SGT‐LOOPY(6)

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

💖 SGT-LOOPY(6) 💖

hey bestie, welcome to the Games section of the manual 💅 this is where sgt-loopy lives, and honestly? she's iconic. let's get into it.

🌸 NAME 🌸

sgt-loopy — a Loop-drawing puzzle 🌀✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

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

sgt-loopy --version

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so picture this: you get a grid of dots, and those dots are joined up by yellow lines — and those yellow lines are basically the universe telling you which dots you're allowed to connect directly to each other. no connecting random dots across the map, bestie, that's not the vibe 💀

your mission? use some subset of those yellow lines to draw one single unbroken loop, dot to dot, all the way through the grid. one loop. no breaks. no cap 🫶

now here's the spicy part: some of the spaces between the lines have numbers in them. each number tells you exactly how many of the lines around that space are part of the loop. so if it says 3, three of the lines hugging that space are loop lines. your loop has to satisfy every single clue before it counts as a correct solution. no fudging it, no "close enough" — the puzzle will simply not accept your nonsense 😭

in the default mode, the dots sit in a regular grid of squares. but you're not stuck there! you can also play on triangular or hexagonal grids, or honestly some even more exotic tilings, iykyk 🧚✨

credit for the basic puzzle idea goes to Nikoli — respect where respect is due: https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/slitherlink/

and a little Loopy history for you: Loopy was originally contributed to this collection by Mike Pinna, and was subsequently enhanced to handle various types of non-square grid by Lambros Lambrou. kings, both of them 👑

🖱️ Loopy controls 🖱️

  • Left-click a yellow line → it turns black, which means "yes bestie, this line is part of the loop, I'm calling it" 💅
  • Left-click it again → back to yellow, which means "actually no, I'm not sure yet, don't quote me"
  • Right-click a line → nukes it completely, for when you are sure that line segment is not part of the loop. pro tip: clicking a second time flips it right back to yellow 🌈

(all the actions described below are also available, so you've got options, queen 💖)

🎛️ Loopy parameters 🎛️

you'll find all of these under the ‘Custom...’ option on the ‘Type’ menu, bestie:

  • Width, Height — the size of the grid, measured in number of regions across and number of regions down. for square grids this is super obvious and you don't even have to think about it. for other types of grid you might have to squint and think a bit to see how the dimensions are being measured. that's just how it is 🙈
  • Grid type — lets you pick between a whole selection of tiling types. some of them have all the faces the same but can have multiple different types of vertex (looking at you, Cairo and Kites modes 👀); others have all the vertices the same but might have different types of face (hi, Great Hexagonal ✨). meanwhile the square, triangular and honeycomb grids are fully regular — every vertex and every face the same — which genuinely makes them the least confusing to play. start there, trust 🫶
  • Difficulty — controls the difficulty of the generated puzzle. you know what this does, bestie, it's giving exactly what it says on the tin 🔥

⚙️ Loopy user preferences ⚙️

on platforms that support user preferences, the ‘Preferences’ option on the ‘Game’ menu lets you configure the following things:

  • ‘Draw excluded grid lines faintly’ — this one is on by default. when a grid line has been explicitly excluded from the solution by right-clicking it, the line still gets drawn, just in a faint grey colour, like a lil ghost of a line 👻 if you turn this option off, those excluded lines aren't drawn at all. gone. poof. 💨
  • ‘Auto-follow unique paths of edges’ — this one is off by default. when it's turned on, clicking to change the status of a single grid line can potentially propagate that change along multiple lines — specifically if one or both ends of the line you clicked connect to only one other line. the whole idea here is that if two lines meet at a vertex and no other lines meet there at all, then those lines are either both part of the loop or neither is, so there's literally no reason you should have to click separately to toggle each one. efficiency, we love her 💅
    • in the mode ‘Based on grid only’, the effects of a click only propagate across vertices that have degree 2 in the underlying grid. for example, in the square grid, the effect will only occur at the four grid corners ✨
    • in the mode ‘Based on grid and game state’, the propagation also takes account of edges you've already excluded from the solution, so it does even more work for you 🔥

🕹️ Common actions 🕹️

these actions are all available from the ‘Game’ menu and via keyboard shortcuts, on top of whatever game-specific actions exist. very convenient, very main character 💖

on Mac OS X, to conform with local user interface standards, these actions are situated on the ‘File’ and ‘Edit’ menus instead. just so you're not out here lost, bestie 🫶
  • New game (N, Ctrl+N) — starts a brand new game with a random initial state. fresh start, new me 🌈
  • Restart game — resets the current game back to its initial state. and yes, this can be undone, so you're not trapped in your choices 😌
  • 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 had done before saving. the timeline stays intact, no snap required ✨

  • Print — where supported (currently only on Windows), 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, and honestly? fair 💀)
  • Undo (U, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+_, *) — undoes a single move. and listen, you can undo moves all the way back to the start of the session. no judgement 🫶
  • Redo (R, Ctrl+R, #) — redoes a previously undone move. the comeback arc 📈
  • 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, so don't come for me if yours doesn't 🙈)
  • Solve — transforms the puzzle instantly into its solved state. now, this one varies a lot by game:
    • 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 — handy if you can't see how a solution could 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 actually 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 themselves — 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 peeking at the answer, you can just press Undo. no shame, bestie, we've all been there 💅

  • Quit (Q, Ctrl+Q) — closes the application entirely. bye babe 👋
  • Preferences — where supported, brings up a dialog allowing you to 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, you're just safer from your own chaos ✨

💖 Specifying games with the game ID 💖

okay so bestie, there are literally two ways to save a game spec out of a puzzle and bring it back later — or recreate it inside somebody else's copy of the same puzzle. 🎀

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 one of these pieces of text back into the program (via the same ‘Specific’ or ‘Random Seed’ menu options) later, 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 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 used to create the puzzle. Which 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 due to having seen the generated puzzle before anybody else. 🏁
  • It is 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 that it will 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 is a colon, and after that is 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 will be parameter data provided with the random seed which is not included in the descriptive game ID. This is because that parameter information is only relevant when generating puzzle grids, and is not important when playing them. Thus, for example, the difficulty level in Solo (sgt-solo(6)) is not 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 which your friend was having trouble with, but once you have finished playing it, when you ask for a new game it will automatically go back to the ‘Advanced’ difficulty which it was previously set on. 💅

🦋 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 allows you to 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 ⭐

(This section does not apply to the Mac OS X version.)

The games in this collection deliberately do not ever save information on to the computer they run on: they have no high score tables and no saved preferences. (This is because I expect at least some people to play them at work, and those people will probably appreciate leaving as little evidence as possible!) 🙈

However, if you do want to arrange for one of these games to default to a particular set of parameters, you can specify them on the command line.

The easiest way to do this is to set up the parameters you want using the ‘Type’ menu (see above), and then to 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 these 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.

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 🖥️

(This section only applies to the Unix port.)

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 option 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.
  • --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.

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.
  • --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).

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

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

okay bestie that's the whole page, you ate that 💅 this was sgt-loopy from the sgt-puzzles collection, dated July 2025 — and if you ever forget any of it, the full glow-up lives in that gzipped doc above. no cap. 👑💖

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