Japanese Crosswords

Your task is to restore the picture by the numbers that are to the left of the lines and above the columns.

Puzzle Japanese Crossword

Fill the grid with a pattern of black and white squares so that the numbers in each row and column correspond to the lengths of successive runs of black squares.

Left-click on a square to mark it black; right-click (or hold Ctrl by left-clicking) to mark it white. Click and drag along a row or column to immediately mark multiple squares in black or white. Middle-click (or hold Shift while left-clicking) to return the square to gray (which means undefined): dragging in this way can erase the entire rectangle, not just the row or column.

How to solve Japanese crosswords?

You have a grid of squares that must be filled with either black or white. In each row of the grid, the lengths of the runs of black squares on this line are indicated; Above each column, the lengths of black square runs in this column are listed. Your goal is to fill the entire grid with black or white.

I first saw this puzzle around 1995 under the name Nonograms. Since then, I have seen this in different places under the different names Griddlers, Nonogram, Pattern, Hanjie, CrossPix, Pic-A-Pix, Picross.

Usually puzzles of this type turn out to be a meaningful picture of something as soon as you solve them. However, since this version automatically generates puzzles, they will just look like random groupings of squares. (One user suggested that this is actually good, as it prevents you from guessing the color of the squares based on the image and makes you use logic.) The advantage, however, is that you never exhausted them.

Managing Japanese Crosswords

This game is played with the mouse.

Left-click on a square to paint it black. Right-click to color it white. If you make a mistake, you can middle-click or hold Shift by pressing any button to color the square gray again by default (which means “undecided”).

You can click and drag the left or right mouse button to color the vertical or horizontal line of the squares black or white at a time (respectively). If you click and drag the middle button or with the Shift key pressed, you can color the entire rectangle of gray squares.

You can also navigate the grid using the arrow keys. Pressing the return key will cycle through the current cell through empty, then black, then white, then empty, and the spacebar will make the same cycle in the reverse order.

Moving the cursor while holding control will color the black squares with the moving black ones. Holding down Shift, the color will be squared white, and both colors will be gray.

Japanese Crossword Parameters

The only parameters available in the "Custom ..." menu in the "Type" menu are "Width and Height", which do not require explanation.

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