#1: Kim Barghouti (kimebar.1) on Jul 25, 2010

Is there any way of adding more colors? It would make puzzle creation more fun, and solving more challenging.....

no it would open even more "coloring" puzzle

I'm not sure I understand, Sylvain....

There are already too many puzzles that have no white space, and thus are just an exercise in filling in. If a puzzle has too many color choices available, the emphasis will shift from making good *puzzles* to making *pretty pictures*.

While those are not mutually exclusive, I think the number of "ooh, pretty!" but unsolvable pictures will go up. Also, I've been on a site that allows many colors in one puzzle and when the colors are too similar it becomes annoying.

The beauty in limited colors is the elegance of the logic that that enforces. The B&W puzzles are often the most beautiful logic-wise. The challenge in creating a limited color picture is distilling the picture to its necessary parts.

Now, with that said, I think being able to choose which five colors one uses would be a nifty thing.

From a programming standpoint, though, this could open a can of worms. Right now, the script downloads a GIF of each color to fill in the grid. That would have to change with color choices. Also there would have to be a method to prevent the colors from being too similar. And if the background is allowed to be changed, then the dot-for-background would have to be changed. And,and...

This site was made and is maintained by one man, Jan. We are all very appreciative of this. Especially since it is just a sideline - and not one that makes money.

Well said Joe.

I would prefer a different way to implement more color choices. Where the designer could color the puzzle. This would only show up after the puzzle was solved. For example, one could create a B&W puzzle. Once it is solved, the "colors" would fill in (I would imagine a separate solution box would pop up). This way we do not more away from the logic aspect but still allow for more "pretty pictures".

I'm not complaining; I am enjoying the site and Jan's labors immensely. Maybe I just need to learn to distill the art in my head to five colors. :0)

I keep hoping that some time to make this site a bit better will appears someday, but things are not going terribly well on that front, so there probably aren't a lot of fixes and enhancements coming real soon.

I agree with Joe that using too many different colors in the same puzzle tends to make for bad puzzles. But having a wider palate to choose from would be nice. The biggest obstacle is actually the question of how to present the clue colors to the solver. Writing clue numbers in yellow on a white background would be pretty illegible. And though the colors we have are already pretty distinct, many people find it difficult to distinguish them. Adding more colors could make that worse.

The only color I've wished to have while creating has been yellow. Now, if puzzle pixel colors are tied to the clue colors, yellow will be tough to see.

I have to admit, that my 43-year-old eyes have trouble with distinguishing between green and blue on some of the larger puzzles until I make them bigger. So I imagine yellow could be a big problem with that as well. So while I'd love to have it, I'm not sure it would be practical.

I for one would not want any more colors. It's fun to be creative and we can all pretend that green is yellow, and red can magically turn to orange when an image is done. And nothing beats the good old black and white, my favorite!

fasstar has it right

Well, I'd like to figure a way to do yellow and maybe one shade of gray, and maybe purple.

But it's true that colors morph magically based on context. Humans are used to seeing colors in all sorts of lights, and so our brains a built to do a lot of color correction, a fact artists have been exploiting for hundreds of years.

That's true. I often use blue as a shade of grey in my puzzles.

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