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The biggest expansion so far: four completely new puzzle groups join the program – Sudoku with ten interlocking and three-dimensional variants, counting puzzles, mathematical arithmetic puzzles and classic jigsaw puzzles made from your own photos. All new puzzle types are available in 50 languages, with the usual design options and as image, PDF, DOCX, text document or playable web app.

• New puzzle type: Sudoku – classic as 4×4, 6×6 and 9×9 as well as hex Sudoku with 16×16 cells
• Ten interlocking and three-dimensional Sudoku variants: twin, trio, small samurai and samurai Sudoku, zigzag, ring and star Sudoku, three cube Sudokus, the triple cube and the 3D star
• Sudoku cells show numbers, freely chosen characters or images – given and entered digits each get their own font, size, style and colour
• Sudokus can be generated for a particular solving style (solvable by logic alone or requiring a guess), with an adjustable number of empty cells and optionally symmetrically distributed givens
• Four Sudokus fit on one page as a 2×2 tile with adjustable spacing; for 3D Sudokus the sides can be darkened separately and the cell contents placed in perspective on the slanted faces
• New puzzle type: counting puzzles in five variants – how many triangles, squares, rectangles, circles or cubes does the figure contain? The program does not estimate, it counts by the same rule a player does: a shape only counts if every one of its sides is actually drawn
• Counting puzzles are built from classic base patterns or as free random figures – with a minimum number of shapes and an optionally symmetrical figure
• Cube counting puzzles are generated so that the number of cubes can be read off beyond doubt even though not every cube is visible: the program renders the figure and verifies that the topmost cube of every column stays recognizable
• Free 3D camera for counting puzzles and cube Sudokus: rotation around all three axes, parallel or central projection and viewing angle – the puzzle reports whether the number is still unambiguous from the chosen view
• New puzzle group: mathematical arithmetic puzzles in three variants – the arithmetic grid in which every row and every column has to work out, “find the starting number” and the path through the arithmetic matrix
• Rows, calculation steps, grid size, permitted operations, number range and difficulty are freely adjustable – with whole numbers or with decimals
• The path through the arithmetic matrix can be drawn into the solution page, in the colour and line width of your choice
• New puzzle group: classic jigsaw puzzles from your own photos – as a children’s puzzle, a classic puzzle and an elegant puzzle. The puzzle page shows the loose pieces spaced apart, the solution page shows the assembled image with the cutting lines
• Nine cutting styles with preview: bold shapes, rectangles and triangles of varying size as well as coarse shapes for the children’s puzzle, the familiar round tab on a narrow neck for the classic puzzle, plus amoeba, labyrinth, swirl and coral for the elegant one
• The size of the tabs, the length and width of their necks and the variation of the shapes can be set with sliders – with high variation no piece looks like another
• Every puzzle piece fits in exactly one place: no two cuts of a puzzle are identical, and the pieces are compared with one another so that none can be swapped for another
• The pieces can really be cut out: two tabs never touch or overlap, the outline never crosses itself and enough material always remains in the corners
• Puzzle pieces can be output randomly rotated so that the puzzle cannot be solved from the position of the pieces alone
• Playable web app for jigsaw puzzles: drag pieces into place with mouse or touchpad and rotate them in 90-degree steps – with adjustable snap tolerance, an optional ghost image of the motif as well as hint and solution buttons that can be switched off, timer, sound and full screen
• All new puzzle types are available in all 50 interface languages – including the puzzle texts in the exported documents and web apps
• The solution text of counting puzzles can be worded yourself, both the answer sentence (“{0} triangles”) and the lines of the breakdown (“{0} of size {1}”)
• New background images and templates for American and letter-corners crosswords
• Separate style for the small word numbers of American crosswords
• The puzzle type tiles on the start page now have a fixed size so the list stays even, and all controls show short hints (tooltips)
• The German texts now address you informally throughout
• The settings for the solution text of a counting puzzle are now on the generate page right next to the remaining settings of the figure instead of on the export page
• Fixed a bug that made the note “test mode active” appear on the puzzle image as a row of empty boxes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and run backwards with unconnected letters in Arabic and Hebrew. Thai and the Indic scripts also placed their vowels and marks incorrectly because of it
• Fixed a bug that made triangle and rectangle counting puzzles show only the total in the solution and no breakdown by size
• Fixed a bug that made cube counting puzzles look like a flat, impossible figure instead of a stack of cubes – every step of the body gets its own line back
• Fixed a bug that kept drawing the cell design of the solution even though the switch for the solution text was turned off
• Fixed a bug that made the language selection of the word lists show “French” and “Spanish” in English in every interface language except German

