downloadable puzzles

[eirian]

Hi Guys,

I had this habit of going onto the Conceptistech website once every 6 months or so and downloading all of that week's puzzles, taking them into work and doing them when I should be working. This worked well until this time when I logged onto the site to get afresh selection of puzzles to work on, only to find that they are no longer supporting downloading of puzzles - it's play them online or print them (if they haven't got a programme to let you do them online). Bah! I can't play online from work and don't want to waste all that paper and then have to sneak to the work's scanner to scan them in so I can do them on my PC.

Does anyone know of any similar sites I can just download a wide selection of puzzles from? (that's what I like about Conceptistech - they do such a good selection! from pic-a-pix, though mazes, and standard sudoku to hitori and bridges, where most other sites seem to just specialise in one or two types)


(aside - I panicked the other day - had gone back to the other site and downloaded a load of Rota's alphacator puzzles to keep me busy, only to have my PC to report a virus shortly afterwards! Since this was at work, I delayed reporting it to IT and did the restart it told me to. Well, the virus seemed to still be there and I restarted my machine several times that afternoon. Eventully I cleared everything that shouldn't be on the PC off it, and called IT. Only to be told that it was a fault with the viruschecking software and they were working through all the affected PCs. Thank goodness for that - it wasn't Rota's fault!! Trouble is, I can't redownload the alphacator puzzles until IT have got round to my PC, just in case they find them and I get into trouble for having unauthorised stuff on there - I'm stuck with boring wallpapers as well, let alone all my Christmas Lights and Falling Snow screen saver have had to go!
Tip Learnt - never trust an IT department to install software correctly!)

[Scurra]

Tip Learnt - never trust an IT department to install software correctly!)

How else do you think they stay in work?

I can't help with your other query though. I don't entirely understand what you used to do - either you solve them on-line or on paper; what other option is there?

[eirian]

I solved them 'on paper' which involved downloading a pdf. Instead of just printing the pdfs, I took the pdfs into work, opened them, opened a word doc, copied one to the other (since work don't have anything as advanced as Adobe Acrobat writer), and solved on the word version. (well, except for the mazes and join the dots, which I had to print, then scan as a bitmap and solve using a paint program). Got quite expert at adding shading to a cell in a table when doing coloured pic-a-pix since changing the colour of the font on an 'X' wasn't distinctive enough!

[Scurra]

I thought the easy solution would be to install a PDF "printer driver" (like this one), where you could print the puzzles to a file and then do what you already did. But although I've got one of those installed myself, the Conceptis applications don't seem to recognise it. Hmmm.

[eirian]

well, that's worked! It seems to be working fine now I've installed it! Not encounted one of these before - I like!
Yay!

[Scurra]

It's working here now too. I only ever do the Conceptis puzzles on-line now though, so this problem hadn't cropped up for me.

[eirian]

well, that's because you aren't trying to play them from work which, even if it would let me access the website in the first place (filtered ), would involve me sitting on the same website all day, and I think even the most unattentive IT person might spot! (or spot and comment on, as oppose to at the moment, when I have the BBC open all day, but I suspect that's allowable!)

[MBH]

Hi Kids

Looks like you've solved your problem, but my contribution would have been my old favorite problem solver (in the Library where almost EVERYTHING is shut off - incuding the right-mouse click). I don't know the size of the images for these puzzles but I use the "screenprint" function pasted into Paint and then jigsawed together if it's bigger than a single screen.

I've built some nice 'combination' multimap printout's this way, including one of the length of the river Wear to show where they are planning a new bidge in relation to the coast and the A19 crossing.

[Scurra]

That's true. My immediate reaction was "capture screen" too, but I forgot that there was an in-built feature to do that! (I use PaintShopPro for all my graphic work.)

Conceptis have said that they will be restoring PDF downloads next year, but don't hold your breath.