Sympathy Tutorial

3.9 Filling the Grid

At the end of the previous step, the Letters Latent gimmick will have been set up appropriately. In this step we will create some filled grids and commit one of them. We will cover filling in a single step, as this has already been discussed in detail in Module 1 Step 10 and Module 1 Step 11.

To start Automatic Filling, click (Filling|Fill) on the Filling toolbar. During the next few seconds you will see the grid changing as Sympathy creates the fills for you. When it has completed its 10 fills, and the result box has been dismissed, the Sympathy window should look like this:

Step 3.9 Initial Image

The tooltips are particularly useful in assessing grids with gimmicks, as the answer often isn't obvious from the light contents. In the above example, 7 across has been filled with zakuski as confirmed by the tooltip (k is the third letter of the message). The status bar shows the same information for the selected light.

You can now use the (Filling|Previous Fill) and (Filling|Next Fill) buttons on the Filling toolbar to assess all the fills.

When you have chosen a fill you like, 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
Grid View Status Bar