An AKARI puzzle consists of a square grid in which some of the cells are painted black in the same way as in a crossword puzzle.
Think of it as the floor plan of a building in which the black cells represent pillars or wall segments. The remainder of the cells
represent floor area which must be illuminated by lamps placed in certain of the cells. A lamp illuminates all cells in its row and
column up to the edge of the puzzle, or up to an intervening black cell. No lamp is allowed to illuminate any other lamp, and the
numbers in some of the black cells indicate the number of lamps which are adjacent to that cell both horizontally and vertically.
Each puzzle has a unique solution which requires no guesswork.
These graphics show a Akari puzzle in the Crossword Express Solve screen
and a PNG graphic file produced by the program's print function, showing the complete puzzle solution.
See also a full size version of a PDF file showing the complete solution.
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FEATURES
The key features of the Crossword Express Akari Construction function are as follows:-
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Fully automatic construction of puzzles. Puzzles are built on predefined grids. A number of suitable grids are provided
with the program, but using Grid Maintenance, you can make an unlimited number of new ones.
A multi-build function allows the construction of many puzzles (thousands if necessary) in a single operation.
Manual construction of puzzles is possible. This may be handy if you have a puzzle derived from a printed publication,
and you want to turn it into a Crossword Express puzzle.
Puzzles can be printed in an unprecedented range of user controlled colors and formats.
Output can be sent direct to the printer or, if you install the appropriate software, it can be sent to a PDF file. The
recommended software for this purpose is Primo PDF which
you can download free from their website, although you might consider sending them a small donation if
you find their program useful. Mac users will be able to create a PDF file directly from the screen provided by
the printer driver.
Formatted output can also be exported from the Print screen to graphic files which conform to the BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG formats.
A fully interactive Solve function is available to allow you to solve the puzzles "on screen" without needing to print them.