Sympathy Tutorial

1.11 Choosing and Committing an Automatic Fill

At the end of the previous step, the grid should have been completely filled and look similar to this:

Step 1.11 Initial Image

Note that the words entered into the grid may not be exactly the same as shown in the picture: in automatic filling, the first word is by default entered at random. This helps give you a variety of different fills to choose from. The automatically filled answers are in a different color to indicate that they are "uncommitted" - they don't become a permanent part of the grid until you commit them (see below).

When filling completed, it indicated that 6 fills were found. The second area of the status bar shows Fill 6 of 6, indicating that the sixth of the six fills is being shown. As there is more than one fill, you can click (Filling|Previous Fill) and (Filling|Next Fill) on the Filling toolbar to see the other fills.

Sympathy has several features to help you assess the automatic fill. If you position the mouse pointer over a light, the dictionary form of the answer is shown in a tooltip; the same information is shown in the status bar if you select a light. This helps identify proper names and phrases. [USWordNet] in the example tooltip above is the name of the dictionary - this is important when doing fills with more than one dictionary.

For now, choose one of the fills at random and click (Filling|Commit Fill) on the Filling Toolbar. This will make the uncommitted answers a permanent part of the grid, as if you had entered them using the keyboard. The grid should then appear as at the start of the next step (although the answers may be different).

Relevant Help Sections

Filling Toolbar
Filling|Previous Fill Command
Filling|Next Fill Command
Filling|Commit Fill Command
Answer Tooltips