Black Ink - What's New?

Black Ink 2.3.3

Oct 9, 2024

Fix a bug that prevented the puzzle chooser from defaulting to the previously selected month and year
Non-applicable comments in some visual NYT clues are no longer displayed
Printing improvements to avoid splitting a clue's text across pages or wrapping prematurely
Puzzle timer now records puzzle solve timing even if timer is not visible
If the app is opened in the background, puzzle timer won't start until app is activated
Accessibility Improvements:
- Puzzle square status such as being circled or shaded, marked incorrect, etc., are now announced by VoiceOver
- Fix a bug that could prevent changed values to cells being reflected by VoiceOver

Black Ink 2.3.2

May 4, 2024

Fix a bug that caused an alert to appear after every entry if "Automatic Correction" is enabled and the puzzle has no answers included.

Black Ink 2.3.1

Apr 30, 2024

New puzzle sources: Lex's Minis and Lex's Crosswords
Improved the accuracy of overlay image drawing over puzzle grid
Fixed the drawing of overlay image drawing in printed puzzles
Attempting to check or reveal answers on puzzles with no answers now displays an explanatory alert
Improve performance when opening the puzzle chooser when it has to search many years for an unsolved puzzle
Now adapts the window size more precisely when screen resolution changes
Fix a glitch that caused the Puzzle Notes text to no longer fit in the popover when detached from window
Puzzle chooser now ensures the selected source name is visible
Fix an issue that caused excessive memory use when opening and closing many puzzles
Now supports entering a hyphen or a period as a special entry answer

Black Ink 2.3

Mar 15, 2024

Now supports puzzles that specify graphical overlays on the puzzle
Now supports puzzles that specify multiple correct answers for a given square
Blank answers that are correct are now treated as such
Small adjustments to size and layout of puzzle title and copyright
Fix a bug that caused puzzles to close without being saved in some cases
Now requires macOS 10.15.4 or later

Black Ink 2.2.9

Feb 4, 2024

Fix a problem that prevented New York Times logins from succeeding
Now requires macOS 10.13 or later

Black Ink 2.2.8

Improvements to NYT authentication process
Calendar picker favors the current/latest puzzle date if a new puzzle has arrived since last opening
Calendar picker allows selection of valid puzzle days from the next/previous month

Black Ink 2.2.7

Mitigate issues that caused NYT to think Black Ink users are "robots"

Black Ink 2.2.6

Quick fix to restore Auto Check feature while solving

Black Ink 2.2.5

Prevent a superflous error message when canceling Across Lite export
Clicking the circle in the calendar interface now jumps to the current day
Fix a bug that prevented Edit -> Copy from working in the Puzzle Notes popover
Fix a bug that prevented the Puzzle Notes popover from staying open while detached from window
Answers with diacritical marks (like Ñ) are now considered correct even if diacritical is not included

Black Ink 2.2.4

Puzzle Notes popover is now keyboard navigable
Shift-arrow keystroke now changes focused word without changing the current direction
Puzzle picker now supports left arrow key to navigate from calendar view back to puzzle list
Refinements to focused square coloring
Check for Updates now includes a link to Version History when there are no new updates
Fix some subtle issues with determining the valid dates for downloading puzzles
Fix issues with text encoding of Across Lite puzzles with unicode characters

Black Ink 2.2.3

Puzzle picker improvements
- Undownloaded puzzle dates are now emphasized in the calendar
- Fix an issue that sometimes prevented the latest puzzle being opened
- Restore ability to press return in the Puzzle Chooser to open the selected puzzle
- The puzzle picker calendar now stays in the same general timeframe across subsequent openings
- If a valid puzzle is not found for a chosen date, the next available puzzle is now downloaded
Puzzle appearance
- Restore previous darkness of the puzzle highlight color in Dark Mode
- More improvements to positioning of letters in puzzle cells
- Reduced the spacing between clues in the clue lists
General usability
- New preference supports automatically closing window after solving a puzzle
- Fix a rare issue that prevented special answers from being verified/corrected/revealed correctly
- "Start Over" now clears any puzzle status flags as well as the entered answers

