Selecting letters for 7-by-many puzzle

[Alan W]

Some time ago TRex asked about creating 7-by-many puzzles under the Your Puzzles tab, with letters input by the player:

How does one create a 7-by-many puzzle with specific letters? When I place a check along 'Allow letters to be reused (7-by-many puzzle), the Puzzle letters section is greyed-out.

This option has been available for a while now, but I think I must have neglected to inform people about it. At any rate players haven't been using it so far in published puzzles.

Please give it a try and let me know if there are any problems. Choose 7-by-many and click on the "Choose your own letters" checkbox.

[doxydaisy]

Thanks Alan I just tried a puzzle and it worked without any problems

[Calilasseia]

I just gave this a try.

There's HOW many common words with these letters??? Yikes ...

[Maudland]

Hi Alan,

I just gave this a go (on my iPhone) - it wouldn’t let me add any letters that featured in the puzzle I’d been playing in ‘Your puzzles,’ which included common ones like n, i etc. Then when I went back to that puzzle (still one word missing, obvs!) it had been playing them there.

Hope that makes sense!

[Alan W]

Hope that makes sense!

Not really!

Could you describe what happened in a little more detail please?

[yelnats]

I think if those same letters were open in a "your puzzle" it wouldn't be possible to use them in a 7bm puzzle. I once tried to use the local paper's puzzle to make a "your puzzle" and it wouldn't go in because coincidentally it was the same word as an open Chi puzzle. I was able to do it when the chi puzzle closed.

[Maudland]

My ‘current’ puzzle is nixing’s INUCYAL.

I tried to enter C as the mandatory letter - nothing showed. R, though, was accepted. It would then only let me enter other letters (for the other 6) that were not in nixing’s puzzle. I tried Y  but it didn’t accept it.

When I went back to my current puzzle, CY was showing where you enter the words.

So I was entering them under the create your own puzzle screen/page, but they were going to the current puzzle instead. The two pages were connected in some way with letters automatically going to the current puzzle rather than the one I was trying to make.

Is that any clearer? Not sure how else to explain it, and not technical enough to know how else to put it! 😳

[Maudland]

Maybe should add that you select ‘new’ from a current puzzle, which remains open behind the page/screen to create your puzzle … and then selected letters go to the page behind where they’re in play.

[Alan W]

Thanks, Maudland. Now I follow you.

Yes, something odd is going on. It seems to be only on Apple iOS devices: iPhones and iPads. It's no doubt related to the fact that on these devices you can use the on-screen keyboard to play Chihuahua, something that doesn't work on Android phones and tablets. But why do we not have this problem on a computer? I shall investigate.

[Maudland]

It’s all beyond my ken, Alan! (As you could probably tell from my technical description.) There’s enough other ways to play a puzzle so it’s not breaking my heart … I suspect you might not be satisfied with it though. What a wizard.
Thanks for everything you do!

[Alan W]

This problem should be fixed now. Give it a go.

[Maudland]

Afraid not, Alan. Still the same. But this time, the keyboard did something very weird and kind of flew in vertically (so, side on, on a landscape screen). Quite an effect!!!

[Alan W]

It's possible you haven't got the latest version of Chihuahua, Maudland. It can take a while for the browser to pick up an update. Try tapping the Reset button down near the bottom right corner.