3.7.2.1. Blocking and unblocking cells
As you know, any classic crossword has basically two types of cells:
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normal cells with letters forming words
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blocked cells that separate words from each other
pycrossword also implements two types of blocked cells:
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normal blocked cells (inside the crossword grid)
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surrounding blocked cells (that help visualize non-standardly shaped crosswords)
Surrounding blocked cells are displayed using the same background color as the crossword grid area, thus making the cells appear "absent". When exported or printed, these cells will be transparent. Other than that, there is no difference between normal blocked cells and surrounding blocked cells. (And even the visual appearance of surrounding cells can be configured in
.)
See the below image showing a crossword with all three types of cells (normal, blocked and surrounding):
Fig. 3.7.2.1.1. Blocked cell activated (selected) in the Edit mode
 Surrounding blocked cell
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 Normal blocked cell
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 Normal unblocked cell
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You can organize your crossword by blocking and unblocking any cells in the grid.
To edit the grid, you must first switch on the
Edit mode by choosing the
menu, or pressing the

button on the
, or using the hotkey.
Once the Edit mode is on (the button on the
will be shown in the pressed state), you will be able to select blocked cells in the usual way (by clicking on them or navigating with the keyboard arrows). If you select a blocked cell, you will see that
pycrossword stores blocked cells internally as asterisk characters (
"*") and surrounding cells as tilde characters (
"~"):
Fig. 3.7.2.1.2. Blocked cell activated (selected) in the Edit mode
To unblock a blocked cell (turn it into a normal blank cell) just remove / replace its content by pressing , or typing in any allowed alphabetical character (as covered in
Editing words). This will delete or replace the internal asterisk or tilde character and thus remove the blocked cell:
Fig. 3.7.2.1.3. Cell unblocked: two new words appear as a result
Unblocking a cell changes the crossword structure, so, as you can see in the picture above, two new words appear after this operation: "o_b" (5 Down) and "u_e" (6 Across).
To block an unblocked (normal) cell, do the reverse: type the asterisk character ("*") to make a normal blocked cell or a tilde character ("~") to make a surrounding blocked cell. This will add a new blocked cell and ultimately split or truncate the crossing word(s):
Fig. 3.7.2.1.4. Cell blocked: the word "paddler" now split into "padd" and "er"
Of course, you can retype in the original (or another) letter, thus unblocking the cell again. Note that pycrossword doesn't navigate to another cell automatically when blocking or unblocking the active cell (unlike normal word editing).
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Since crossword grid editing (such as blocking and unblocking cells) causes the application to reconstruct all words from scratch, all word clues will be lost after each grid modification! This behavior is likely to change in the future, but for now just remember that you will have to rewrite the clues once you're done with grid editing.
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