We all know how physical exercises are good for your body. That is equally true with your brain. Regular brain exercises make your brain healthier.
That's why newspapers usually include puzzles to help your brain as you relax during a short break at work or after work. I remember playing the cross-number puzzle which features regularly in
The Daily Times of Malawi, when I was young. To win the puzzle game, you fill empty boxes with with one digit numbers (1-9) such that vertical, horizontal and diagonal numbers in the inner 4x4 boxes add up to the sums in the bottom and right-most cells - similar to a cross-word puzzle.
Every time I saw a copy of the paper, I would write down the puzzle on a piece of paper solve to it later. I spent my childhood days in Chikwawa, south of Blantyre, and I would look forward to reading The Daily Times and solving a new puzzle whenever my father returned from a trip to Blantyre.
But when I started using computers, I slowly found myself without pencils or pens and started shifting my reading medium from printed papers to electronic files. That also meant playing less and less of my favourite puzzle game. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who used to solve this or similar puzzle games but no longer do so these days. Maybe you've started playing Freecell or other computer games and puzzles.
When I was learning computer programming back in 1998, one thing I really wanted develop was a program to help me play and solve that puzzle game. The program would also be intelligent enough to solve a puzzle for me. I remember starting to code it in dBase IV :) but got distracted and went on to code other things during my free time.
If you're one of those who enjoy solving puzzles that involve numbers, I have some good news for you. You can now play that cross number puzzle game, this time online. I have finally developed a web application that will let you play a game or solve one from The Daily Times, or another source, for you at
http://soyapi.com/puzzle
New button gives you another Puzzle to Solve.
Create lets you upload a new game from the Daily Times or any other source.
Solve will give give a solution for the puzzle either created or generated using New
You can use keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the cells or click on the white cells to enter the numbers.
But that's not all.
What happens when you see a Puzzle in The Daily Times and want
XNumber Puzzle to solve it for you but you're not on a computer with internet access? What if you want a new game to solve on paper but can't find a copy of The Daily Times around? Well, you can go to
http://soyapi.com/puzzle/m via your GPRS enabled mobile phone. Since most mobile phones don't support JavaScript, you'll have to play it on paper.
And if you care about the technical details, it's not written in dBase IV. Times have changed since '98. I used Ruby on Rails and little bit of good old C.
After almost 10 years, I've finally canceled the Cross Number Puzzle Player and Solver on my To Program list. Now get your daily brain exercise. Prescription: 2 puzzles, 3 times a day!
