SGT‐FILLING(6)

📦
version 20250730.a7c7826 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 sgt-filling, the Filling puzzle, bestie 💖

okay so this is the manual page for sgt-filling — it's SGT-FILLING(6), like, the Games section of the manual, and it's genuinely one of the cutest little puzzles in the whole collection 🎀 no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

sgt-filling — Polyomino puzzle 🧩

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sgt-filling [--generate n] [--print wxh [--with-solutions] [--scale n]
[--colour]] [game-parameters|game-ID|random-seed]

sgt-filling --version

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so picture this: you've got a grid of squares 🌸 Some of the squares are already holding digits, and the rest of them are just sitting there, empty, waiting for you. Your whole job — your main character mission — is to fill digits into those empty squares so that every connected region of squares holding the same digit has an area that's equal to that digit. Like, a region of 3s? It's gotta be 3 squares big. Periodt.

(and like, a quick clarification bestie: a “connected region” does not count diagonally separated squares as adjacent. Only the side-by-side ones count 💅)

so some stuff that just falls out of that rule, for free:

  • no square can ever contain a zero 🙅
  • two adjacent squares can not both contain a one
  • no region can have an area bigger than 9, because then its area wouldn't be a single digit anymore — and this whole game runs on single digits 🍓

Credit for this puzzle goes to Nikoli (https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/fillomino/) — iconic of them honestly 👑

Filling was contributed to this collection by Jonas Kölker. thank you for your service 🫡💜

🦋 Filling controls 🦋

to actually play Filling, it's so easy: just click the mouse in any empty square, then type a digit on the keyboard and boom, that square is filled ✨

and if you're feeling efficient (main character energy), drag the mouse and you can select multiple squares to fill with just one single keypress 👑

made a mistake? it happens, it's fine, we've all been there 😭 click the mouse on the incorrect square, then press 0, Space, Backspace or Enter to clear it again. (or just use Undo, no shame in it 💖)

you can also move around the grid with the cursor keys — typing a digit fills the square the cursor is sitting in with that number, and typing 0 clears it. You can also select multiple squares for numbering or clearing using the return and arrow keys, and then type a digit to fill or clear all the highlighted squares (same as above bestie 💅). The space bar adds and removes single squares to and from the selection. And Backspace and escape remove all squares from the selection. clean slate energy 🌈

(all the actions described below are also available, btw — keep reading 👀)

🎀 Filling parameters 🎀

Filling lets you configure the number of rows and columns of the grid, through the ‘Type’ menu ✨

✨ Common actions ✨

these bad boys are all available from the ‘Game’ menu and via keyboard shortcuts, on top of whatever game-specific actions the game has going on 💅

(on Mac OS X, to conform with local user interface standards, these actions are situated on the ‘File’ and ‘Edit’ menus instead. different menu, same vibes 🍓)

  • New game (N, Ctrl+N) — starts a whole new game, with a random initial state 🌱
  • Restart game — resets the current game right back to its initial state. (and yes, this can be undone, so you can't break anything 🫶)
  • Load — loads a saved game from a file on disk 📂
  • Save — saves the current state of your game to a file on disk 💾

The Load and Save operations preserve your entire game history — so you can save, reload, and still Undo and Redo things you'd done before you saved. the way that works is honestly so good 🌸

  • Print — where supported (currently only on Windows), this brings up a dialog letting you print an arbitrary number of puzzles, randomly generated from the current parameters, optionally including the current puzzle. (Only for puzzles which make sense to print, of course — it's hard to think of a sensible printable representation of Fifteen! 💀)
  • Undo (U, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+_, *) — undoes a single move. (You can undo moves all the way back to the start of the session, no cap 👑)
  • Redo (R, Ctrl+R, #) — redoes a move you previously undid 💫
  • Copy — copies the current state of your game to the clipboard in text format, so you can paste it into (say) an e-mail client or a web message board if you're discussing the game with someone else. (not all games support this feature 🙈)
  • Solve — transforms the puzzle instantly into its solved state ✨ For some games (Cube) this feature isn't supported at all, because it's of no particular use. For other games (such as Pattern), the solved state can be used to give you information if you can't see how a solution can exist at all, or if you want to know where you made a mistake. For still other games (such as Sixteen), automatic solution tells you nothing about how to get to the solution, but it does provide a useful way to get there quickly so you can experiment with set-piece moves and transformations 🔥

Some games (such as Solo) are capable of solving a game ID you've typed in from elsewhere. Other games (such as Rectangles) cannot solve a game ID they didn't invent themself — but when they did invent the game ID, they already know what the solution is. Still other games (Pattern) can solve some external game IDs, but only if they aren't too difficult 💀

