A- PLANNING

Before you start, take a moment to imagine the situation and the story you’re going to tell. Then enter the editor: Zebra puzzles, zebra puzzle editor.

Starting point

The first phase begins by clicking the Design… button , which is displayed at the very beginning.
The first three steps are identical to those performed in solver mode :

• indicate the number of headers,
• enter the size of the grids,
• fill the table with headers and items.

Once you’ve finished, click Next. The advisor then suggests whether to continue (Next) or to finish. This time, unlike in solver mode, let’s click Next, as we need to enter new information.

A little vocabulary

A series includes a header with its items:

First names: Alice, Bob, Carol, Denis, Enzo

The First Names series is made up of the First Names heading and the items Alice, Bob, Carol, Denis, Enzo .

Additional information

Ordering and adding

In this window you must check the headers whose items are ordered and those which are summable.

ordered items

Items have a value that follows an ascending or descending progression . Here are some examples of ordered items:

Age: 12 years, 13 years, 15 years, 20 years, 23 years (increasing progression)

Weight: 80kg, 70kg, 50kg, 45kg, 40kg (decreasing progression)

Note that here there is no regularity in the progression between items. This is not absolutely essential, except for an instruction.

This is not an ordered series:

Price: €10, €15, €14, €16, €19: not ordered

The most interesting series are those that have a regular progression: the gap between consecutive values ​​is always the same.

Age: 12 years, 13 years, 14 years, 15 years, 16 years (regularly increasing progression of 1 year)

Weight: 80kg, 75kg, 70kg, 65kg, 60kg (regular decreasing progression of 5kg)

I’ve indicated numerical values ​​here, but in fact, any sorting system is valid. For example, alphabetical order. But later, you’ll have to manually associate numbers with it.

City: Amiens, Bordeaux, Caen, Dijon, Écully: alphabetical order, 1 letter difference.

Any ordered headers allow the use of the THRESHOLD, BIPLET, TRIPLET, BEFORE instructions.

Regular ordered headers allow the additional use of the GAP instruction.

Summable items

Let’s imagine a puzzle in which farmers harvest apples and pears. In this case, it is possible to create propositions like:

Alice harvested 15 tons of fruit.

Here you have to add the items in the series: apples and pears. See the puzzle ” At the Orchard” on Actilud.

If you want to use them, you therefore need at least two summable headers.

Summable headers allow the use of SUM and TOTAL instructions.

Entering numeric values ​​for fields

Once the fields have been checked, the advisor will display pages for each header with the items and numerical values it has tried to determine.

You should check that the numerical values are correct, correct them if necessary, and fill in any blanks. Decimal numbers are accepted. Do not indicate units (kg, km, etc.)

Series must be ascending or descending.

Type the title and enter the game

This is the last step. You can come back to this window later. The title and description will be displayed by the advisor when the puzzle is started.

To return to the planning phase at any time, use the menu tool, then plan, then edit.

Before continuing, it’s time to make a backup; a file is created in your computer’s downloads folder.

A word about privacy

All work you do in the zebra puzzle section is managed locally, on your own machine. No information concerning the content of your puzzle is transmitted to the server.