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25th April 2008 : PixiePaint |
This picture, from Tyler (age 10), is the 4000th picture that has been submitted to PixiePaint since I released the program. There has been some amazing paintings by kids of all ages (from 1 to 150!). Have a look at the gallery for other star paintings or have a go yourself. Click on the Pixie Paintings! menu item in the main menu to the left to start.
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22nd April 2008 : Spy Wordsearch |
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A set of wordsearches this week starting with this easy version (6x6 grid). These all use our new format and some of you may have noticed that the older wordsearches are also moving slowly to this format.
Medium difficulty (10x10 grid). All of these wordsearches also have printable versions as well for anyone wanting to do them offline, or even print them out for a school class.
Hard version (15x15 grid)
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30th March 2008 : Question du Lapin |
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Another unexpected break, but things should be back to normal now... This is a new puzzle for more experienced puzzlers based on a classic puzzle first made in 1900 called "Question du Lapin". Enjoy.
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26th January 2008 : Twister Jigsaw |
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We're back! After a bit of a break from publishing puzzles (but doing a lot of work in the background) we're back to releasing some more puzzling distractions. This one is for the 5 to 7 years section (or inexperienced puzzlers) and is a quite easy jigsaw puzzle where you have to turn the pieces to make the picture. You can see some of our background efforts in the puzzle - for example nicer graphics - that form the new 2008 style.
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4th November 2007 : Spooky spot-the-difference |
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A bit late for Halloween, but I've added an online version of the spooky ghost scene puzzle. It's great for helping younger kids with their mouse control as well as their powers of observation.
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30th October 2007 : Spooky spot-the-difference |
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As it's Halloween, I've added a new spooky ghost scene printable spot-the-difference puzzle in activities. Have fun!
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12th November 2007 : Ring Puzzle |
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A quick puzzle (not interactive, just animated) in 10+ years. Have a go!
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Things have been slow on the puzzles lately as I've been working on some new technology to improve future puzzles and I'm working on a major upgrade to PixiePaint (I'll finally be including some clipart!). If you're curious what I'm up to see my development blog - it's technical but you can see bits of whats on the horizon...
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8th Aug: Peg Solitaire Designer |
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I've updated the peg solitaire game to allow you to design your own puzzles, submit them to us and play other people's designs. I'll be adding some further puzzles into it this week.
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20th July: English Peg Solitaire |
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Another puzzle for you this week! This time it is Peg Solitaire with the traditional English board with 33 squares and 32 counters. It can be finished in 18 moves but is not easy!
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17th July: Jumping Frog Puzzle |
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This is a harder version of the Jumping Frogs puzzle with 8 instead of 6 frogs. Have fun!
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15th July: Jumping Frog Puzzle |
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I've added a Jumping Frogs puzzle to the 8 to 10 years section. This one is a new version of an old French puzzle that dates from about 1880. I've also added a loading progress bar to this game and I'll be adding it to all the newer games and puzzles.
Update: I've added a printable version of this puzzle and also the solution.
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22nd June : Harder Jigsaws |
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Continuing with jigsaws this week, I've added some more challenging ones. This first one is for 5 to 7 year olds and is a 16 piece version of the pre-school one.
This one is a lot more challenging (36 pieces) and probably only the older kids in the 5 to 7 year old age range will be able to do it. My 7 year old finished it, but took a while. There are some pieces that look similar, so it is more difficult.
This is a 25 piece jigsaw for the 8 to 10 years section. This is less pieces than the previous puzzle but is much more difficult as a lot of the pieces are of water! It takes good powers of observation...
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It's been a long time since we added puzzles to the pre-school section, so this week we have made some 9 piece jigsaw puzzles. The first one is of our octopus picture. It's been well tested by my 3 year old!
This is another jigsaw puzzle of the same style but it has a photograph rather than a drawing. This one is harder than the previous one as two of the pieces are only slightly different.
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This week, I've finally added an on-line viewing gallery for the best pictures submitted from the Pixie Paint art program to Pixie Paintings!. I'll also be adding a search facility in the near future that will allow you to view any picture submitted. The size of the gallery shows just how active you have all been in the last year - and this is only a small selection!