The ‘Solve’ command adds the solved state to the end of the undo chain for the puzzle. In other words, if you want to go back to solving it yourself after seeing the answer, you can just press Undo. so chill 🌈

  • Quit (Q, Ctrl+Q) — closes the application entirely. bye bestie 😭
  • Preferences — where supported, brings up a dialog letting you configure personal preferences about a particular game. Some of these preferences are specific to a particular game; others are common to all games 💜

One option common to all games lets you turn off the one-key shortcuts like N for new game or Q for quit, so there's less chance of hitting them by accident. You can still access the same shortcuts with the Ctrl key — so nothing's lost, it's just safer 🫶

✨ Specifying games with the game ID ✨

there are two ways to save a game specification out of a puzzle and recreate it later — or recreate it in somebody else's copy of the same puzzle. sharing is caring 💖

The ‘Specific’ and ‘Random Seed’ options from the ‘Game’ menu (or the ‘File’ menu, on Mac OS X) each show a piece of text (a ‘game ID’) which is sufficient to reconstruct precisely the same game at a later date ✨

You can enter either of these pieces of text back into the program (via the same ‘Specific’ or ‘Random Seed’ menu options) at a later point, and it will recreate the same game. You can also use either one as a command line argument (on Windows or Unix); see below for more detail 👀

so what's the difference between the two forms? a descriptive game ID is a literal description of the initial state of the game, whereas a random seed is just a piece of arbitrary text which was provided as input to the random number generator that was used to create the puzzle. and that means:

  • Descriptive game IDs tend to be longer in many puzzles (although some, such as Cube (sgt-cube(6)), only need very short descriptions). So a random seed is often a quicker way to note down the puzzle you're currently playing, or to tell it to somebody else so they can play the same one as you 💅
  • Any text at all is a valid random seed. The automatically generated ones are fifteen-digit numbers, but anything will do — you can type in your full name, or a word you just made up, and a valid puzzle will be generated from it ✨ This provides a way for two or more people to race to complete the same puzzle: you think of a random seed, then everybody types it in at the same time, and nobody has an advantage from having seen the generated puzzle before anybody else. no cap, that's such a good idea 🏁
  • It's often possible to convert puzzles from other sources (such as ‘nonograms’ or ‘sudoku’ from newspapers) into descriptive game IDs suitable for use with these programs 🌸
  • Random seeds are not guaranteed to produce the same result if you use them with a different version of the puzzle program. This is because the generation algorithm might have been improved or modified in later versions of the code, and will therefore produce a different result when given the same sequence of random numbers. Use a descriptive game ID if you aren't sure it'll be used on the same version of the program as yours ⚠️

(Use the ‘About’ menu option to find out the version number of the program. Programs with the same version number running on different platforms should still be random-seed compatible 🫶)

A descriptive game ID starts with a piece of text which encodes the parameters of the current game (such as grid size). Then there's a colon, and after that comes the description of the game's initial state. A random seed starts with a similar string of parameters, but then it contains a hash sign followed by arbitrary data 🔍

If you enter a descriptive game ID, the program will not be able to show you the random seed which generated it, since it wasn't generated from a random seed. If you enter a random seed, however, the program will be able to show you the descriptive game ID derived from that random seed 💫

Note that the game parameter strings are not always identical between the two forms. For some games, there'll be parameter data provided with the random seed which isn't included in the descriptive game ID. This is because that parameter information is only relevant when generating puzzle grids, and isn't important when playing them. So, for example, the difficulty level in Solo (sgt-solo(6)) isn't mentioned in the descriptive game ID 👑

These additional parameters are also not set permanently if you type in a game ID. For example, suppose you have Solo set to ‘Advanced’ difficulty level, and then a friend wants your help with a ‘Trivial’ puzzle; so the friend reads out a random seed specifying ‘Trivial’ difficulty, and you type it in. The program will generate you the same ‘Trivial’ grid your friend was having trouble with — but once you've finished playing it, when you ask for a new game it'll automatically go back to the ‘Advanced’ difficulty it was previously set on. it literally just remembers where it was at 😌

✨ The ‘Type’ menu ✨

The ‘Type’ menu, if present, may contain a list of preset game settings 🎀 Selecting one of these will start a new random game with the parameters specified.

The ‘Type’ menu may also contain a ‘Custom’ option which lets you fine-tune game parameters ✨ The parameters available are specific to each game and are described in the following sections.

