The PDA of tungsten

The logic games have had much height lately. Most popular he is clearly sudoku, and for that reason already we spoke of him at the time, the basic techniques to solve them and of how playing them in our Palm. But sudoku is not the unique game of logic that can hook to us, far from it. Today we will speak of another one of most famous, nonogramas, also calls pictograms or puzzles of drawing (not to confuse with nomograma, that is a slide rule).

In 1987, Non Ishida, a Japanese grafista, gains a competition in Tokyo designing grid drawings using the lights of skyscrapers that ignite or extinguish. At the same time and of independent way, puzzler Japanese called professional Tetsuya Nishio it invents the same puzzle. From it arises the concept to paint with numbers and the logical puzzles here that they form images.

The drawing by numbers began to appear in Japanese magazines of puzzle. Nintendo took this fashion and sent two titles of Picross (Picture Crossword) for the Gameboy, and nine for the Super ones nintendo in Japan. Only one of these, Mario Picross de Gameboy, was sent in the United States. [...] In 1990, James Dalgety in the United Kingdom invents the name of Nonograma (in honor to Non Ishida), and the Sunday Telegraph begins to publish them on a weekly base. In 1993, the first book of Nonogramas is published by nonIshida in Japan. [...] Today, the magazines with puzzle to paint by numbers are published in the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Finland and many other countries.

Nonograma simple, already solved

In nonograma, like in sudoku, also we will have to fill up a square that initially is in target, but in this case the numbers by drawings are replaced. The objective of the game consists of coloring certain squares, not all, so that finally, we have done if it well, it appears a drawing. What squares to fill up? In order to know it, they appear a series of numbers in the margin of the square, as much in each row, as in each column. These numbers represent groups of contiguous squares that are to be filled up, in that row or column. For example, if in a row they appear numbers “8 4 3”, will mean that there is a group of eight stuffed squares, next another one of four, and finally one of three, with a intererminado number of squares in target (like minimum one) between these groups, and perhaps also squares in target in the ends.

Using colors, pretty images are created

Like ocuría with sudoku, to solve nonogramas also a few rules exist that we must know. I recommend east tutorial to you where it is explained very well, step by step and with drawings, how to solve nonograma, although it is in English (we thank, because originally it was in Japanese). But so that you prune to make an attempt with some nonograma simple, these are the first steps:

• First it is to look for the greatest number of those than they appear, because surely with him we will be able to fill up a few squares already. We imagine that a row has ten squares and in her it only appears number “6”. We think about the extreme cases: that the six stuffed squares are in an end or the other of the row. They would be in the two shown positions. What conclusion we can remove from these two cases? that the two central squares are stuffed in both cases. If for both extreme cases this coincidence occurs, for anyone of the intervals also: they will always be stuffed. Therefore we filled up, them. Already there are shortage two squares that were to fill up.

How to discover the two first stuffed squares

• Now we watched the columns in which they are these two squares. we see that they have numbers “1 2 1 1” and “1 1 1 1 1”. In both cases, the last group is a “1”. That they are indeed those that we finished filling up. So we know that just upon these squares there is a space in target (between each two groups of stuffed squares we have said that there is, like minimum, a square in target). Then we marked those two squares with a point, that means that they are definitively squares in target. In the resolution of nonograma it is so important to discover the stuffed squares, like which they are in target, to get to complete it.

The two empty squares open pies

With these two basic techniques, already many squares can be discovered. You try to solve some, and certainly it desires to you to learn more techniques to discover less trivial squares. As I say, in this tutorial it is very well explained. Also there are explanations in Activity Workshop, with a tutorial, an example step by step, and some nonogramas simple to practice. Like curiosity, they show to us how a program solves nonograma automatically complicated. A very extensive collection of nonogramas online can be found here. In next post we will see how we can solve nonogramas in our Palm.

By: Analysis
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Labelling: game, nonograma, palm, pda, picross, sudoku

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