Nonograms: a practical guide with interactive examples
lab174.com
lab174.com
I link to my app[1] frequently, it's free right now, I hope this is fine. There's no Android version yet; for anyone who wants to try nonograms on an Android smartphone I recommend Simon Tatham's Puzzles[2] - like my app it is also free, has no ads, etc; nonograms there are called "pattern".
Feedback very welcome; thanks! If you use other nonogram solving techniques and want me to add them to the list please share too.
Since you mentioned Simon Tatham puzzles there's a js version here[1], but it really just isn't quite as good
[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/patt...
(if I were to nitpick, for large grids one might want to make the separating line a bit thicker every 5 blocks for faster counting, and repeat numbers at the bottom/right -- but at the size the examples are in neither are needed)
(BTW you didn't mention for overlapping but there's a nice trick: just try from either end, count how many cells are leftover, and take that off the starting side of each block)
"When there are two or more numbers, this means there will be two or more groups of filled cells."
Is the "group number" the size of the first group? That seems to fit the tutorial example where (1, 2) = (., x, ., .) and (2, 1) = (., ., x, .).
Thanks for making this - I've stumbled across these puzzles but never took the time to try one.
Each number specifies the size of the corresponding group. E.g. numbers “5 4 7” would mean: “three groups of filled cells, first group will consist of 5 cells, second will consist of 4 cells, third group will consist of 7 cells”.
Have fun and I’m happy to hear that this is useful!
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Sorry, cannot edit the grandparent post. I copied that invalid link from safari's url bar, perhaps Google Play store did something unexpected with URLs.
Once you have learned and want to keep playing, this site has tens of thousands of good nonograms, in both black-and-white and color: https://www.nonograms.org/
There are also "Picross" games for Nintendo consoles (and recently Squeakross for Steam).
But now I needed to test the solver. I had a couple of magazines with Nonograms. Transfer those manually into the computer? No way! So I wrote a utility that uses OpenCV to parse these low resolution pixel grids from photos, from the solutions page of the magazine. This was way harder than I imagined. A huge waste of time, but quite a fun project on its own.
For the solver I added one technique after the other. In the beginning it would not be able to solve all puzzles. Then it gradually became more capable, until it would no longer get stuck on the test inputs. A list of techniques like this would have been very helpful!
The solver was still quite slow, but it was really fun to watch it fill in the solution pixel by pixel. It took about 10-20 s to solve the larger puzzles.
My twist on the game is that it's multiplayer. I posted it on the nonogram subreddit a few years ago and to my surprise I still have a few daily players. I'd recommend posting it there as well, they're nice folks.
Here's mine. Multiplayer, free, browser-only, no ads/tracking. https://berendswennenhuis.nl/nonogram/
1. https://romhackplaza.org/translations/yu-no-a-girl-that-chan...
10x10 2star is the standard for me, I solved up to 6 stars but 10x10 is the sweet spot imo.
I frequently play it on 15x15 and I regenerate it until there are no numbers above 6 (and as few 5s and 6s as possible).
The only issue I have is I'm limited with the size of board I can comfortably play on my phone, and I rather keep my laptop as a games free zone.
There's some good nonogram games on Steam - Paint it Back, Picross Touch, Pictopix.
(Depixtion is a bit of a twist on nonograms which I play from time to time also)
edit: Gahhhh Windows/Linux only, not Mac :(