Black Ink 2.2.2

Fix a crashing bug when opening NYT puzzles on some Macs
Fix drawing of clue text with superscript and subscript characters

Black Ink 2.2.1

Color preferences can now be reset to default values
Printed puzzles now include any formatting, e.g. italics, bold, that are specified for clues
Puzzles based on east coast US timezone should now be available at the appropriate time in other time zones
Fix a bug in 2.2 that caused kerning of text to be disabled in the clue lists
Fix a bug that caused the app to sometimes become unresponsive while handling formatted clue text
Fix auto-shrinking of clue font size to fit longer clues without clipping them
Fix a variety of cosmetic glitches that affected older versions of macOS
Fix a bug that prevented clues and grid numbers from being printed by default
The puzzle timer no longer restarts automatically if a reopened puzzle is already solved
Checking a puzzle that is complete and correct now re-displays completion panel

Black Ink 2.2

New calendar-based puzzle browser for easier download of historical puzzles
Preferences now includes an option to run in Dark Mode, Light Mode, or System default
New York Times enhancements:
- Support for shaded squares (previously they were shown as circles)
- Support for italics, bold, and special characters in clue text
The app now prompts to open another puzzle after finishing with one
Other fixes and enhancements
- When solving, the delete key now moves to previous word if first letter is already blank
- Improved performance opening next puzzle for sources that have a large number of previously downloaded puzzles
- Improved drawing of checked/revealed/incorrect symbols especially on non-Retina displays
- Puzzle answers are now considered correct even if they don't match upper/lower case
- Fix a crashing bug that could occur if right-clicking on the preview puzzle in Preferences
- Improved the appearance of answer letters in cells, particular longer "Special Entry" answers
- Elapsed solving time is now saved with the puzzle when closing/re-opening
- The Copy Clue menu item no longer includes the clue number in the copied text
- Fix a crash that could occur when entering special answers in some puzzles
- Accessibility: puzzle chooser now hides puzzle source icons from VoiceOver

Black Ink 2.1.9

Fix an issue importing October 31, 2021 NYT puzzle
NYT Puzzles with "shaded squares" now appear as circled squares
Restored compatibility of saved NYT puzzles with Across Lite

Black Ink 2.1.8

Circled squares now appear correctly in NYT puzzles

Black Ink 2.1.7

Now downloads NYT puzzles without requiring Across Lite format
Improved memory usage performance when opening and closing puzzles
Prevents editing and deletion of built-in puzzle sources. Disable them if you want to hide them from the list.
Further improvements to the compatibilty of saved puzzles with Across Lite

Black Ink 2.1.6

Mac App Store only: Fix an issue that prevented premium feature purchases from being validated correctly

Black Ink 2.1.5

Saved puzzles are now compatible with being opened in Across Lite
Add a new Edit menu item to "Copy Clue" for the selected word
Fix a bug that could cause puzzle clues to print over the grid in some layouts
Fix a crashing bug when printing some puzzles
Improve VoiceOver behavior with respect to focused word after switching focus direction

Black Ink 2.1.4

Support for downloading NYT puzzles that are released the night before
Fix a bug that caused NYT downloads to fail from certain time zones with positive offsets from GMT

Black Ink 2.1.3

Restored support for logging in to download Premium NYT puzzles
Fix visual glitches with puzzle source icons after switching between dark and light modes
Fix a bug that could cause puzzle source icons to draw very large in the Open Web Puzzle menu
Improvements to letter alignment within puzzle squares
Fine-tune the placement of the focus ring when entering special answers
If special entry is open while the window is resized the field now moves with the window
Remove Chronicle of Higher Education whose puzzles are no longer updated

Black Ink 2.1.2

Added Washington Post Sunday to the web puzzles list
Added Liz Gorski's Crossword Nation premium puzzle
Fix a crashing bug that could occur while printing or soon afterwards
Fix a bug that could distort the puzzle shape when zooming in or out of full screen mode
Fix a bug that caused part of a checkbox label in preferences to be cut off

Black Ink 2.1.1

Adapt to support puzzles that mix diagramless and regular formats
Fix a bug that prevented puzzle window from being resized by dragging the window's edge
Selected clue is now scrolled to visible with a little buffer area around it in the clue list
Now marks any incorrect answers in the puzzle when enabling the "Automatic Correction" preference
Remove "move to unsolved after switching direction" preference as it was not behaving well

