Indel-Seq-Gen (iSG) is a biological sequence simulation program that simulates highly divergent DNA sequences and protein superfamilies. This is accomplished through the addition of subsequence length constraints and lineage- and site-specific evolution. ISG tracks insertion and deletion processes that occur during the simulation run. ISG records all evolutionary events and outputs the 'true. Dazzle is the product of thousands of hours of intense research and development. It meticulously scans all of the nooks and crannies of a computer for junk that can take up huge amounts of disk space.
Puzzle Maker lets you create crossword and word search puzzles using your own words! You choose the words, and Puzzle Maker can make a crossword and word search from them.
Features
- Edit Puzzles: change fonts, add colors and modify layout. Don't settle for a boring black-and-white puzzle.
- Nice Printouts: tired of your puzzles looking like they were printed off a Web site? With Puzzle Maker, your printed puzzles will look great - no website logos, no unwanted text.
- Export As Image: export your puzzles to a high quality image (PNG), so they can be included in another document or a website.
- Export To Pages: need to edit your puzzle document further? Export your puzzles to Pages, the word processor by Apple. Then you can create books and newsletters that include your puzzle. Compatible with Pages '09 and later.
- Export As an Interactive Web Page: want to share your puzzle with the world? Puzzle Maker lets you export your puzzle as an interactive Web page, so people all over the world can solve your puzzle.
- Multi-Core -- High Quality Puzzles, Fast: Puzzle Maker takes advantage of your multi-core Mac to deliver a good-looking puzzle, fast.
- 2 for the price of 1: Puzzle Maker is both a crossword puzzle maker and a word search maker. Don't use 2 separate programs: create both type of puzzles from the same word lists!
- Export to iBooks: Include an interactive crossword or word search in your upcoming eBook made with iBooks Author.
- Export to .puz Play your puzzle in popular crossword players, such as Black Ink by Red Sweater Software
Sherlock.
What user-support person, when seeing the message produced when a new game is started in Sherlock - The Game of Logic..
.. wouldn't say to himself (or herself) 'Oh! Don't I wish!'
A friend sent me a copy of this game and, for me, it rapidly becameaddictive. I have since found the web site of the author, Everett Kaserand registered the game. I also found there is a newer version that addsa few more features such as saving an incompletely-solved game to continuelater and shelling to DOS. (Unfortunately, the 'Shell to DOS' onlyworks if your shell is COMMAND.COM. It does not work with 4DOS.)From Everett Kaser's web site:
Sherlock is a computerized version of logic puzzles, where you're presented with a series of clues that help you to determine the exact locations of 36 different images in a 6 x 6 array. Each of 6 rows contain 6 different images of the same type (faces, houses, numbers, fruit, street signs, or the letters 'HOLMES'). The computer scrambles the locations of the items in each row (without showing you their locations) and then presents to you a set of graphical clues that describe the physical relationships of different images. You use the clues to deduce where things can't be (and where they HAVE to be) until you know where all of the images are located.
Here is what the game looks like at the beginning of play:
Sherlock is shareware available fromEverett Kaser Software andthe MS-DOS version can be downloaded from Everett'sMSDOS Games page.A Windows version is also available and when I registered the MS-DOS versionI received registered versions of both the MS-DOS and Windows versions.(His site also has other games and puzzles and quite a few puzzlelinks. Fans of FreeCell will find one link especially interesting.)
Note: The game requires a mouse.
Problems:
There are a few minor annoyances to the older version of the game:
- A few games in the old version generate too many clues and not all are visible. This can mean that you may have to guess at two or more possible solutions to the visible clues to get the right one. This is fixed in the newer version.
- Once in a long while the screen appears to freeze during the 'fireworks' display at the end of a won game. This is because one of the images which is supposed to move across the screen at a random velocity and explode when it hits the edge of the screen gets a random velocity of zero. You can press the right mouse button or the ESC key to abort the display and restore the menu but it can be disconcerting when you first encounter this. The current version doesn't appear to be afflicted with this problem -- especially since the current version can be run in a mode that continuously displays the 'win' display (now one of three patterns to choose from). If the freeze problem still existed then it would have shown up long ago.
- When you load new images, the new full sized images take effect immediately. The thumbnails are not changed until you exit the game and restart it with the new images as the default. This appears to be fixed in the new version.
- When you edit the images and wish to save your changes, you must specify the file name without the extension. With the new version of the game, if you used the file-open menu to load an image file for editing, the default name in the Save prompt is the name of the file loaded with the extension. You have to delete the extension or the save will fail.
