When you first start you see a blank board, ready to accept a new puzzle.
For a quick start, start at the top left of your printed puzzle, then go along the rows from left to right, entering the numbers in groups of three - bang, bang, bang, using the space bar for blank.When you've finished (30 secs later?), check your entry by looking down the columns rather than along the rows, correct by clicking on the offending square and reentering. Then do Control and Setup complete to see the puzzle with the little numbers in each blank square. If the numbers are too large or too small, do Action and Bigger or Smaller.
You can either enter a new puzzle or open one by choosing File Open. If you enter a new puzzle, you can enter values for as many squares as you like. The Secretary will decline impossible values. The square shown in grey is where the next value will go. Navigate with the arrow keys, use space or delete to make a square empty again.
When you've finished entering the new puzzle, choose the menu item Control and Setup complete. After this, the entry rules change: The fixed squares are in bold,and cannot be replaced. Each empty square contains an indication of its possible values, as a set of small figures. These values are simply the result of checking against the values in the square's row, column, and box. Nothing clever about it, it just saves you the donkey work of visually checking the possibles. If you don't want SS to do this, preferring to work things yourself, do Options and click on Show possibles to turn it off. Values entered are shown lighter than the fixed squares. Navigation by the arrow keys will skip over the fixed squares.
You can undo an entry either by just typing over it, or by choosing Action Undo. If you change your mind you can choose Action Redo. The arrowed buttons have the same effect as choosing these menu items. Undo and Redo work right back to when you started with a new board or an opened file.
You can save the game so far by choosing File Save, or its toolbar button. If you want to keep the original game, you can choose File Save As, and keep the play so far under a new name, for instance "Telegraph Challenge". You can print out the game you see by choosing File Print, or the toolbar button. It's quite nice to do this, take the bit of paper away to puzzle over, and then enter the results next time you're at the computer.
If the board on the screen looks too big or too small, you can change the size by choosing Action Bigger or Action Smaller. Undo and Redo do not affect these actions.
I intend to add a record of entries, like "1:A2=5, 2:G7=4", and to make it
easier to restart at a particular point. Quite often in the harder
puzzles you have to make a guess and then come back to where you
were if it turns out wrong. At present you have to either save the
game where you make the guess, or make notes on a bit of paper.
Also, I know some people prefer to enter ABCDEFGHI instead of 123456789.
At present, you can enter either letters or digits, but the value is
always shown as numeric. I intend to add an option so that the display
also can be either letters or digits.
1
Sometimes you may see the board look a bit odd, funny extra lines
and wobbly squares. This only happens when the board is covered by
another window, and then
re-exposed. You'll see the effect if you choose Print
and then move
the Print window around. I'll fix it when I work out what's happening.
Meanwhile, if you Undo and Redo, that fixes it.
2
Before printing, if you've changed the display size, you need to reset
the size to something like the original, so it will fit on a page. I'll
fix it soon, so that it will fit a page regardless of the display size.
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