Nonograms - Japanese Crosswords | Hacker News Reader

Nonograms - Japanese Crosswords

nonograms.org

127 pointsclouddrover51 comments

I stick to good all Simon Tatham

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/patt...

(also available in most linux distros and both the android and apple stores)

Simon Tatham is a small group of people that I want to meet and invite to beers and torreznos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torreznos).

It is awesome his collection of puzzle games. There is android version in https://f-droid.org/es/packages/name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles/ .

The "picmi" program is by far superior for nonograms (though a couple of its builtin puzzles are unfortunately ambiguous), though it still doesn't support color like most proprietary implementations do. It's easy to create and add an XML puzzle collection if you have a directory of black-and-white images (though images not specifically designed to be nonograms are likely to be ambiguous).

Actually, this generalizes: SGT's puzzle implementations are never as good as a dedicated program; their value is in their bulk and relative uniformity (though that is not very complete; half the programs don't support possibilities (and none support multiple flavors of possibility or global usage tracking; see e.g. any halfway-decent Sudoku program) and several require keyboard or require mouse where others don't). I'm also irritated that there isn't a command-line interface to automated generation/rendering/solving at least (I wouldn't want to play most of them in a terminal).

Would be nice if I could keep tapping multiple times on a single cell to iterate through the states. Would make it mobile friendly with the least invasive changes to the existing UI.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chr... works like that.

Nonograms are great! I created a multiplayer co-op nonogram browser game that works with websockets, it was a lot of fun to create. https://berendswennenhuis.nl/nonogram/

That

Was

Awesome

Thank you for making this. It's so much more fun to play when someone else notices tricks you don't see

I like this. And as a Dutch guy, I like your user name.

The top puzzles are penises.

Users can make new puzzles by drawing pixel art, so I guess it was unavoidable.

This is the first time learning about these, but it resembles a compression algorithm: an image of m * n bits is represented by m + n + d numbers, which may take less than m * n bits, a sort of 2D RLE. The compression algorithms used by faxes, T.4 and T.6, are also based on this idea.

Not be confused with nomograms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomogram

Sadly, nonogram solving is in general NP-complete, which limits its usefulness as a compression algorithm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram#Nonograms_in_computin...

As a teenager, I loved solving Nonograms in puzzle magazines on train rides or when I was bored, they are the perfect time killer. Somehow I forgot about them but recently rediscovered them through a Twitter post, which was a real pleasure.

The linked website seems to be very nice, especially since there is a community aspect to it, where people can send in their own puzzles (it seems like).

My recent goto app for Nonograms is https://nonograms-katana.com , which works great on browsers and mobile alike with lots of well thought-out features (e.g. it asks you if you want cells automatically crossed out if a line is complete) and beautiful artwork, good interaction, etc.

Been playing it since I read your recommendation, nice, but as others commented, I might need to move to the tablet to continue with the larger ones. Thanks again !

The one thing I really wish with Katana is that it had some accessibility options. The stylized font and less-than-ideal contrast aren't super readable, at least for me.

This one was always my favorite app but I had to move to a tablet once I got above 35x35 or so. Couldn't stand all the scrolling around.

I bought a tablet with a stylus just to play this game. (Samsung Galaxy Tab) The UI is the most convenient I could imagine.

Using the same app daily here.

Nonograms are not bad but I wouldn’t consider them either crosswords or puzzles. There’s a cap on how much skill is needed to solve one (of a reasonable size) based on the need to make a solvable piece of art.

(Nonograms in general - without the need for a pictoral reward - might well be NP hard or even able to encrypt information. I’m not at all sure.)

They’re not crosswords. But they are logic puzzles. Regarding your skill cap comment, even children’s jigsaw puzzles that have 4 pieces are still considered puzzles lol.

Wikipedia says NP-complete under “Nonograms in computing”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram

Your point is well-taken.

They are definitely puzzles. But they are closer to sudoku than crosswords in that no knowledge is required besides the rules of the game.

As for the skill cap. It is the same for the Rubik's cube, once you know the algorithms, solving it is straightforward. It doesn't make it less of a puzzle. And if you want to up the skill cap, time it (as in speed cubing).

Hungry Cat Nonogram [Google](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tuesdayque...) [iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hungry-cat-nonogram/id73774447...) was always my favorite of these as it had full-color puzzles.

It was also called "Hungry Cat Picross" until Nintendo trademarked "Picross" and went after everything branded with it. This actually caused me to learn about the nonograms as I had assumed the type of puzzle was always called picross.

I thought they've owned the trademark for 15+ years at this point? That's part of the reason why Jupiter, the main dev for Nintendo's picross games, can't use the name when they create a picross game for a non-Nintendo system

That's why they had to use the awkward Logiart name for the game they just published on Steam

Hungry Cat Nonogram uses a kind of numbering system that will really annoy you if you're coming from a different nonogram app.

can confirm... went right back to nonograms katana.

Paint it Back (2013) was the first nonogram game I devoured and still have a great memories of playing it by the pool.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PjruB8wDLQ

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/paint-it-back-gameclub/id14915...