This version adds two brand-new puzzle types: the American crossword familiar from English-language newspapers, and the letter-corners crossword with one big given letter in every corner. On top of that come many new templates and backgrounds, a much larger word collection, and crosswords that fill in far more densely when you work with large word lists.

• New puzzle type: American crossword – there are no clue cells inside the grid. Black squares separate the words, and small numbers in the letter squares point to the “Across” and “Down” clue lists next to the puzzle
• Second variant for American crosswords: the black squares form the even, symmetric pattern known from newspapers, and every letter belongs to an across word and a down word at the same time. In exchange, the calculation takes a little longer
• New puzzle type: letter-corners crossword – each of the four corners shows one big given letter covering 2×2 squares. Every word touching a corner starts or ends with that letter
• New option for letter-corners crosswords: you can now choose the separator between the corner words in the clue list below the puzzle
• Added many new templates for both new puzzle types
• Added new background images
• Crosswords built from large word lists turn out much better: the grid is now planned as a whole first and filled with words afterwards, instead of placing one word after another. The result is puzzles without empty squares and with noticeably more crossings between the words – for Swedish-style and classic crosswords
• Word lists can now also be imported from .csv files
• Greatly expanded word library: many new German and English words together with matching clues
• Smoother, cleaner rendering of the puzzles on screen and in print
• Updated the libraries used for better stability and compatibility
• Fixed an issue where the questions and answers pages were still included in PDF and Word exports when the manual page layout was active. The switch for questions on a separate page is now only shown with the automatic page layout
• Fixed an issue where the solution phrase was not reliably distributed across the puzzle squares in American and letter-corners crosswords
• Fixed playable web app exports of American crosswords: clicking a square showed no clue at all, which made the puzzle impossible to play
• Fixed the solution phrase in playable web app exports: the spacing between words and the separator characters were missing, and the phrase was not shown at all when its letters had not been distributed across the grid

This version fixes another launch problem of the macOS app on Intel-based Macs. On affected devices the app icon appeared, but the app would not open and quit again immediately without any message. Puzzle Generator now starts correctly on Intel Macs.

• Fixed an issue where the macOS app would not start on some Intel Macs – it would not open and quit again immediately without any error message

This version fixes a compatibility issue affecting the macOS app. Puzzle-Generator can now be launched reliably on Intel-based Macs as well as on Macs running older supported versions of macOS.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the macOS app from launching on some Macs and displayed the message “You can’t use this version of the application with this version of macOS”
• The macOS app now reliably supports macOS 13 Ventura and later versions

This version makes Puzzle-Generator significantly more international: the user interface now supports a total of 50 languages. New fonts, backgrounds, and puzzle templates have also been added, along with numerous improvements and bug fixes.

• Added 48 new user interface languages – previously, only English and German were available
• The user interface now supports a total of 50 languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian (Bokmål), Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese
• Added a language selector to the settings dialog
• Added two new embedded fonts: Great Vibes and Kanit
• Added new background images and templates for Swedish-style crosswords, cube puzzles, and pyramid puzzles
• Improved and updated the language selector in the settings dialog
• Improved language selection for hyphenation in crossword clue cells
• Improved embedded font handling and font style resolution for more reliable text rendering
• Updated and expanded the word library with many new words, including Spanish and French vocabulary
• Word categories in the tree view are now sorted alphabetically
• Updated NuGet libraries for improved stability and compatibility
• Fixed incorrect word source values in the list of used words after crossword generation
• Fixed an issue where canceling crossword generation and accepting the best result could insert incorrect words into the puzzle grid
• Fixed incorrect used and unused word lists displayed after crossword generation
• Fixed an issue where selecting an unsupported font could cause the application to crash
• Fixed SVG export of the 3D cube view, which could corrupt the cube faces
• Fixed playable web app exports of cube and pyramid puzzles with a 2×2 grid, where items on the right-hand side could not be clicked