🌸 Specifying game parameters on the command line 🌸

(ok so this whole section? yeah, it does NOT apply to the Mac OS X version. just so you know bestie)

So like, here's the ✨design philosophy✨: the games in this collection deliberately do not ever save information on to the computer they run on — no high score tables, no saved preferences, nada. Zero evidence. Why? Because the author expects at least some people to play them at work, and those people will probably appreciate leaving as little evidence as possible! 💀 (valid tbh)

But lowkey, if you do want one of these games to default to a particular set of parameters? You can just specify them on the command line. 🫶

The easiest way to do this:

  1. Set up the parameters you want using the ‘Type’ menu (see above).
  2. Then select ‘Random Seed’ from the ‘Game’ or ‘File’ menu (see above).

The text in the ‘Game ID’ box will be composed of two parts, separated by a hash. The first of those parts represents the game parameters — the size of the playing area, for example, and anything else you set using the ‘Type’ menu. 🎀

If you run the game with just that parameter text on the command line, it will start up with the settings you specified. periodt.

For example: if you run Cube (see sgt-cube(6)), select ‘Octahedron’ from the ‘Type’ menu, and then go to the game ID selection, you will see a string of the form o2x2#338686542711620. Take only the part before the hash (o2x2), and start Cube with that text on the command line:

sgt-cube o2x2

If you copy the entire game ID on to the command line, the game will start up in the specific game that was described. This is occasionally a more convenient way to start a particular game ID than by pasting it into the game ID selection box. ✨

(You could also retrieve the encoded game parameters using the ‘Specific’ menu option instead of ‘Random Seed’, but if you do then some options, such as the difficulty level in Solo, will be missing. See above for more details on this.)

💅 Unix command-line options 💅

(and this section? only applies to the Unix port. iykyk)

In addition to being able to specify game parameters on the command line (see above), there are various other options:

  • --game, --load — these options respectively determine whether the command-line argument is treated as specifying game parameters or a save file to load. Only one should be specified. If neither of these options is specified, a guess is made based on the format of the argument. 🤔
  • --generate n — if this one is specified, instead of a puzzle being displayed, a number of descriptive game IDs will be invented and printed on standard output. This is useful for gaining access to the game generation algorithms without necessarily using the frontend. If game parameters are specified on the command-line, they will be used to generate the game IDs; otherwise a default set of parameters will be used. The most common use of this option is in conjunction with --print, in which case its behaviour is slightly different; see below. 👑
  • --delete-prefs — this option causes the puzzle to delete the configuration file in which its user preferences were stored, if there is one. bye bestie 🫶
  • --print wxh — if this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being displayed, a printed representation of one or more unsolved puzzles is sent to standard output, in PostScript format. On each page of puzzles, there will be w across and h down. If there are more puzzles than w×*h*, more than one page will be printed. If --generate has also been specified, the invented game IDs will be used to generate the printed output. Otherwise, a list of game IDs is expected on standard input (which can be descriptive or random seeds; see above), in the same format produced by --generate.

For example:

sgt-net --generate 12 --print 2x3 7x7w | lpr

will generate two pages of printed Net puzzles (each of which will have a 7×7 wrapping grid), and pipe the output to the lpr command, which on many systems will send them to an actual printer. 🖨️ There are various other options which affect printing; see below.

  • --save file-prefix [ --save-suffix file-suffix ] — if this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being displayed, saved-game files for one or more unsolved puzzles are written to files constructed from the supplied prefix and/or suffix. If --generate has also been specified, the invented game IDs will be used to generate the printed output. Otherwise, a list of game IDs is expected on standard input (which can be descriptive or random seeds; see above), in the same format produced by --generate.

For example:

sgt-net --generate 12 --save game --save-suffix .sav

will generate twelve Net saved-game files with the names game0.sav to game11.sav. 🎀

  • --version — prints version information about the game, and then quits. slay.

The following options are only meaningful if --print is also specified:

  • --with-solutions — the set of pages filled with unsolved puzzles will be followed by the solutions to those puzzles. (no peeking… okay actually yes peeking, that's the whole point 💅)
  • --scale n — adjusts how big each puzzle is when printed. Larger numbers make puzzles bigger; the default is 1.0.
  • --colour — puzzles will be printed in colour, rather than in black and white (if supported by the puzzle). 🌈 iconic.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

Full documentation in /usr/share/doc/sgt-puzzles/puzzles.txt.gz. 📚

ok that's a wrap bestie, you now know everything about sgt-filling from the sgt-puzzles collection, dated July 2025 — go forth and fill, mwah 💖✨👑

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