- With the default set of images, it is hard to tell some of the images apart when you are using a VGA monochrome monitor. It may be necessary to edit the images (especially the coloured houses) to make the images look different from each other. You can also get a different set of images -- see below.
A problem in the new game:
- If you use the 'Save Game' feature in the new version (notavailable in the old version) and forget to load your mouse driver after alater reboot before running Sherlock there is no way to exit from the gamewithout Sherlock thinking you want to abandon the saved game so the savedgame is deleted. So, if your mouse driver is not automatically loaded atbootup time, don't forget to load it before running Sherlock if you have asaved game. I plan to experiment with a batch file to see if I can detectthe absense of a mouse driver and prompt for one before running Sherlock.Stay tuned.
Running Sherlock with a monochrome monitor:
I found it difficult enough to tell some of the default images apartwith a monochrome monitor that I created my own sets of images which youcan download as a single zipped package. (As abonus, I am including a copy of the original default images touched up tomake them more usable with monochrome monitors. They probably lookhorrible with colour monitors.) You might prefer using one ofthose. They are (in order of difficulty in solving one of the logicproblems):
- A set of 36 images consisting of the digits '0' to '9' and the letters 'A' to 'Z'.
- A set of six geometrical shapes (oval, diamond, rectangle, dotted oval(one tiny oval inside another), dotted diamond, and dotted rectangle) withthe six possible combinations of black, white, and coloured (which appearsgrey on my screen). Each row has one shape with all six colour combinations.
- A set of the same geometrical shapes as above but with one of each shapeAND one of each colour combination in each row.
The game shown above using the default images is shown below with each ofmy three custom image sets:
The Alpha-Numeric set:
On a colour screen:
On a monochrome screen:
The Geometric Shapes, one shape per row:
On a colour screen:
On a monochrome screen:
The Geometric Shapes, all six shapes in each row:
On a colour screen:
On a monochrome screen:
New Coloured Image Sets:
For those with coloured monitors who may prefer more different colours,I have converted my Geometric Shapes to use six colours plus black (and,in two cases, white) instead of just black, white, and blue. You can graba set of various slightly-different versions as a zipped package calledgeo-col.zip and pick the variation youprefer.
For an even more eye-watering set and one that might causecerebral-meltdown, try my 'PIPES?.SHI' set which hasfour colours with all possible two-colour pairings (twelve of them)with three different shapes (plus black for a background and grey for the border). That image set is a filecalled pipes.zip but be warned, you need to bevery careful when you use it because it is very easy to makemistakes. There are three versions -- pipes1.shi with a thick (two-pixelwide) border, pipes2.shi with a one-pixel border, and pipes3.shi withno border at all (which makes it very difficult).
Note, if you grabbed an earlier version of pipes.zip, you might havegotten the first copy I put up here. That one was buggy. I accidentallygot the colours reversed on one image (blue and green instead of green andblue) making that image the same as another. Grab the new pipes.zip forthe corrected version.
The PIPES*.SHI files were not difficult enough for you? Try mySPOTS.SHI file, also available as a zipped file(but be sure to be wearing sunglasses or you'll be seeing spots forhours). [NEW] The zip-file now includes SPOTS-M.SHI for users withmonochrome monitors.
A quick-and-dirty screen-saver.
The new version of Sherlock can be run in a demo mode that displays acontinously running show of the screen display that you usually see aftera winning game. If a set of inages is edited so that most of them areblack and just a few are coloured, running Sherlock with the'-bf' switch,
C:>sherlock -bf
then you have a very effective and colourful screen-saver that rivalsome of the more flamboyant Windows screen-savers. One such editedset of images,sher-ss.zip, can be downloaded here andunzipped. That set is terrible for playing Sherlock, however.☺
C:>sherlock -bf
then you have a very effective and colourful screen-saver that rivalsome of the more flamboyant Windows screen-savers. One such editedset of images,sher-ss.zip, can be downloaded here andunzipped. That set is terrible for playing Sherlock, however.☺
Do you find Sherlock too easy?
If an orderly matrix of shapes makes solving things too easy, you couldtry scrambling the images. (I recommend copying the set to be scrambled toa file called TEMP.SHI and make that your Sherlock default image set. Thenyou can scramble TEMP.SHI as often as you want without fouling up theoriginal image sets.) To allow others to scramble their images, I havecreated another zipped package that uses DEBUGscripts to re-arrange the images in an image set in a (pseudo-)randomfashion. For 4DOS users, there is a BTM file that creates a newrandomly-generated DEBUG script on the fly to mix up the images. Forthose using COMMAND.COM, there is a BAT file which allows you to manuallychoose one of ten DEBUG scripts (originally randomly-generated) formixing the images.