This version introduces a major update for crossword puzzle generation. Two new algorithms make it possible to create crossword grids more flexibly, more efficiently, and fully filled when enough words are available:

• Added two new algorithms for crossword puzzle generation
• Added support for automatically filling crossword grids completely, leaving no empty cells when enough words are provided
• Added the new NoBlocker algorithm for crossword puzzle generation
• Added an option to choose between the classic and the new default crossword generation algorithm
• Added settings to control the number of generation loops for crossword puzzle creation
• Added live word counts above the word lists in Crossword, Word Search, and Alphametic pages
• Added copy and paste support for Alphametic and Crossword word lists
• Added support for copying and pasting complete word lists in Word Search puzzles
• Added a new heart shape
• Improved and optimized crossword puzzle generation
• Improved crossword generation to prioritize user-provided words
• Improved Swedish-style crossword generation to better avoid remaining unassigned cells
• Improved removal of unnecessary and duplicate blockers in crossword grids
• Improved cancellation handling and status messages during crossword puzzle generation
• Updated and improved templates
• Updated and expanded the word library
• Fixed an issue in no-blocker crossword generation where clue cells at the end of a word could be missing
• Fixed an issue with deep cloning of internal puzzle data
• Fixed a text clipping issue on the start page

This version expands the templates, layout options, and design possibilities for word search puzzles, Swedish-style crosswords, and cube puzzles:

• Many new templates for word search puzzles and Swedish-style crosswords
• New background images as well as seasonal Christmas and Halloween images
• New variants (Cross 180, Cross 270) for cube puzzles
• New grid layout option for cube puzzles to improve the visual appearance
• Added a new word search option to display the hidden words in a grid
• Individual colors per found word for highlight lines in word search puzzles
• New shapes for grid and layout design, including a pumpkin shape
• Extended the manual layout editor with preview functions
• Improved the layout preview: areas can now be adjusted directly with the mouse
• Improved word search rendering: letters remain visible even with opaque solution lines
• Updated NuGet libraries for better stability and compatibility

This update adds new geometry puzzles, creative design tools, and many workflow improvements:

• New geometry puzzles: create cube net and triangular pyramid puzzles with 3D and 2D figures
• Added a new color picker with eye dropper support
• Added new color backgrounds, pattern images, and Puzzle-Generator images
• New crossword option to define how many random words are used at the start
• Improved crossword generation for puzzles with only a few words
• Improved display of crossword clue boxes when space is limited
• Improved vertical scrolling and layout behavior in property windows
• Added adjustable layout areas to the word search generation page
• Improved progress dialogs with cancel support
• Fixed image and brush handling, including undo/redo and saved puzzle previews
• Fixed export heading options for question sections
• Fixed puzzle creation errors on systems using languages other than German or English
• Optimized saved project files by storing only image data that is actually used
• Updated Avalonia and other libraries for improved stability and compatibility

This update introduces powerful new features and improvements:

• Crossword and word search puzzles can now be exported as playable web apps
• Added new templates for word search puzzles
• Easily swap any two columns in crossword word lists (with undo/redo support)
• New option to randomly shuffle entries between “Puzzle Words” and “Clues” – perfect for mixed-language vocabulary training
• Fixed missing translation of “Rätsellösung” in the English version of classic crossword exports

• Crosswords & word search with custom shapes
• Undo / Redo functionality
• Built-in dictionaries
• Many more design and customization options
• Various stability and performance improvements