Black Ink 2.1

Performance enhancements for Apple Silicon based Macs
Now supports printing very large puzzles that require more than 2 pages
Fix issues printing in landscape mode or to small paper sizes

Black Ink 2.0.9

Work around a crashing bug at launch in some versions of macOS

Black Ink 2.0.8

Improved positioning of clue numbers and letters in puzzle grid
Improved layout of puzzle grid when printing
Web Puzzle panel now defaults to the last puzzle source opened
Added menu items for switching puzzle direction and moving to next and previous words
Fixed a crash that rarely occurred while printing
Fixed a crash that could occur when opening a new puzzle

Black Ink 2.0.7

Improved animation when entering full screen mode
Fix a bug that caused the timer to pause while entering a special answer entry
Fix a problem that caused the puzzle to leave a blank space at edge on some Macs
Fix the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Period for canceling a puzzle download
Fix some grid layout issues on non-Retina displays
Fix a bug that caused the first-launch registration panel to contain placeholder strings

Black Ink 2.0.6

Typing a number to jump to a clue now automatically commits without pressing enter
Change default navigation preferences to not pause cursor movement when changing directions
Fix the appearance of circled cells to prevent the circle being shifted a little too high
Fix a crash that could occur when tabbing in a puzzle with squares that do not correspond to any clue
Fix a bug that could change other answers when revealing a multi-character answer
Fix a bug that caused the wrong clue to show when reopening the app with a down clue selected

Black Ink 2.0.5

Heads up, New York Times fans! A recent change to the site prevents Black Ink from automatically logging in and downloading the latest puzzles. Existing users will be able to continue downloading puzzles for the time being, but new users will have to download puzzles from the NYT web site. We hope to find a workaround to this in the future.

Black Ink 2.0.4

Added support for The Inkubator puzzle source. They are offering a free, two-month trial!

Black Ink 2.0.3

General improvements to puzzle printing
Fixed a bug that caused puzzle clues to print in bold when fitting to a single page
Fixed the appearance of the Puzzle Notes when Dark Mode is enabled
Improved the centering of circles when drawn in puzzle squares
Decreased the severity of the shadow drawn on text in selected cells
Fixed a bug that caused the last row/column to be slightly shorter/narrower than other cells
Typing a clue number to jump to a clue now favors clue in the same direction as selected
Removed Emoji & Symbols menu item since it's not suitable for puzzle answer entry
Direct navigation by typing clue number now favors the orientation where the answer is not yet entered

Black Ink 2.0.2

Accessibility
- Improve "Speak items under the pointer" to speak the right clue for across or down depending on current focus
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that caused downloads of older WSJ puzzles to fail
- Fixed a bug that caused the puzzle window to drift off screen when making it larger
- Fixed an issue that prevented logging in to American Values Club accounts when passwords contain particular characters
- Fixed a bug that caused the timer to not be visible/started by default
- Improved error handling when a downloaded puzzle cannot be saved for whatever reason

Black Ink 2.0

Major new release featuring VoiceOver support, a refined visual interface, streamlined solving, and a free-for-all mode with limited features.

Black Ink 1.6.11

Update puzzle information for American Values Club

Black Ink 1.6.10

This update addresses a problem that prevented some puzzle downloads over HTTPS secure connections from completing as expected.

Black Ink 1.6.9

Fix downloads from the premium AV Club puzzle source.

Black Ink 1.6.8

Fix a login problem with some authenticated puzzle sources.