Sherlock image set for anti-spammers.
I have a Sherlock image set for antispammers with the newsgroup,news.admin.net-abuse.email in five colours plus 'NOSPAM' in red and pink.Other images include 'UCE', 'TINLC', 'rDNS', 'C&C', White and Black hats(instead of the '..' box), and 'LART' (instead of the slashed circle).It's in a file named nanaeshi.zip and includesthe images plus an HTML file with links to information or definitions forthe newsgroup and terms mentioned above. Anti-spammers, have fun.
Two additional games you can play with Sherlock:
Do you have younger children who would like to play games with your computerbut don't have the logical skills for playing Sherlock? Using the rightSherlock image sets and the Sherlock quilt 'win' screen, there are twosimple games that can be played.
Word Seek.
Instructions:
- Set Sherlock to use my ALPHANUM.SHI image set with the 26 letters ofthe alphabet and the ten digits (part ofshapes.zip mentioned above). You can either usethe Sherlock 'Load Image Set' feature to select it or do as I do, setSherlock to use a temporary file name (I use 'test.shi') and then usethe DOS COPY command to copy the wanted image set to the temporary file.
- Run Sherlock with the command:
sherlock -bq
to get it to display the changing quilt pattern. - Press the Pause key to freeze the display.
- Try to find as many words as you can that can be made by tracing fromone horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent letter to another.(The individual words need not be adjacent.)
- Make up a point system that rewards the most words found, the longestwords found, etc. Set the minimum word length to two, three, four, ormore to adjust for different children's reading level. I am not settingany hard rules here because you know your children better than I do.
- Press some other key (the Enter key or the space bar are goodones to use) to unfreeze the display and then press Pause againfor another search with new letters.
- Repeat the steps above, quitting before boredom sets in.
View or download a typical screen-shot of Word Seek.
Plumbing.
Use the same method of play as above except using my PIPES3.SHI image set(part of pipes.zip mentioned above).In this case, you are looking for:
- A twisty, multicoloured path that leads fron one edge of the board tothe opposite edge. Bonus points for a path that connects from the left-handedge of the screen to the right-hand edge (because it is longer andless-frequently possible). Extra points for the longest path from eitherleft to right or top to bottom. Again, invent your own point system.
- Closed loops that don't touch the edge at all. (The shortest possibleis one that goes through four squares.) Long ones may be found thattwist and turn and finally return to the arbitrary starting square. Bonusescan be scored for the longest closed path too.
Hotdog out of control! gmtk2020 mac os. View or download a typical screen-shot of Plumbing.
Chip's Challenge.
One game that started on the Atari Lynx game machine and then got ported toWindows and included in their 'Entertainment Pack' (sadly no longeravailable (legally)) by Microsoft is Chip's Challenge.There is a whole community of Chip's Challenge players.There is even a (GPLed, if I'm not mistaken) duplicate of Chip's Challengeavailable (with different graphics for copyright reasons and supportingboth the Lynx Gameboy behaviour and the slightly different Microsoftbehaviour of the game) called Tile World.
Here are some Chip's Challenge links and related games from mybookmarks, sorted by URL to remove duplicates:
Somewhere in the collection of pages above you may find links to downloada copy of the original Chip's Challenge but it is copyrighted by but nolonger available from Microsoft.
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Another game you might find interesting, if you like Chip's Challenge, is Hero's Hearts and its sequels available from Everett Kaser Software.It's similar in operation to Chip's Challenge except that you see theentire map for a puzzle instead of a 9x9 window into it. It wasoriginally written for MS-DOS but it is now availablein a Windows version (and thesequels on the download page (including some user-designed puzzle sets)are only available in Windows versions).
JavaScript Chip's Challenge:
I am also working on implementing some simple Chip'sChallenge-typepuzzles in JavaScript (using Tile World images). There are severaldifferences between my version andthe originals including the fact that it is not 'real time' so adisabled person who can't make moves fast enough isn't prevented fromsolving it.The firstone has just been completed and when the second has been finished thenthe first one will be modified to give the URL for the second one if youwin the game. (Then the second one will be changed to give the URL forthe third one when that one is complete and so on.) The 'differences'file mentioned above has the instructions.
Those who would prefer a timed version with the monsters movingcontinuously may prefer the real-timeadaptation (well, as 'real-time' as you can get considering browserslugishness) of my puzzle by Madhav, AKA 'Keyboard Wielder' (KW)which, on solving it, leads to another Chip's Challenge puzzle byKW.
To create my puzzle (and try other designs), I had to convert a lot ofTile World images from the supplied BMP file into GIF format (includinganimating them.)
