cliptic: Crosswords in your Terminal

• A command-line interface for downloading and playing cryptic crosswords from within the terminal.
• Puzzles are sourced from the free crosswords uploaded daily to Lovatt's.
• cliptic is written in Ruby using the ncurses library

New to 0.1.3

Bug Fixes

• Fix the ssl certificate bug that prevents fetching puzzles
• Fix the "out of range" bug when moving to an undefined index using g

Features

• Add manual redraw feature to the main puzzle view. Called with ^L (useful for terminal resize)
• Add exit controls to the resize interface (q or ^C)

Features

• VIM-like keybindings
• Puzzles scraped daily from Lovatt's. Puzzles are cached locally to prevent excessive requests
• Progress can be saved to continue puzzles at a later time
• Time taken to complete the puzzle is logged on completion of puzzle. High scores can be viewed within cliptic
• Track progress for puzzles released in the last week
• Puzzle history is tracked, making it easy to pick up recently played puzzles
• Select puzzles to play by date manually (puzzles are available for up to 9 months from release)
• Customisation of cliptic's appearance

Dependencies

System

• Ruby
• Ncurses
• Curl

Gems

• curb
• curses
• sqlite3

Installing

As a Gem

• cliptic is available as a Ruby Gem. To install, simply run:

gem install cliptic

Manually

• Or, to install manually:

git clone https://github.com/apexatoll/cliptic
cd cliptic
rake build install

Running

• To run cliptic after installation, simply run the command cliptic from within the terminal
• When the program is first run it will ask the user whether they want cliptic to generate a default config file. This is located in ~/.config/cliptic/cliptic.rc
• If the screen is too small to display cliptic, please resize until the prompt disappears

Other Commands

• There are other commands that can be run from the command line

Today

• The command cliptic today will play today's puzzle
• This command can be followed with a negative number to play a puzzle n days before today
• For example cliptic today -2 will play the puzzle from the day before yesterday

Resetting Progress

• The command cliptic reset will allow the user to reset progress in cliptic.
• The command can be followed with either all, states, scores or recents
• all resets all progress
• states resets all game progress
• scores resets high scores
• recents resets puzzle history

Main Menu

• On the main menu there are several options
  • Play today's puzzle
  • Show this week's progress
  • Select a date manually
  • Display recent puzzles
  • Show high scores
  • Exit cliptic

Menu Navigation

| Command | Action | |------------------|----------------| | j/DOWN, k/UP | Move cursor | | q | Back/quit | | ENTER | Make selection |

Solving Puzzles

• By default, cliptic uses vim-like keybindings for navigation and text manipulation. There are plans to release more "accessible" keybindings in the future.
• Text manipulation is modal akin to vim. Vim-users will be familiar with insert and normal modes
• The currently focussed clue is displayed within the window at the bottom of the screen. If you are on a cell that is an intersection of two clues (ie an across and a down) you can swap between them using TAB

Game Modes

• There are 2 game modes that can be played. These can be changed in the cliptic config file.

1. Auto_mark = 1 (default)
   • Each clue is marked once every cell is filled
   • The clue will be highlighted green or red depending on whether the attempt is correct
2. Auto_mark = 0
   • No clues are marked automatically, similar to a paper crossword
   • Clues can be checked manually using the ^G command

Global Commands

| Command | Action | |---------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ^S | Save current progress (note that progress is saved when exiting puzzles by default) | | ^R | Reveals solution for focussed clue (note that this forfeits adding this puzzle to high scores) | | ^C | Exit puzzle | | ^E | Resets timer and progress for puzzle | | ^G | Mark current progress (only relevant if auto_mark is set to 0) | | ^P | Pause game | | ^L | Redraws the screen (useful on resizing terminal window) |

Navigation (Normal Mode)

• There are several ways to navigate the cells of the cliptic grid in NORMAL MODE.

| Command | Action | |--------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | h, j, k, l | Move cursor left, up, down, right. Arrow keys can also be used | | (n)w | Move to (nth) next unsolved clue | | (n)b | Move to (nth) previous unsolved clue | | e | Move to end of clue | | <clue number>g | Move to clue by number | | <cell number>G | Move to cell by number (not 0 indexed | | TAB | Swap from across to down clue (or vice versa) |

Entering Text (Insert Mode)

| Command | Action | |-------------|-------------------------------------| | a-z | Enter character to cell | | BACKSPACE | Delete one character | | ESC | Exit insert mode. Enter normal mode |

Normal Mode

| Command | Action | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | I | Move to the start of the clue and enter insert mode | | a | Advance one cell and enter insert mode | | c(obj) | calls d(obj) then enters insert mode | | d(obj) | delete the object provided after d (may be w for word or l for character) | | i | Enter insert mode | | r(char) | Replaces the character under the cursor with char | | x | deletes the character under the cursor |

Configuration

• Cliptic settings can be added to the cliptic.rc file found at ~/.config/cliptic/cliptic.rc

Interface

• Affect how cliptic functions
• Set using the format

set <setting> <0/1>

Settable Items

| Item | Description | Default | |----------------|--------------------------------|---------| | auto_advance | Move to next clue after solve | 1 | | auto_mark | Mark clues as they are entered | 1 | | auto_save | Save progress on exit | 1 |

Colours

• Colours are numbered 1-16.
  • 0 is default terminal color
  • 1-8 equates to your terminals 8 default colours.
  • 9-16 equate to same colours as the background and blank as the foreground
• To set colour settings use the format

hi <obj> <colour>

Settable Items

| Item | Description | Default | |-----------------|----------------------------|---------| | active_num | Grid number of active clue | 3 | | bar | Top and bottom bars | 16 | | block | Grid blocks | 8 | | box | Box outlines | 8 | | grid | cliptic grids | 8 | | incorrect | Incorrect clue attempt | 1 | | correct | Correct clue attempt | 2 | | prompt | Menu prompt | 3 | | default | Default text color | 0 | | meta | Clue box metadata | 3 | | num | Inactive grid numbers | 8 | | logo_text | Logo text color | 3 | | I | Insert mode prompt | 15 | | N | Normal mode prompt | 12 | | menu_active | Active menu option | 15 | | menu_inactive | Inactive menu option | 0 |

Feedback

• Cliptic is still in development
• If you have any feature requests or find any bugs please leave a new issue
• Contributions welcome!

Dedicated to WES who passed on to me his love of crosswords