Less pretty but very functional app with near infinite content to play these days is Nonograms Katana.

https://apps.apple.com/de/app/nonograms-katana/id1037710023?...

Nonograms Katana also has a Web version: https://nonograms-katana.com/play/

I use it almost daily on my laptop.

On my phone, I use Nonogram Galaxy. So much that my previous phone has some of the app layout burned-in on the OLED screen.

The android version of Katana looks and functions a bit better. I don't know if the devs are just less informed or just care less for iOS but, having made the switch recently, it's a pretty drastic difference.

The site isn’t readable on my mobile device, so here is the Wikipedia article for “nonogram”, for others who don’t know what they area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram

Aw man, there was an adventure game back in the day where you had to solve a bunch of these, but the numbers were from an alien script. Earlier in the game, you encounter a clock using the same script, which if you didn't notice and record, you were going to have a hard time.

Of course this being an old-school game, they specifically disable the load/save feature as soon as you go into the puzzle room.

Nonograms provide nice BW pictures, I love solving them through general techniques such as Constraint Programming.

Nonograms solver through Python in Jupyter notebook using ampl and highs mip solver:

https://colab.ampl.com/tags/mip.html#solving-a-nonogram-puzz...

See chapter 17 in https://www.gecode.org/doc-latest/MPG.pdf for a description on how to solve it with regular expression constraints using CP.

Great material, thanks for the reference!

When Hurricane Irene left me with no power (and no wifi), I played hundreds of these nonograms on my Kindle Keyboard 3rd Gen. I was amazed by the battery life I could get even in a game that required many screen refreshes. I had bought the Kindle only a few days earlier, and the unlimited 3G access came in handy!

Mario's Picross — Highly recommended.

That's where I got hooked as a kid. And I've been solving them ever since. Nonograms Katana on the Fold 3 with the S Pen is amazing. For someone as addicted to them as me, it almost made the price of the phone worth it in itself. Yeah, I'm a bit crazy.

Yep, was inspired by Mario’s Picross to make my own nonogram game.

That game was a gateway drug!

One of my favorite kinds of puzzles, one of those I played so long that I felt it necessary to build a solver in order to formalize the (slow, manual) algorithms I was employing.

Once you get the hang of it, see if you can progress to Cross The Streams[1], a variant with wildcards and also more constraints so the solutions are at least achievable.

[1] https://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/cross-the-streams-rules-and-i...

I have a distinct memory of being about 4 and getting a magazine/book that had physical nonograms using little coloured stickers that you had to place in the grid pursuant to the numerical rules; I recall the memory mostly because it was the last time I visited my grandmother's old house and can remember standing in the hallway excitedly explaining how the stickers had to be placed, to her; so it was prior to 1976 when she moved a few hundred metres to a new build bungalow.

If you have an itch to solve a few, https://griddlers.net has you covered for just about a lifetime. Even huge multi-grid-puzzles, triangle ones, colors, no colors.

I really hoped this was cross-words in the word sense, but it is a numbers game.

If you have a switch with the online plan, there is a super mario themed version of this game available on the Super Nintendo emulator.

I’m not into puzzles at all and is one of the reasons I find typical dev interviewing so frustrating, problems and puzzles are not interchangeable afaic.

But my wife LOVES puzzles, her favourite type are nonograms. She’s spent many a long haul flight casually watching films while really just devouring these things one after the other.

They all end up making a picture of some kind (as far as I can tell anyway) so they scratch the itch of a logic puzzle and also the feeling of something creative, revealing the image at the end, be it a lions head, a windmill, landscape or whatever.

If you’re into puzzles and haven’t tried these I second hand recommend it. Second hand since I can think of nothing worse than these things but I enjoy seeing the satisfaction and enjoyment my wife gets out of them. Them

I find that both, puzzles and problems can pet your brain with the reward of getting something right through reasoning. I guess the joy you get from problems maybe stems from the results or impact beyond the reasoning and solving part.

Exactly, the best part of a problem is the solution and its positive impact. Also, a viable solution to a problem is to go around it/avoid it. Since a puzzle (to me) has no tangible impact/benefit the best solution is to simply go around it/avoid it … which apparently misses the point!

I love this comment, probably because I relate so much. I enjoy designing puzzles more than actually solving them. The one exception is crosswords.

Interesting, I suppose the problem of creating the puzzle gives the tangible outcome of knowing that you made something for others to enjoy - which relates to the sibling comment to this and my reply.

For the tiny intersection of HN users, nonogram enjoyers, and people who own functioning 3DS: I highly suggest playing picross 3D.

Also for the 3DS is the Picross e series of games [0]. For a more modern console, the Picross S series of games [1] currently spans 9 whole games on the Nintendo Switch, and is made by the same company that did Picross e and Picross DS.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picross_e

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picross_S

The Picross series on 3DS is perfect. The stylus makes the whole solving as close to paper as possible with all the upsides of being a digital game.

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