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