Above is one of the simplest layouts from Knarly Jigs, showing the puzzle, the Wall Jigs across the bottom, and the Path Jigs down the right. (Not all of the Wall and Path Jigs are shown here.) The game keeps track of which Jigs are possible at each location in the puzzle. As you solve the puzzle, for each location, you mark Wall and Path Jigs as “not possible”, reducing the number that will fit at each location. You do this through logic, no guessing. The Jigs overlap each other in the same fashion as the bricks in a brick wall. Using the above puzzle as an example:

This shows the outlines of Wall Jigs (left) and Path Jigs (middle), and how they fit together to “tile” the puzzle. The figure on the right shows how the Wall Jigs and Path Jigs overlay each other. Often there will be “partial Jigs” where only a part of the Jig is actually used in the puzzle itself. You can see two partial Path Jigs at the bottom of the clues in the top-most figure above.

When Wall Jigs are placed next to each other in the puzzle, the side wall segments in the Wall Jigs must match. Similarly, when the Path Jigs are placed into the puzzle, the paths leaving and entering adjacent Path Jigs must match. The paths in the Path Jigs will fall perfectly between the walls in the Wall Jigs, and the paths will never cross the walls. When completed, the puzzle will be a maze defined by the walls, and the paths will form one continuous trail that travels to every nook and cranny of the maze (as shown in the solution to this puzzle below). Further, there will be no loops in the path, and all of the paths will be connected.

The licensed game comes with over 150 different layouts, and each layout has over 65,000 different puzzles! The layouts vary in complexity from the simplest containing 20 or 30 Jigs up to the most complex containing over 250 Jigs. The program text and help text are stored in external ASCII text files that are easily translatable. The menus and dialogs are currently available in English, Danish, and German, and the Help is in English and Danish (user selectable). I don’t speak German or French or Latin (although I could do a Pig Latin translation...), but if any of you would like to try your hand at translating the text into your native tongue, I’ll be happy to post your translations on the this web page for others to enjoy.

ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE FILES (LOCALIZATION)

This game can be "localized". Almost all of the text used in the menus and dialogs are stored in a separate ASCII text file, and the Help screens are stored in another ASCII text file. These files can be translated to other languages (English and Danish are currently included with the game). The Danish translations were done by Michael Madsen. Below are the other available translations that have been done after the release of the game. To use them, you will need to download and run the desired language installation file. The default folder for the game is C:\EKS\KJIGS, and the language files are stored in the LANGUAGE sub-folder. The self-extracting ZIP files (EXE files) include the LANGUAGE sub-folder, so you just need to specify where the game is installed (if different than the default).

1) Download the desired language installation file.
2) Run the downloaded installation file.
3) If necessary, change the installation path if you installed the game in a different location.
4) Click the UNZIP button to install the files.
5) Run the game, and click on the Player menu, then on the Language sub-menu.
6) Select the desired language from the available lists for "strings" (menus and dialogs) and Help, then click OK.
7) Due to a bug in the program, some strings may not display properly until you exit the game and restart it, but will work fine from that point on.

The available translation languages are:

Deutsch (German) - strings only, no help, from Stephan Schmid
Svenska (Swedish) - strings only, no help, from Tom Törnroos

If you're interested in translating the strings or help into another language, see the Keys, Toolbar, and The Menus Help screen, which has a section that discusses this subject. Also, there are comments at the beginning of the STR_language.TXT and HLP_language.TXT files that describe the format.

KINT Interpreter Source Code

If you're interested in the KINT interpreter source codes (which are mentioned on the Help page about porting the game to non-Microsoft OS's) see the KINT web page. This will NOT be of interest to you, I suspect, unless you're a programmer.

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Contact information:

Everett Kaser Software
PO Box 403
Albany OR 97321-0117
Phone: (541) 928-5259 between 8am and 8pm Pacific Time daily.
email: everett@kaser.com