Crossword

Daily crosswords in the panel: Crosshare's English minis in the manner of the NYT Mini, and the Turkish papers' kare bulmaca (HaberTürk, Cumhuriyet, Sabah). Enter on the palette's row opens a view level whose body is the extension's own page (surface/, a surface view node): the grid, as large as the panel allows; the puzzle's title and source, the clock, the clue you are on in a bar of its own, and the Across and Down lists.

The page plays the solve with game.ts, the same file the host tests, and hands every change to the extension (pal.send), which writes it to disk before the next key. The puzzles, the lists and the record live on the extension's side (index.ts).

Sources

A source lists a month of its puzzles and fetches one as a puzzle (sources.ts); nothing else about it leaks out. Every request is made only when a puzzle or a list is about to be shown, and kept (cache.ts): a fetched puzzle for good under cache/puzzles/, so a replay or the archive never asks again and a puzzle once opened plays offline; a list while it is fresh. A failed request falls back to the cache, however old; offline, the page says so plainly and lists the puzzles opened before. Nothing of any source's ships with pal: the puzzles are their makers' work, fetched when you play and credited on the page with a link to the puzzle's own page. The tests and the screenshots use puzzles made for them (host/test/extensions/crossword-fixtures.ts, crossword-tr-fixtures.ts).

• Crosshare (crosshare.ts): /dailyminis/<year>/<month> is a Next.js page with the month in its __NEXT_DATA__ as [day, puzzle, constructor, patron], newest first; the days are UTC and the props' month 0-based. /tags/mini/page/<n> has the newest minis, 20 a page, pages 0 to 9 (the site's limit). /api/ipuz/<id> is one puzzle (ipuz.ts: circles, bars, the clue shapes the spec allows, the constructor's note).
• HaberTürk (turkish.ts): /bulmaca/gunluk/YYYY/MM/DD carries the puzzle as var _data = [...], each answer with its clue, direction and 1-based start; fromEntries builds the grid from them (blocks where no answer runs, numbered as the grid numbers, each clue on the word that starts where its answer does; an answer that is not a word of the grid is refused). Later days are up before their day; a day is played only once it has come. There is no list: the calendar shows every day, and Next passes by a day that turns out to have none.
• Cumhuriyet: the game's own JSON on cumhuriyet.lidyagames.com: /api/list for the archive, /api/puzzle/YYYY-MM-DD for a puzzle (the rows, the clues by the grid's numbers, and a photo over a 5 by 5 block as a data URL, drawn over its squares; a click shows it large).
• Sabah: the month slider (POST /bulmaca-coz/getsliderarticles; the site reads only the month of the date sent), then the article, then the player page in its iframe (isbh.tmgrup.com.tr), which holds the puzzle as base64 JSON in the same shape as HaberTürk's. A day with two puzzles lists the first. The same player files come back under other dates, so two days can be the same puzzle.

The papers' days are Istanbul's (UTC+3), Crosshare's UTC.

Turkish letters. On a Turkish puzzle (lang: "tr") a key is upper-cased the Turkish way (i to İ, ı to I), and a letter matches its answer with the diacritics folded (Ç C, Ğ G, İ I, Ö O, Ş S, Ü U): the papers' grids cross Ç with C and Ü with U (Sabah's often), and their own players check that way. So a US keyboard solves one with plain letters, and a plain letter that matches shows as the answer's own (c typed where Ç goes shows Ç, i where I goes shows I). A Turkish keyboard's letters, and macOS's ⌥c (ç), type as they are.

Which puzzle. The first open is the puzzle left half-done, else today's puzzle of the source setting (an archive's newest). Next (⌘N, or Enter on the finish) stays with the puzzle's source and goes to an unplayed one: today's while it is open, then back from the puzzle's day, a month's list at a time (four months at most a step); for Crosshare, the newest minis too (first after a newest mini, last after a daily). Anything solved or started is skipped. Skip (⌘⇧N) moves on and leaves the puzzle out for good: Next, the first open and the Now row pass it by, and Browse shows its day struck through; opening it from Browse takes the skip back. The next puzzle is looked up and fetched 1.5 s after one opens (prefetch), so Next is instant.

