier designed for reading.(it's paper thin & fits anywhere)..it works pretty good at reading the small numbers :)
#10: Jan Wolter (jan) on Jun 14, 2008
I hope to find time to work on this problem. I'm thinking that the best solution for large puzzles might be to give an option to print them over several pages. Then you'd have to use scissors and tape to assemble them together the way they belong. I also want to give people the option to select a paper size. I think the current PDF's are all "US letter" sized which is probably inconvenient for European users who have "A4" paper instead. People who have printers that handle larger paper could also use that option.
#11: Gitte Olesen (granny40) on Jul 9, 2008
Pssst. I use Microsoft office Publisher.
Open a puzzle... press the button [Prt Scr]... goto Publisher and insert the screen. Now you can cut, mowe around and resize it and print it the size you wish.

You can even have more puzzles on each site if you want to.

Maybe there are other programs that can do the same if you don´t have Publisher... I donnow...

That´s how i print my vacation-puzzles ;o) I can´t go througt a vacation without theese puzzles ;o)
#12: Jen (LightVader) on Jul 9, 2008
You can do that in some photo editing software too.
#13: Rea Aksglæde Karlsen (Rea) on Jul 17, 2008
great tip
#14: Stepho Guy (Stepho) on Apr 12, 2009
I do it onto WORD, Print Screen and paste as a picture onto word, you can crop off what you want and re-size it as well (I use Word 2007)
#15: Karyn Hayter (kjhayter) on Jan 6, 2010
If you save it before you print, it removes it from the general list so you won't go to it again unless you search for it.

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