EXCALIBUR 455-3 User Manual

Touch-Screen

Crossword

Puzzle

Model 455

o n gratulations on your purchase of Excalibu r
Electronics The New York Times Touch-Screen Cross-

C

word! Now you can take the best crosswords in English
with you anywhere! You don’t need paper, pencil, or eraser. The
included stylus and The New Yo rk Ti m e s To u c h - S c r e e n
Crossword’s technology does it all.

The New York Times Touch-Screen Crossword is easy to use and

enjoy. But be sure to use it safely. Before getting started, please read this
manual thoroughly, especially noting safety, care and battery informa­tion. Keep your manual for future reference.

Table of Contents

Installing Batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3

Layout of the Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Layout of the Onscreen Keyboard . . . 4

Functions of the Icons . . . . . . . . . . .. 4

Locating & Using Your Stylus . . . . . . 5

Using Your NY Times Crossword . . . .5

Getting started (5), Choosing the level (5),
Choosing the puzzle (6), Working a puzzle
(6), Viewing hints (6), Filling in letters (7),

The leg e n d a ry King A rthur brandished a ma gic
swo r d, Excalibu r, from which we take our company
name. With this unique weapon in his hands, he could not be
vanquished.

Solving (7), Deleting or erasing (8), Using
the spell function (8), Completing the
puzzle (9), Starting a new puzzle (9),
Auto power-off (9), Competing against
friends (9)

Special Care & Handling . . . . . . . . .10

Battery Information . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

90-Day Limited Warranty . . . . . . . . 11

Although E xcalibu r Electron ic s can’t
claim the magical secrets of Merlin, King
A rt h u r ’s cour t wi za rd, someti mes o ur
patented technology may make it seem a s
if we could. The NewYork Times Touch Screen
Crossword is another unmatched innova t i o n
of Excalibur Electronics .

We make you think.

2

Installing Batteries

Your New York Times Touch-
Screen Crossword requires 2
AAA batteries. Be sure to review
“Battery Information” on page

10. Carefully turn the unit over
so that the top side is face-down
on a soft surface, such as a towel
or magazine. You’ll find the bat­tery compartment on the unit’s
back. Use a small Phillips screw­driver to remove the screw. Lift
off the battery compartment lid.

Install 2 AAA batteries, making
sure to match the polarity (+ and

-) with the diagram inside the
battery compartment. (See dia­gram at
right. Place
the battery
c o m p a r t ­ment lid’s tabs in their slots and
snap the compartment door back
on. Replace the screw and gently
tighten it.

Layout of The New York Times Touch-Screen Crossword

Reset Button

(on back)

Crossword Puzzle

QWERTY Keyboard

3

Layout of Onscreen Keyboard

“QWERTY” Keyboard

Sound On/Off
Key

On/Off Key
New Game Key

Solve Puzzle Key

Your unit uses a touch-screen “QWERTY” keyboard. A“QWERTY” keyboard arranges
the letter-keys just like your home, school, or work computer keyboard does.

Hint Key
Clue Key

Delete Key

Solve Letter Key
SolveWord Key

Functions of the Icons (Onscreen Buttons)

Your unit’s buttons are easy to
use.

RESET: Press this button if your

unit functions improperly.

ON/OFF Press this to turn the unit

on and off.

SOUND Press to toggle sound on

and off.

NEW GAME Press to start a new

puzzle.

HINT Press to see the “across”

and “down” hints for a selected
letter.

CLUE Once you’ve filled in one or

more letters, tap and hold this key
to check spelling. Any letter that
is incorrect will be marked with a
spell-check icon. Once you re-

lease the CLUE key, the original
letters will return.

D E L E T E Press to delete letters

filled in on the selected letter,
word, or all letters filled in on the
entire puzzle.

PUZZLE Press key to solve the

entire puzzle.

WORD Press WORD to solve the

selected word.

LETTER Press this keyto solve the

selected letter.

A-Z: Use these keys (which are

arranged into standard “QWER­TY” key b o a r d, just like yo u r
computer keyboard) to enter your
answers.

4

Locating & Using Your Stylus

Your stylus is the key to com­municating with your New York
Times Touch-Screen Crossword.
On the back of your unit, between
b a t t e ry compartment and the
reset button, yo u ’ll find a
recessed cradle running diagonal­ly across the unit. Inside is the
stylus. Carefully remove the sty­lus by pressing gently on the tab
near its top and pushing it up

Using Your New York Times Crossword

Getting started

Gently touch the pointed end
of the stylus to the ON/OFF icon at
the bottom left of the keyboard.
The first time you do this after
installing batteries or pushing the

RESET button, your screen will

display:

New York Times

Crossword

Puzzle

Choosing the level

Next, use your stylus to press
the NEW GAME button. Your dis­play will show the screen at right.

until you can hold the stylus eas­ily and pull it out completely.

