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Announcing gemxw, a Gemini crossword interface

gemxw

This turns out to be surprisingly playable. For now at least, the only crosswords available are The Guardian's, updated daily. Partially solved crosswords have their state saved after each change, and you can return to them at any time.

The trickiest part was to find a compact ASCII representation of a crossword. Here's what I settled on:

┌────────────────────────────────┐
│  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8 │
│  T   E   *   *   *   E   *   * │
│ 9E * X * *  a* * * * M * * * * │
│  S   A   *   *   *   B   *   * │
│ bT E M P O R A R Y  cL O R E M │
│  d   P   e   *   *   E   *   f │
│ g* * L * * * *  hS Y M B O L S │
│  *   E   *   *   i   A   j   * │
│ kI P S U M  l* * *  mT * * * * │
│  *   n   *   o   *   I   *   * │
│ p* * * * * * *  q* * C * * * * │
│  r   *   *   *   *   s   *   t │
│ u* * * * *  v* * * * * * * * * │
│  *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * │
│ w* * * * * * * * *  x* * * * * │
│  *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * │
└────────────────────────────────┘

Conventional clue numbering is sacrificed in favour of single character codes. After a little familiarisation, it's entirely readable. Colours help (visible above if your client supports them), but aren't crucial -- I've been playing happily on my monochrome KOReader device.

Thanks to mrrobinhood5, stack, and others on BBS who helped with beta-testing and advice.

Enjoy. Do contact me (or write on BBS) if you have comments or suggestions.