#1: Jan Wolter (jan) on Nov 24, 2008

So, I was thinking about what to give various friends and relatives for the holidays, and I thought, "how about a paint-by-number book?" I'd pick some nice puzzles from webpbn, write some code to generate a PDF book, print it out, and give copies to various people.

And I figured, maybe I could make it downloadable for free from the webpbn site, so other webpbn users could use it as a cheap gift.

I haven't done anything about this yet, but the idea that there would be a selection of maybe about 50 puzzles, starting with smaller easier ones, ending with bigger ones. It would probably be all black & white puzzles (because MY printer doesn't do color). Each puzzle would keep the usual author name and copyright. At the back there would be solutions to all the puzzles, with descriptions. There'd be a short introduction telling how to solve PBN puzzles. Maybe I'd have short bios of some of the puzzle creators in the back, or maybe not.

What do you think?

Sounds like a nice idea although my puzzle wouldn't make it. It has color! lol

awesome!!

Sounds like a great idea :)

I would be so happy it you did this!

It will be amazing and much appreciated. I'm game for this idea and if I can help in any way, I'm available.

that is a really good idea..it would be better than the ones you buy in the store :)

I know whose puzzle to include and NOT to include, LOL

(And no, I am NOT talking about including mine).

That would be an awesome stocking stuffer! If you wanted to take this book idea further, you could make books with different levels: Easy, Medium, Advanced. In the more difficult leveled books you could include some of your advance solving techniques. Also you could make themed books (animals, holidays, transportation, etc.)

Honestly, I don't like the idea of including bio's of authors for 2 reasons: I don't think ppl who don't use this site would care and it would be more pages to print.

So, I've made a draft version of puzzle book. This version calls itself an introductory book, and only contains rather easy puzzles. I also decided to exclude multicolor puzzles. Because of this, people who make lots of small, easy, black and white puzzles are over-represented (me and marz) and people who make large, hard or multicolor puzzles are underrepresented. (Like Adam, whose small easy puzzles are mostly in the "Close up series" which are a bit too inexplicable for this context.)

I'm thinking of adding a few more pages of slightly more difficult puzzles, and maybe a real brain buster or two, since I think some people will find them fun, and an introduction to paint-by-number puzzles shouldn't leave people with the impression that they are all easy.

Anyway, the draft is at http://webpbn.com/book2008.pdf . That link will probably stop working once I put up a final version of this.

I understand. Thank you.

Thanks !

Great ( but no qwerty puzzle...lol)

very nice Jan

it looks great

Thanks, Jan. I'm so glad you were able to include one of Naneki's portraits - good choice!

Looks pretty neat. A nice selection of puzzles as well :)

Wow awesome! I would give it to my dad if he weren't on here already. haha. Maybe I'll spread the cheer elsewhere. thanks jan!

That turned out well, I think. Nice range of images and styles. I'll have to print some of these out to share at the big shin-dig next week.

I've improved it a bit. I added a solved puzzle to the cover page, partly to make it look pretty, partly to help absolute newbies figure out what this is, partly to help people who know these puzzles by another name to recognize it at a glance.

I also add five more puzzles, all a bit harder, to the end. I wanted to get in at least one of Adam's puzzles, even if I had to devote a whole page to it. The last puzzle (Matt Everton #1461 dreaming) is such a cool hard-but-solvable puzzle I really wanted to put it in, although I had to shrink it to get on the page.

I still want to add one more puzzle page. Though trying to get fair representation of all authors isn't really my primary goal, it seems like there should be some from each of the more prolific publishers, so I need at least one of Sylvain's puzzles too. Probably I'll use #2881, and then find some similar sized puzzles to fill out a page with it. (An awful lot of the puzzle selection is driven by puzzle size.)

What size do you want? I have a few smaller, B&Ws. #1190 is 25x30 and #1564 is 20x20. Or for a challenging one #2884 is 40x40 and requires edge logic at the beginning.

Sorry--shameless self-promotion. I was the 11th most prolific last time I checked, after all. Can't seem to break into the top 10!

The book looks really cool by the way.

New version uploaded with a couple more puzzles, including one of Sylvain's best. I swapped in one Arduinna puzzle, since she asked so nice, and I was able to find good one of a useful size.

So I'm thinking this is probably the final version, still at the same location:

http://webpbn.com/book2008.pdf

39 puzzles on 20 pages, a 4 Meg download.

My recommendation would be to bind (or staple) the solution pages separately from the rest of the pages. Then they can be put away somewhere and not be accidentally seen unless you need them. Maybe you could put them in an envelope.

Thanks a lot it'll be a wonderful present and we'll probably collect more talent thru it.

Thanks Jan! You made my day! Nice title on that one too.

Oh right, I adjusted some titles, and in that case, I invented a whole new title (was "Pixilated Painting #9" became "Touch"). This is just because without Pixilated Paintings one through eight there, I thought the other title was a bit confusing. I adjusted a lot of descriptions, mostly shortening them to fit under the solution images.

I'm also willing to adjust author names. In fact, it occurs to me that I had meant to take the "WC Man" part out of Sylvain's name, but I forgot to. Maybe I should go back and do that, so people don't think he's the guy who cleans the water closets.

lol yeah thanks Jan it would be appriciate since WC outside of here have a real diffrent meaning

But I'm still the one cleaning out the bathroom at home... :-)

This is very timely; we have a stocking exchange in my family and the guy I got likes puzzles, so maybe I can win a new convert!

Plus, one of the parameters of this exchange is we're supposed to spend as little money as possible, so this fits right in.

I have a coworker who loves to do Sudoko. I just know she'll like these puzzles better and got her to come to the website once to try it out. She's been "too buzy." I knew she leaves Saturday for a holiday trip so last night I printed out the book and gave it to her at work today. She's taking it as something to do on the plane. I'm pretty sure by the time she gets back we'll have another convert.

I just changed "Sylvain 'WC Man'" to just plain "Sylvain". Sorry to be late getting to that.

my water closet day are over as far as book are concern.....good :-)

But only as far as the book is concerned.

lol
that right jk

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