Note: Remove the stylus by
pulling away from its cradle until
its tip clears the brace at the top
of the indentation.

When you want to store your
stylus again, just slide it back into
its cradle, pointed-end first.

Use your stylus to touch the
box corresponding to the level of
challenge you want. (Selecting
“MIXED” will give you a variety
of puzzles, from easy to hard. We
suggest, unless you are a very
experienced crossword playe r,

5

that you choose the “EASY” level
to get started.)

Choosing the puzzle

When you select a level, the
numbers of the puzzles corre­sponding to your selected level
will appear on the screen. Your
display will look like this:

“NEXT PAGE” to move through
the screens. The screen will dis­p l ay “L A S T PA G E” when the
final page of choices has been
displayed.

Working a puzzle

As soon as you touch a num­ber with the stylus, your display
will fill with the chosen cross­word puzzle. Naturally, all
“boxes” (each indicating a single
letter) are blank. Blanks between
words are indicated by a solid
black “box,” just as in the puzzles
printed in The NewYork Times.

Touch any of the numbers to

display a puzzle.

This feature allows you to
select favorites, or avoid selecting
puzzles you’ve already worked. It
also allows you to compete with
others, by seeing who can work
the same puzzle the fa s t e s t .
(Note: there are more than 1,000
puzzles in your New York Times
Touch-Screen Crosswo r d, so it
requires more than one screen
“page” to list the puzzles. Touch

You’ll see the cursor flashing
in the first blank “box” at the top
left of the puzzle. You can move
the cursor to any open square you
want simply by touching that
square. You can’t move the cursor
to a blocked-out (black) square.

Viewing hints

Naturally, you’ll want to see
the hint so that you can try to
solve the word. Simply touch the

HINT key with your stylus. A new

screen will be displayed. At the

6

top, you will be shown the
“ACROSS” hint. At the bottom,
you will be shown the “DOWN”
hint. Your display will look some­thing like this:

Your puzzle will not look
exactly the same as our example,
but you can see that the hint at the
top gives you the number of let­ters in the “ACROSS” word, rep­resented by the five dashes. Then,
it gives you a hint.

The hint at the bottom of the
screen indicates that in this exam­ple, the “DOWN” word is a
s even-letter word meaning
“CERAMIC ARTISANS.”

L e t ’s use this example to
explain how your unit works.

Filling in letters

With your stylus, you’d touch

HINT again to leave the hint screen

and return to the puzzle screen.

Suppose you wanted to try to
solve the “ACROSS” with the
word “POLES.” With your stylus,
yo u ’d touch the “P” on yo u r
onscreen keyboard, and the letter
would appear in the first box.
(This would make the letter “P”
appear as the first letter of both
words.) At the same time, you
would see two arr ows on the
screen, indicating that you should
select the across or down arrow
by touching either with your sty­lus. You’d touch the arrow point ­ing to the right. Then, the cursor
would automatically move to the
next square, allowing you to fill
in the rest of the word “POLES.”

Solving letters, words & puzzle

Suppose, in our example, you
were stumped about the
“DOWN” word. You could ask
for a specific letter, word—or
even the whole puzzle—to be
solved. With your stylus, you’d
press LETTER, WORD OR PUZZLE.
Suppose you touched WORD.Your

7

screen would look like this:

SOLVE WORD?

Y/N

By asking you this question,
your unit is safeguarding against
giving you a clue you do not
want. If we confirm that we want
the clue by tapping “Y” with our
stylus, the following screen
would be displayed:

Because we want the
“DOWN” word solved, we could
touch the box to the left of
“ D OW N,” but we could also
select “BOTH” to confirm our
choice of “POLES.” In a
moment, you’d be returned to the
puzzle screen, and both words
would be filled in. (You’d see that
you were right about “POLES,”
and that the “DOWN” answe r
was “POTTERS.”)

By progressing in this way,
with or without getting help from
the solve functions, you

can work

through the entire puzzle.

Deleting or erasing

This function is just like eras­ing an answer you’ve made in a
paper-and-pencil crossword. Place
the cursor on the letter you want
to delete, and touch the DELETE
key with the stylus. Three options
will appear on screen: “DELETE
LETTER,” “DELETE WORD,”
and “DELETE PUZZLE.”

When you choose to delete a
wo r d, your unit will display
ACROSS or DOWN, giving you
a chance to select which you want
to erase.

Using the spell function

You can touch and hold the

CLUE key to check the spelling of

all words in the puzzle. All of the
incorrect letters will be replaced
by a spell-check icon, alerting
you that you’ve made a mistake,
without giving you the answer.