A table of most of the Tile-Wold images I haveconverted, leaving out the composite images. (I found iteasier to have effects such as a monster flying over a tile with a key onit if I created composites of some of the transparent GIFs superimposed onFloor tiles.) There are too many images to make all ofthem available (because of space requirements) but a minimum subset of the tiles needed to create your ownpuzzles is available as three zipped files,
- the non-animated ones,
- the animated ones and
- the composite ones (Chip, keys, boots,and monsters over floor).
Oh, and the six-segment digits I used are also available for download, ('0' to '9' and equal-sized blank in threesizes and an HTML page to display them) inone convenient zipped package.
If you want to go to excess in being a Chip's Challenge fan, I havesome Chip's Challenge mouse cursors availablefor download in a zip file. The hot spotsfor the cursors with Chip going East and West is the tip of Chip'soutstretched arm and the hot spot for the cursors with Chip going Northand South is the tip of Chip's arm on your right (Chip's right armwhen he's going North, away from you and his left arm when he's goingSouth, facing you).
Cripple Mr Onion:
Any fan of Terry Pratchett'sDiscworld series of hilarious fantasy novels is familiar with thethree witches. In the book, Witches Abroad there is a scenewhere some cardsharks get taken to the cleaners by one of the witches,playing a gane called 'Cripple Mr Onion'. If you are too lazy to do yourown laundry, you can try these reconstructed rules for the gameand then you, too, can be taken to the cleaners.
(Information is available on the web for otherDiscworld Gamesas well.)
Some of My Puzzles:
The 'Mindworks' Puzzle (Version 1)
There used to be a store in the Historic Properties of Halifax called'Mindworks' (no relation toAlchemy Mindworks) which sold puzzles,science experimentation kits, and childrens' books about science. I created(for free) the following Move-The-Blocks puzzle for them to use in theiradvertising -- using the words 'Mindworks' and 'Halifax'as significant parts of the puzzle. The store is no longer in businessbut it is a shame to let the puzzle disappear into oblivion.
Instructions:
- Print out two copies of the following image, (shown below as ASCII art forlynx users and also as a GIF for graphical browsers) one to use as a templatefor setting up the pieces and one to cut up to make the blocks.
- Glue one copy to a sheet of cardboard such as that used with shoe boxesand cut the blocks out along the dividing lines between them. You should havefourteen blocks -- eleven small blocks with 'M', 'D', 'W', 'O', 'S', 'H','A', another 'A', 'X', a 'happy face', and one marked 'empty'; two largerblocks with 'IN' and 'RK', and one triple-sized block with 'LIF' on it.
- Lay out the blocks as shown in the 'START' layout -- leaving out the blockmarked 'empty' to leave an empty space. The top row should read 'MINDWORKS' and the bottom row shouls read 'HALIFAX' with thehappy-face to the left of 'HALIFAX' and the empty space to its right.
- You can now move one or more blocks per move. A move consists of:
- Moving a small block up or down to occupy the empty space or
- Moving one or more blocks to the left or right to occupy the empty space.
- Try to rearrange the blocks as is shown in the 'FINISH' template with thehappy-face and the empty space exchanged. It can be done in 76 moves. Canyou beat that score?
Text version for lynx users:
Puzzlerun Mac Os X
Graphical version:
You can download the same image rotated by 90 degreesto make it easier to print on one page with portrait orientation.
I now have a JavaScript version of the Mindworks Halifax puzzle available foron-line use or downloadable in zipped form for off-line use.
The 'Mindworks' Puzzle (Version 2)
I got to wondering if the puzzle above could be converted to apply toAlchemy Mindworks, which is the zany shareware company that producesgraphic software, screen-saver-creation utilities, and a very funny web site. I tried it and, although the topology was different, it couldbe converted. It takes more moves to solve than the one above.
Using the same rules as above, change this:
.. into this:
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It can be solved in 103 moves. Can you beat that? (I don't knowwhether 103 moves is the minimum or not.)
I now have a JavaScript version of the Alchemy Mindworks puzzle available foron-line use or downloadable in zipped form for off-line use.
My 'Halifax', 'Nova Scotia'Puzzle.
If the puzzles above are too hard, follow the same general instructionswith the following image instead -- except the blocks and layout differas this one is based on where I live -- Halifax, Nova Scotia. Thegoal is to exchange the lobster and the empty space. The beginninglayout looks like this:
Text version for lynx users:
Note: The '=' below some of the characters indicatesa Blue character and the '-' below others indicates a Red character.In this puzzle, the placement of the colours is significant. You will needa colour printer to properly print out this puzzle.
Graphical version:
