dailysudoku.com

[nataraj]

Five years ago, in 2010, I started the Sudok-o-Rama project.

October 2010, the puzzles were generated for a daily serving of one "easy", "mild", "hard" and either "Very Hard" or "Advanced".
The next year, 2011, I added the special types "Squiggly", "X-Sudoku" and "Compass" (a variant of Color Sudoku, which I created to avoid the Color Sudoku's drain on ink ...)

Since thenI have had a lot of visitors on my page, many of them from dailysudoku.com, and sometimes one of my puzzles was discussed here.

As a small "Thank You" for your interest and continuing support for these five years, I've created a "Special Edition" of puzzles,
all previously unpublished and not part of the Sudok-o-Rama but of the same types.

All the special types are there, but of the Classic Sudoku flavors, only "Very Hard" and "Advanced" are included in the Special Edition. But there's always more at the Sudok-o-Rama, of course

Here's the link to the Special Edition


I've upgraded the Sudok-o-Rama a little bit: it is now possible to create .pdf documents directly - without going through Draw/Play. If you'd like to solve my puzzles with Draw/Play instead of pen&paper, that possibility still exists:

In the -o-Rama, click on the "First Aid" icon in the top right corner. That should take you to Helmut's Sudoku Helper, and there you have a new option: FORMAT, which in turn will take you to Helmut's Sudoku Formatter.

I guess most of you will know the Formatter (a.k.a. "Nataraj Formatter"), used mainly to convert puzzles from all over the web into a format useful for posting on the forum.

The Formatter is now able to print directly (i.e. create a .pdf) and the user interface has changed to more closely match HSH's look and feel,
but the main functions are still there: import, print, create phpbb code, activate Helmut's Sudoku Helper, activate Draw/Play.

Here is the link: Sudoku Formatter

Oh, BTW, Firefox seems to have a nasty bug: documents printed directly from the Firefox plug-in sometimes come out way too small.
One work-around for this problem is to download the .pdf and print it using the Acrobat Reader (not the plug-in), or use a different browser.

If there are any problems with the new version, please post your comments here in this thread. I've not been active on this forum for quite a while, but shall monitor this thread for the next couple of days. You can always e-mail me, of course, find the address in my profile

Hope you enjoy the new Formatter and the o-Rama puzzles !

Take care,
Helmut

[nataraj]

Good to see everything works smoothly.

Discontinuing the close monitoring. If there are any problems, email me.

Take care
Helmut

[Marty R.]

I am unable to get a puzzle (with givens only) from this site into the formatter. Whatever I tried the formatter reported that it had 160+ cells.

[nataraj]

Marty,

assuming that by "this site" you mean the dailySudoku, I tried it 2 minutes ago with today's "easy", worked just fine (Draw/Play, ASCII, copy/paste).
Perhaps you accidentally included the last line ([url ....) from the ASCII box.

The whole puzzle is repeated there, that would explain the message , "...that it had 160+ cells."

If that does not solve the problem, please post more details

best wishes
Helmut

[Marty R.]

Details:

I just now clicked "archive" on the main page, then clicked the Very Hard of November 27. When that appeared I clicked Ascii and then clicked in the middle of the grid in the new window that popped up. Then clicked the Copy icon on my Firefox toolba. Upon pasting it into the formatter the message "165" cells found" appeared.

When I was trying the other day, I also tried putting it in the forum, clicking "Preview" to get an aligned grid and copied that and got the same message after pasting it into the formatter. I just tried Nov27 from the archive again and nothing happens when I click the Ascii button. Now I grabbed Nov. 23 from the archive and again the Ascii didn't work, but that's not your problem.

The other day when I first started it was too early for me to get a grid so I typed the givens into a blank Draw/Play grid and the same happened as above in my first sentence.

[keith]

Marty,

When you click in the Acsii pop-up window it selects all the text. When you copy you get this:

[Marty R.]

OK, Keith, thank you very much. I can see what's happening (or not happening). I would like to think I'm at least semi-sane, but perhaps that's debatable. I've used the Ascii function and the formatter countless times with success. Something has changed since I've suddenly gone from able to unable to use the formatter in some cases. I have just been monkeying around, using the Ascii function a number of times and then suddenly I click Ascii and the window doesn't appear. It's as if it stops working after being used a certain number of times within a certain amount of time.

Like I said, I've successfully used the formatter countless times with many of those times using the Ascii as opposed to hand-selecting a puzzle from elsewhere. I've always clicked inside the grid in the pop-up window followed by Ctrl + C. What I am now seeing is that after I click the grid is gone and all I see is the selected stuff that was under the now-gone grid. That must be related to now sending 165 cells to the formatter. But it's good to know that I now can find a way to send only 81 cells. It's a big mystery why I sent too many cells from copying the grid from a Preview window.

Than ks again, that's really helpful.

[keith]

Marty,

On further thought, I think you can copy and paste the whole thing then just edit out the extra content before you "Do it !" in the Formatter.

Keith

[keith]

Marty,

The Ascii window is a popup. If you do not shut it down but then do a new "Ascii", you will not see a new window. The old one is lurking there in the background, somewhere.

Keith

[Marty R.]

[keith]