When you release the CLUE

8

key, the spell-check icons will
disappear and the original letters
will be displayed.

Completing the puzzle

A puzzle is completed when
all of the squares have been filled
with the correct letters. Whether
you complete the puzzle by using
the SOLVE keys or by working
each word out, when you’re fin­ished, the screen will display:

PUZZLE

COMPLETED

TIME 045M025S

The third line tells you how long
it took to solve the puzzle, in total
minutes and seconds.

Starting a new puzzle

You can begin a new puzzle
any time by touching the NEW

GAME

key. Your display will ask
you to confirm your choice—so
that you don’t lose your current
game by accident. Then the dis­play will give you the choice of
levels.

ON/OFF button

Touch the ON/OFF key at any

time during game play to turn the
game off. Touch the ON/OFF key
again to turn the game on, and
you will continue playing the cur­rent game.

Auto power-off

To save batteries, your unit
will automatically turn off after
three minutes of inactivity. If this
happens while you are still play­ing, touch the ON/OFF key to wake
up the game. You will continue
playing the current game.

Competing against friends

You can see that by remem­bering the level and number of
the puzzle you select, you can
compete against others. The one
who solves the puzzle in the least
time wins!

You can allow a specifi c
number of letter and word clues
per player—the more ex p e r i­enced the players, the fewer the
clues. Or you can make a rule that
each use of the letter clue adds,
for example, 10 seconds to your
time and each use of the word
clue adds a minute. You’ll still

9

want to establish a maximum
number of uses of each, however.

You can even compete against
players that are much more or
less experienced than you by
selecting puzzles at different lev-

els. As the more ex p e r i e n c e d
player, you may have to solve a
puzzle in the “MEDIUM” cate­g o ry, while your less ex p e rt
opponent gets to choose from the
“EASY” level.

Special Care & Handling

• Avoid rough handling such as bumping or dropping.

• Avoid moisture and extreme temperatures. For best results, use

between the temperatures of 39ºF and 100ºF (4º C and 38º C).

• Clean using only a slightly damp cloth. Do not use cleaners

with chemical agents.

Battery Information

• Your New York Times Touch-Screen Crossword uses 2 AAA

batteries, not included.

• Do not mix alkaline, standard (carbon-zinc) or rechargeable

(nickel-cadmium) batteries.

• Do not mix old and new batteries.

• Do not use rechargeable batteries.

• Remove exhausted batteries from the unit.

• Do not short circuit battery terminals.

• Remove batteries and store them in a cool, dry place when not

in use.

• To avoid explosion or leakage, do not dispose of batteries in a

fire or attempt to recharge alkaline or other non-rechargeable
batteries.

10

Limited 90-Day Warranty

E X C A L I BUR ELECTRO N I C S ,
INC., warrants to the original con­sumer that its products are free from
any electrical or mechanical defects
for a period of 90 DAYS from the
date of purchase. If any such defect
is discovered within the warranty
period, EXCALIBUR ELECTRON­ICS, INC., will repair or replace the
unit free of charge upon receipt of
the unit, shipped postage prepaid
and insured to the factory address
shown at right.

The warranty covers normal con­sumer use and does not cover dam­age that occurs in shipment or failure
that results from alterations, acci­dent, misuse, abuse, neglect, wear
and tear, inadequate maintenance,
commercial use, or unreasonable use
of the unit. Removal of the top panel
voids all warranties. This warranty
does not cover cost of repairs made
or attempted outside of the factory.

Any applicable implied warranties,
including wa rranties of mer­chantability and fitness, are hereby
limited to 90 DAYS from the date of
purchase. Consequential or inciden­tal damages resulting from a breach
of any applicable express or implied
wa rranties are hereby ex c l u d e d .
Some states do not allow limitations
on the duration of implied warranties
and do not allow exclusion of inci-

dental or consequential damages, so
the above limitations and exclusions
in these instances may not apply.

The only authorized service center
in the United States is:

Excalibur Electronics, Inc.

13755 SW 119th Ave

Miami, Florida 33186 U.S.A.

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

www.ExcaliburElectronics.com

Ship the unit carefully packe d,
preferably in the original carton, and
send it prepaid, and adequately
insured. Include a letter, detailing the
complaint and including your day­time telephone number, inside the
shipping carton.

If your warranty has expired and you
want an estimated fee for service,
write to the above address, specify­ing the model and the problem.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND

YOUR UNIT WITHOUT

RECEIVING AN ESTIMATE FOR

SERVICING. WE CANNOT

STORE YOUR UNIT!

11

Excalibur Electronics, Inc.

13755 SW 119th Ave

Miami, Florida 33186 U.S.A.

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

www.ExcaliburElectronics.com

We make you think.

.