Playing

The NYT's keys:

• A letter (or digit) fills the square and moves to the next empty one in the word, skipping filled ones; typing over a full word goes square by square; a finished word jumps to the next clue that has a gap.
• Backspace clears the square; on an empty one it steps back and clears that, into the previous clue from a word's first square. Delete clears and stays.
• An arrow along the word moves one square (over blocks); an arrow across it turns first. Space, or a click on the cursor's square, turns.
• Tab and Shift-Tab (Enter and Shift-Enter too) walk the clues, across then down, skipping full ones while any has a gap. A click on a square or a clue goes there.
• ⌘E checks the word (⌘⌥E the square, ⌘G the grid, and Enter on "Not quite"; ⌘⇧E still works): a wrong letter gets a red slash until it changes, a right one turns blue and locks. ⌘U reveals the word (⌘⌥U the square, ⌘⇧U the grid, asking first): the answer in blue with a corner mark. ⌥⌫ clears the word, ⌘⌥⌫ the grid (locked squares stay). The autocheck setting slashes a wrong letter as it lands.
• ⌘P pauses: the grid is covered and the clues blurred. ? shows every key; ⌘K lists the rest (start over, autocheck, the puzzle on crosshare.org).

The colours rank what you look at: the cursor's square yellow, its word blue, the crossing word a faint blue; in the lists the clue you are on is filled, the crossing one has a bar, and finished clues are greyed. The clue bar keeps its height and shrinks a long clue's type to fit.

The clock runs only while the grid is on screen and unsolved: it stops when the panel hides, on Browse and Stats, over the key sheet or a question, and while paused. The time rides in every save. ⌘T (or clock = false) hides it, pause button and all, for anyone a ticking time rushes; the time still counts for the stats and shows on the finish.

The finish. A full grid with a mistake says "Not quite" and never where. Solved, a wave of light runs across the grid on the diagonals with every letter hopping in turn; then the time, a new best or the streak, the constructor's note if there is one, and Next puzzle. A reveal makes it "finished with help": it counts as solved, but not for the best time or the streak; checks are only noted.

Browse and stats

Browse (⌘O): In progress first, every half-done puzzle from any source, the last played on top (Enter picks it up where it was left); then a tab per source (Tab walks them), Crosshare's newest minis as a list right after it. A source's tab is its calendar, month by month ([ ], bounded by what it has), each day marked solved (gold), solved with help (grey), started (a pie of how far), skipped (a dash) or new, with the day's puzzle beside it. Enter plays, ⌫ goes back.

Stats (⌘S), per source (a tab each, the one being played lit): solved, best and average time (and the last ten), the streak and the best one, a chart of the recent clean times with the average, and the history. The streak counts the source's daily puzzles solved without a reveal on their own day, on the source's calendar; it reads from yesterday until today's is solved.

Now. While today's puzzle of the source setting is unsolved, a quiet row in the root's Now section opens it (only once you have solved a puzzle, so it never nags someone who does not play; never for Sabah, an archive; suggest turns it off).

The page's arrangements

The page picks whichever arrangement gives the squares the most room:

• side: the grid on the left, the title, clock, clue bar and both lists on the right (a mini, an 8 or 9 square kare bulmaca);
• top: the clue bar across the top beside the clock, the grid under it, the title and one column of lists beside the grid (a wide grid such as Cumhuriyet's 17 by 11 at 720);
• top without lists: when there is no room beside the grid either (Cumhuriyet's in the compact panel), the title and the hint under the grid, and ⌘L lays every clue over it.

A small square gives its number the top-left corner and a smaller letter set lower, so the two never touch.

Files

• game.ts: the rules, pure: numbering, the keys, check, reveal, clear, the finish, the saved form, the Turkish letters.
• ipuz.ts: ipuz to a puzzle. stats.ts: bests, averages, streaks, per source.
• sources.ts: the sources, today's puzzle, Next. crosshare.ts and turkish.ts: each site's pages. cache.ts: the requests and the disk.
• store.ts: progress.json (every solve as it stands, the log of solves, each puzzle's name for the lists), written whole and atomically, a burst of saves coalesced into one write. PAL_CROSSWORD_DIR moves it; PAL_CROSSWORD_URL, PAL_CROSSWORD_HT_URL, PAL_CROSSWORD_CUM_URL and PAL_CROSSWORD_SABAH_URL point at stand-in sites (tests).
• surface/: the page (main.ts the solve and the keys, screens.ts Browse, Stats and the offline page).

Settings

[extensions.crossword]
source = "crosshare"   # what the first open and the Now row offer: haberturk, cumhuriyet, sabah
autocheck = false      # mark a wrong letter as it is typed; also on ⌘K
suggest = true         # today's puzzle in the root's Now section while unsolved