Black Ink 1.6.7

Fix a problem where puzzle grid answers could shift slightly while solving
Add NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching to Info.plist to depending on high power GPU
Workaround a bug that could cause Black Ink to crash when waking a Touch Bar Mac from sleep

Black Ink 1.6.6

Tabbing to a new word now skips completed words when "Move to Blank" preference is set
Fix a crash that could occur when opening a damaged puzzle file
Fix a UI glitch that caused multi-character entry focus ring to be wider on one side
Eliminate some issues caused by entering single-character answer in multi-character entry mode

Black Ink 1.6.5

Disable system window tabbing on macOS Sierra, because it doesn't work well with puzzle document windows

Black Ink 1.6.4

Update to use more secure HTTPS based URLs when connecting to Red Sweater's web site

Black Ink 1.6.3

Black Ink will now try to download an earlier puzzle if the latest puzzle from a source is already downloaded
Fix an issue that could cause NYT login to fail repeatedly even with good login info
Switch to using Helvetica consistently across the board for printout text

Black Ink 1.6.2

Fix an issue that prevented NY Times Premium login request from appearing
Fine-tune drawing of clue numbers so they aren't so close to the left edge of squares

Black Ink 1.6.1

New support for premium puzzle downloads from New York Times and American Values Club
Fix a bug where the puzzle chooser would appear upon launch even when already opening a document
Fix a crash that could sometimes occur while closing a puzzle

Black Ink 1.6

Sandboxed for increased security
Now supports autosave and document version browsing on 10.7 Lion or later
Clue list rows now resize height to guarantee showing entire clue
Puzzle solving - improvements to the mechanics of when checked and revealed indicators are shown
Fix an issue where typing a clue number too high for puzzle could crash
Fix a crash when starting the puzzle Timer on Mac OS X 10.6.8

Black Ink 1.5.3

Fix broken behavior in 1.5.2 where clicking on the Dock didn't re-open the puzzle browser
Support GateKeeper for Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X 10.8

Black Ink 1.5.2

Fix an issue that caused the puzzle browser window to erroneously report and expired evaluation period

Black Ink 1.5.1

Fix printing bug that omitted the puzzle grid by default for new users
Only show Tool Tip content for squares that have special characters
Fix appearance of demo-version info graphic on puzzle browser window
Fix an issue causing the Crash Reporter to fail on Mac OS X 10.5

Black Ink 1.5

Support new options for printing puzzle grid at the bottom of the page
Cleaner printing layout for fit-on-one-sheet printing
Improve speed of printing puzzles

Black Ink 1.4.1

Fix clue lists scrollbar appearance on Lion
Fix a problem where puzzles would no longer open after installing official Across Lite app

Black Ink 1.4

Printing improvements
- Support a new "fit on one sheet of paper" print option
- Support live-updating of print preview as settings are changed
- Fix issues with printing when clue list printing is disabled
- Work around a printing issue on a pre-release version of Mac OS X
Other Fixes
- Prevent possibility of crashes with some accidental keystrokes in puzzle view
- Remove Houston Chronicle as it stopped publishing Mar 25, 2011
- Prevent double-quoting titles of puzzles already in quotes
- Further fixes for Mac OS X 10.4 functionality
- Fix to show puzzle document names as "Black Ink Puzzle Document" in Finder
- Restore ability to add custom puzzle sources to the default list

Black Ink 1.3.1

This release restores functionality for 10.4 based Macs

Black Ink 1.3

Rework the Startup preferences to be more user-friendly with reopening puzzles
Give keyboard shortcut Cmd-K to "Check Current Letter"
Now includes automatic crash reporter
Fix a bug that caused Black Ink to hang when printing on rare occasions
Fix a bug that caused puzzle timer to be placed off screen edge
Fix a bug that could prevent puzzle solving menu items from being enabled
Fix a bug that prevented canceling a stalled puzzle download from working

Black Ink 1.2.3

Fix crashing bug on launch with 10.4-based computers
Fix possible crash pressing return in puzzle browser when no source selected

Black Ink 1.2.2

Fix behavior of Open as Unsaved when the puzzle is not already open
Fix issues with showing and hiding the puzzle Timer window

Black Ink 1.2.1

Fix issue with puzzles that have e.g. a blank center square (NYT 7/22/10)

Black Ink 1.2

Printing improvements
- New option lets you choose whether the grid appears on left or right of page
- Clue text is now less likely to be split across two columns
Puzzle zoom factor is now remembered when you open new puzzles
Supports horizontal scrolling with Mighty Mouse and trackpads
Fix an occasional crashing bug when downloading puzzles
Fix a crash when trying to use OS X definition hotkey over puzzle grid

Black Ink 1.1.9

Update the Philadelphia Sunday and Wall Street Journal puzzle sources.

