Black Ink 2.2.3: Puzzle Picker, Appearance, and Usability Improvements

May 18th, 2022

Black Ink 2.2.3 is now available on the Black Ink site and on the Mac App Store.

This update includes a number of improvements to the new calendar-based puzzle picker, addressing some bugs and also introducing a new behavior that highlights un-downloaded puzzles by showing their dates in bold:

Puzzle chooser window showing unsolved puzzles in bold

This will make it easier to navigate historical puzzles without bothering to re-open puzzles that have previously been downloaded. Of course, if you do want to re-open a puzzle that is already downloaded, you can select it again from the calendar. In the future I hope to offer more details in this panel such that you can tell whether a downloaded puzzle is partially or fully completed.

Here is the complete list of changes for this release:

  • 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

If you enjoy Black Ink, please consider writing a review or rating the app on the Mac App Store, and spreading the word on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks for your support.