Honeycomb Hotel is a game of logic and deduction. It provides over 65,000 puzzles in each of small, medium, and large sizes. The goal of each puzzle is to determine the placements of images within the honeycomb (up to 37 different cells on the large puzzles) and to determine the exact path that runs through each cell of the honeycomb. You're provided with sufficient clues (presented graphically) to determine all of this, using clear, cold, precise logic. Are you up to the task, or are you too buzzy?

If you're a teacher and think you might be able to use Honeycomb Hotel to teach logic in your classroom, visit the web site: Teaching With Honeycomb Hotel.

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Additional Image Sets for version 2.0 of Honeycomb Hotel

Once downloaded, install these into the HCH folder for your game. For example, if you installed the game in the default location of C:\EKS\HCH, then just accept that path in the unZIP dialog. If you installed the game in E:\GREAT_STUFF\EKS\HCH, then you would unZIP these image sets into that same folder. (TECHNICAL NOTE: the image sets actually get put in the IMAGES sub-folder of the HCH folder, but the self-extracting unZIP program knows that, so it will add 'IMAGES' onto the end of whatever path you provide. But if you unZIP the file manually, make sure you get the .BMP file into the IMAGES folder!) The files in this section are EXE files, so once they're downloaded, just run them like any other program and they will unZIP themselves to whatever folder you specify (a dialog will prompt you for your preferred folder).

CGGAME40 - A higher resolution version of the CG_Game image set (uploaded Dec 10, 2007).

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INFORMATION FOR THE ADVANCED PLAYER:

The Honeycomb Hotel program was designed to make many of the same deductions that a human player would make, and that's how it generates the puzzles for the game. However, it is NOT programmed to make ALL possible deductions. That means that frequently a human player can make some deductions that the program would never figure out. The reason I tell you this is...

In the higher puzzle numbers, the game uses "What-If" logic to make some deductions (see the Help in the program for more about this). Some puzzles require more What-Ifs than others (for the program to solve the puzzle). The number of What-Ifs required by the program to solve a given puzzle does NOT have a direct relationship to the number of What-Ifs required for a human to solve that same puzzle. However, it can be an indicator of the puzzle's difficulty level. (This count can be viewed using the 'W' key, when the puzzle number is greater than or equal to 15000. See "What Is WHAT IF and How Is It Used" in the game's Help screens.)

So... you might wonder, "Which puzzles have the HIGHEST What-If counts or requirements?" or "Which puzzles have the most IS_LEFT_OF types of clues?" or some other crazy question. :-) You can find out that information by downloading the LINFO.ZIP file and unZIP'ing it to get the LINFO.CSV file (LINFO.ZIP is about 470 Kbytes, the unZIP'd LINFO.CSV file is about 1.7 Mbytes). This is a "comma separated values" file (common in the spreadsheet and database worlds). Each line of the file contains information regarding ONE of the Large puzzles. There is one line for EACH of the 65,536 Large puzzles. You can load this file into a spreadsheet or database program, and then sort it based upon whatever criteria you choose. The information (numbers) on each line of the file are:

NOTE: this file was generated for the 1.0 version of Honeycomb Hotel, which numbered the puzzles from 0 to 65535. The 2.0 version of the game numbers the puzzles from 1 to 65536. They're exactly the same puzzles, just numbered differently. So, when using this file, you will need to add ONE to the puzzle number in the file to get the "real" puzzle number in version 2.0 of the game.

Number of the puzzle
Number of "image what-if" deductions the program had to make to solve it
Number of "path what-if" deductions the program had to make to solve it
Number of "given" locations on the playing board at the start of the puzzle
Number of "right diagonal" clues
Number of "left diagonal" clues
Number of "to the left of" clues
Number of "next to, unknown wall/path" clues
Number of "next to, wall between" clues
Number of "next to, path between" clues
Number of "has path" clues

All of these numbers assumes a Handicap setting of 0. If you have a higher Handicap setting, then that will effect the "given" count, as well as the number of "what-if" deductions necessary to solve it.

ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE FILES (LOCALIZATION)

This game can be "localized". Almost all of the text used in the menus and dialogs are stored in a separate ASCII text file, and the Help screens are stored in another ASCII text file. These files can be translated to other languages (English and Danish are currently included with the game). The Danish translations were done by Michael Madsen. Below are the other available translations that have been done after the release of the game. To use them, you will need to download and run the desired language installation file. The default folder for the game is C:\EKS\HCH, and the language files are stored in the LANGUAGE sub-folder. The self-extracting ZIP files (EXE files) include the LANGUAGE sub-folder, so you just need to specify where the game is installed (if different than the default).

1) Download the desired language installation file.
2) Run the downloaded installation file.
3) If necessary, change the installation path if you installed the game in a different location.
4) Click the UNZIP button to install the files.
5) Run the game, and click on the Player menu, then on the Language sub-menu.
6) Select the desired language from the available lists for "strings" (menus and dialogs) and Help, then click OK.
7) Due to a bug in the program, some strings may not display properly until you exit the game and restart it, but will work fine from that point on.

The available translation languages are:

Deutsch (German) - strings only, no help, from Stephan Schmid
Svenska (Swedish) - strings only, no help, from Tom Törnroos

If you're interested in translating the strings or help into another language, see the Keys, Toolbar, and The Menus Help screen, which has a section that discusses this subject. Also, there are comments at the beginning of the STR_language.TXT and HLP_language.TXT files that describe the format.

KINT Interpreter Source Code

If you're interested in the KINT interpreter source codes (which are mentioned on the Help page about porting the game to non-Microsoft OS's) see the KINT web page. This will NOT be of interest to you, I suspect, unless you're a programmer.

Everett Kaser Software
PO Box 403
Albany OR 97321-0117
Phone: (541) 928-5259 between 8am and 8pm Pacific Time daily.
email: everett@kaser.com