The art gallery pictures are in date order. The latest pictures will appear on the first page and older pictures on later pages.
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We've added an online version of the classic Four-in-a-row game (connect four) in 5 to 7 years. Be warned - it is not a push-over even at this level!
A harder version of the game (the computer makes less mistakes) is in 8 to 10 years.
After a busy weekend of making paper planes, I decided to put the best design on the website under Activities. Have fun!
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Dr Jekyll's Cylinder Puzzle in 8 to 10 years
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After a long holiday travelling to the USA and Ireland, I'm back! I'm just finishing off some new content and I'll post it later on this week...
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A new spot-the-difference puzzles this week, including our first online version!
Online Jungle spot the difference puzzle in 5 to 7 years
There is also the print-out version in the usual place:
Printable Jungle spot the difference puzzle in Activities
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Another maths puzzle for older puzzlers
Difficult number triangle maths puzzle in 10+ years
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Some maths puzzles this week based on "Magic Squares". A magic square is a grid of numbers with some amazing mathematical properties. The first of these puzzles is based on an ancient Chinese legend and the second on a very famous picture. Click on the icons below to find out more.
The Lo Shu 3x3 magic square in 8 to 10 years
This 4x4 magic square maths puzzle in 10+ years is based on a very famous engraving by Albrecht Dürer
I've also been doing some behind-the-scenes work too. You should find that the web-pages now load faster and that the voting system should now work.
Finally, I've made some more minor changes to the Pixie Paint online painting program to make the new Export facility easier to use. There have been some great pictures sent in this week!
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As promised, the first of the Pixie Paint changes has been added. New features include the ability to print out your pictures using the browser and even save the pictures to your computer as an image file. This means you can save the pictures and e-mail them or use them as a background for your computer. It also means that you can print out the blank colouring-in pages as well.
The painting program will also now work on screen-sizes of 800x600, although the icons may look a bit squashed. For those people lucky enough to have 1280x1024 resolution, the painting area will now also be bigger.
There are a lot of other minor changes which should make painting easier as well. These include: the brush size will be remembered as you move from painting to line-drawing; you can now set the size of the shape outline from within that menu and it will remember what shape you picked; and many other bug fixes. The rectangle drawing now draws from the first point you click rather than from the centre - the old method was proving difficult for people. Circles still are drawn by clicking the centre point and moving the mouse to set the size.
As usual, please take the time to email me your comments using the contact us main menu link.
Apologies also to anyone unable to send a picture in during a small number of periods during the last few days - a lot of changes were made at various times over the weekend which could have affected things.
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A few new wordsearches this week...
A Winter Holidays wordsearch puzzle in 5 to 7 years
And a more difficult Winter Holidays wordsearch puzzle in 8 to 10 years
I've been so impressed by the great pictures that have been sent in recently, that I've been working hard on making Pixie Paint much better this week. I haven't put the changes on the website yet as I haven't finished yet but expect these features soon:
- Printing! (at last) : You will soon be able to save your picture as an image file or print it out from your browser.
- Stamps : these should be available soon
- How to draw : I'm adding a learn to draw section where you will be able to interactively learn how to draw cartoons.
Check back soon. In the meantime, I've added a new coloring-in picture...
A cartoon face to get you started. Let your imagination run riot and add new hairstyles, eyebrows, beards, moustaches, noses, eyes, ears... I'm going to display the best ones here on the front page!
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As promised, I've added another find-a-word called "Seeing Stars" to 5 to 7 years
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Its nearly time for the Chinese New Year, so I've added an activities page where you can find out what your Chinese Animal is. Dixie is a Pig and Trixie is a rat! You can find it by clicking the icon to the left of this text.
I've also added a new type of puzzle called find-a-word. Its a bit like a word search, except there is only one word to find. You have to try and find all the times that a word appears. Only, we don't tell you how many times you can find it!!! The first one is in the 8 to 10 years section. I'll be adding more later in the week. Click the icon on the left to go to it...
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Online Painting and Colouring-in Program! |
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Older news can be found in the news section
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