Solving THC interactively: a suggestion

By Chaturvasi 

Of late the Hindu crossword doesn’t appear on time or doesn’t appear at all on the web edition of the paper. When THC is absent, the apps can’t import the crossword from the website and so interactive solving cannot be done. Those who are used to solving the puzzle on their machine in a few moments available at work or at home feel deprived.

This article suggests a way by which solvers can still try to attempt it on the machine if they do not have the means of simply taking a printout from the ePaper and attempting it. Be forewarned that I am only giving a remedy when the apps don't work; it requires some effort on the part of those who want to do it and I am offering it to help only those who have the time, inclination and adventure spirit to do it. Also, it is possible that computer geeks already know about it and may snigger at this amateur trotting out the method. The developers of apps may look down upon me for touching my nose by taking my right hand round from the back of my rettamandai and approaching it from the left side but everything is fair in war when it is fair in love.

With that preamble, let me now go into what I came to say.

1.  For filling in words in a grid, we need a grid into which we can fill the words. Of course, that is obvious! If one is a subscriber to the email paper, one sees the grid in the pdf of the crossword. Else, one can look at it by following the link that the THCC blog gives assiduously or in the Hub forum where a member provides it. We need to set up the day's grid.

There are commercial software which we can use to set grids. There are also some freeware which let us do it. There are also some websites where we can do the same job and save our work.

Leaving the commercial software aside (after all, enter ‘crossword’ or perhaps even 'cross' in an Internet search box and the advertisement for it will hit your eye and every other part of your body), I would like to mention Puzzlers Cave.

Visit: http://www.puzzlerscave.com/software.php

Needs registration but it is a quick and simple process.

Here you can set a 15x15 grid in a couple of minutes. When you have set up the grid and saved it,  open it in a window on your machine, it will look like this:

The above is not ready for filling in with words. For that you right-click on the above grid and in the pop-up window select 'populate grid'. The blue tint on the right half turns black and the grid becomes one into which you can fill in the words. See

 

2.  Now the clues too are not available on time in the paper. But if you have access to the e-paper, you get the PDF of the crossword. It is quite easy to copy the clues which you may paste in a file in Notepad or Word and open the file in another window. Or there may be other sources from where you can get the clues, thanks to the existence of blogs like this/message groups/mails from friends. 

3. Now you have two resized windows on your screen:

4. Finally, read the clues from one window and insert solutions in slots in the grid in the other window.

As most of the setters use repetitive grids you can save the grid created and use them again the next time a setter uses the same grid.

NOTE: If you are using the crossword compiler from Puzzlers cave, I can send you a zipped folder with 110 grids (for interactive solving) which are used repetitively by the setters of THC, just send me an e-mail asking for the same

Hope the above helps you in being able to solve THC on your machine.