Black Ink 1.1.7

Puzzle Sources
- Fix the Chronicle of Higher Education source
- Remove Syndey Morning Herald - the paper has stopped publishing new puzzles
- Fix a bug that could cause downloads to stop working until relaunching the app
Bug fixes and minor improvements
- Can now hover over a long puzzle title to see a tool tip window with the entire content
- Fix a visual bug with "Open As Unsolved" when the puzzle is already open
- Fix a bug that prevented numeric answers from being checked correctly
- Fix a bug that caused direction to change abruptly in puzzle that starts in "down" mode
Multi-character answer improvements
- When revealing a multiple character answer, make sure the "revealed" color applies to all characters
- Fix check-as-you-type for multi-character answers
- Enter Multiple Letters menu item is now called "Enter Special Letters"
- After entering multiple character answer, now jumps to next square same as when entering single
- Fix a bug that caused reveal/correct to fail on some multi-character answers

Black Ink 1.1.6

Fix a crash that could occur while changing preferences
Fix more issues with puzzle corruption when entering multiple character answers

Black Ink 1.1.5

Fix a puzzle corruption bug when entering multiple characters

Black Ink 1.1.4

Fix a bug where the selection jumped inappropriately to end of word
Fix a crashing bug related to selecting the wrong starting square on puzzles with black square in top-left

Black Ink 1.1.3

New puzzle sources:
- Chicago Reader
- Onion AV Club
- Chronicle of Higher Education
Remove Little Rock Daily Record - no longer published
Bug fixes
- Fix a problem with opening the wrong puzzle source when a source is disabled
- Fix an issue printing puzzles of unusual dimensions

Black Ink 1.1.2

Fix display of the "puzzle correctly solved" dialog
Fix to make sure download dialog closes after download
Fix problems with duplicating and adding custom puzzle sources
Fix a bug that caused last few clues of a puzzle to sometimes not print

Black Ink 1.1.1

Fix a problem in 1.1 that caused blank puzzle printouts for some users

Black Ink 1.1

Dramatically improved puzzle printing quality
Improved highlighting of active clue in clue list
Fix for crashing scenario when migrating preferences to a new Mac
Improved reliability of puzzle downloads
Fix some bugs with timer restarting after pausing
Updated default puzzle sources
- New: Boston Globe Sunday
- New: Little Rock Daily Record
- Removed: Washington Post Sunday

Black Ink 1.0.9

Fix problem that caused puzzle letters too draw too small
Fix zooming of non-square puzzles

Black Ink 1.0.8

Automatically stop timer when puzzle completed successfully
Fix a bug that caused drawer edge preference not to be respected
Update Houston Chronicle puzzle URL
Fix a rare hanging bug when keyboard navigating some puzzles

Black Ink 1.0.7

Menu items for making puzzle larger/smaller
Add keyboard shortcut for opening web puzzle chooser
Fix correctly-solved detection for puzzles with multi-character answers

Black Ink 1.0.6

Fix a bug in 1.0.5 that could cause the web puzzles source to be cleared.

Black Ink 1.0.5

Update the URL for the Thinks.com web puzzle source.

Black Ink 1.0.4

Fix corruption with puzzles containing multi-character answers
Don't show puzzle browser if opened with a double-clicked puzzle

Black Ink 1.0.3

Improves reliability of web puzzle downloads, by downloading again if previous attempt was corrupted or the puzzle was not yet available on the server.

Black Ink 1.0.2

Fix memory leaks
Allow selection for copy/paste of clue text and puzzle credits
Fix for "smart quotes" and similar characters found in some puzzles
Fix bug with puzzles having no value for any of author, title, or copyright
Add menu link to "Get More Puzzles..."
Fix "Show By Text" color order in Preferences
Center checkbox in web sources table and fix bug with size of table header for Web Sources

Black Ink 1.0.1

Fix a crash when loading puzzles of differing height/width (e.g. 15x16)
Fix inconsistencies in respecting "insertion movement" preferences

Black Ink 1.0

First release. (Formerly MacXword)