Excalibur electronic NY90 User Manual

User ’s Guide for

Model No. NY90

SuDoku Plug & Play

C

ongratulations on your purchase of The New York
Times SuDoku Plug & Play by Excalibur

Electronics, Inc. You and your friends will enjoy
hours of challenging fun with this innovative game. The
New York Times SuDoku Plug & Play features 835
puzzles selected by The New York Times crossword puzzle
editor Will Shortz.

Your New York Times SuDoku Plug & Play is easy to
use, but be sure to use it safely. Before starting, please read
this manual thoroughly, especially noting safety and care.
Keep this manual for reference.

This package includes one New York Times SuDoku
Plug & Play and its user's guide.

Copyright © 2006. The New York Times Company. The New York Times logo

is a registered trademark of The New York Times Company.

SuDoku Easy Presented by Will Shortz, Volume 1; SuDoku Easy to Hard

Presented by Will Shortz, Volume 2; SuDoku Easy to Hard Presented by Will

Shortz, Volume 3; The Giant Book of SuDoku Presented by Will Shortz; The

Ultimate SuDoku Challenge Presented by Will Shortz; SuDoku for your

Coffeebreak Presented by Will Shortz; SuDoku to Boost Your Brainpower

Presented by Will Shortz. Copyright © 2006 by Will Shortz. All Rights Reserved.

The legendary King Arthur brandished
a magic sword, Excalibur, from which
we take our company name. With this
unique weapon in his hands, he could
not be vanquished.

Although Excalibur Electronics can’t
claim the magical secrets of Merlin,
King Arthur’s court wizard, sometimes
our patented technology may make it
seem as if we could.

We make you think.

The puzzles featured herein have not appeared in The New York Times.

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

Layout of The New York Times SuDoku

Plug & Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4

Functions of Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5

How to Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6

SuDoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 6

Getting Started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 6

The New York Times Plug & Play . page 6

Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 9

Menu Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10

Creating a New Puzzle. . . . . . . . . . .page 11

Battery Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13

Special Care & Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 14

Limited 90 Day Warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 15

Table of Contents

Installing Batteries

Your New York Times SuDoku Plug & Play requires four
AAA batteries, not included. To install batteries, carefully
turn the unit over so that it is face-down on a soft surface.
Find the battery compartment on the back of the unit.

Use a small Phillips screwdriver to remove the screw.
Lift off the battery compartment lid. Install the batteries,
making sure to match polarity (+ and -) with the diagram
inside the battery compartment. Place the tab of the battery
compartment lid in its slot and close the compartment door.
Replace the screw and tighten it carefully.

23

Layout of The New York Times

SuDoku Plug & Play

Function of Buttons

ON/OFF: Switch to turn the

unit on or off.

DIRECTIONAL KEYPAD: Press

to move cursor up, down,
left and right while playing
the game. During game
selection, press the

UP and

DOWN buttons to scroll

through game options.

EXIT/MENU: Press to enter the
MENU screen during a game;

press again to return to
previous screen.

AUTO PLAY: Press once to

answer a square automati­cally; press and hold for two
seconds to fill in all of the
squares one-by-one, one
square per second.

NUMBERS: Press to enter one

through nine during a game.

START/ENTER: Press to

confirm your selection;
press to erase your entry
during a game; press to
move the cursor to the hint
option when the cursor is on
a square.

VIDEO PLUG: Insert the

yellow plug into the video
socket of your television.

AUDIO PLUG: Insert the white

plug into the audio socket of
your television.

RESET: Press to reset the

unit.

54

EXIT/MENU

AUTO PLAY

START

/ENTER

RESET

ON

/OFF

DIRECTIONAL

KEYPAD

1-9

VIDEO

AUDIO

How to Play

SuDoku

The object of the game is
to place numbers in the
empty squares so that each
row, each column and each
three by three grid contains
the numbers one through
nine once.

Getting Started

Plug it into your television
and then turn it on by
switching the power switch
to ON on the top of the unit.

The New York Times SuDoku
Plug & Play

When the game turns on,
the following screen will
appear on your television.

Figure 1: Opening Screen

Use the

DIRECTIONAL KEY-

PAD to scroll up and down

the menu items. If there's a
saved puzzle, the

RECALL

option will appear on the
bottom of the menu screen.
Press the

START/ENTER but-

ton to confirm your selec­tion.

To begin playing, select

the

PLAY NOW! option. Players

may also customize a puzzle
by selecting CREATE A PUZ-

ZLE. Players can also select
OPTIONS to adjust the game

setting.

After selecting

PLAY NOW!,

the following screen will
appear on your television:

Figure 2: Select Level

Use the

UP and DOWN but-

tons to select one of the lev­els of difficulty and press the

START/ENTER button to con-

firm. The following screen
will appear on your televi­sion.

Figure 3: Puzzle Selection

Screen

Scroll through the differ­ent puzzles per level of diffi­culty by using the LEFT or

RIGHT button of your DIREC-
TIONAL KEYPAD. Press the UP

or DOWN button of your

DIRECTIONAL KEYPAD to

scroll by ten puzzles at a
time. Press and hold the UP
or DOWN button to scroll
quickly through all of the
puzzles.

Once you've found the

puzzle you want to play,
press the START/ENTER but-
ton to confirm. The follow­ing screen will then appear.

Figure 4: Puzzle

Use the DIRECTIONAL KEY-

PAD to move the cursor

around the screen. The
square you are on will be
marked in red. The numbers
available for that box will
turn red on the right side of
the screen if the show possi­bilities function is on.

Once you've reached a
square that you know the
answer for, press the respec­tive number button. This
number will appear white if
incorrect or black if correct
if the incorrect number alert
is on. It will appear red if it

67

was filled in by the AUTO
function.

During your game, the
potential answer choices
will be shown on the right
side of the screen, marked in
red if the show possibilities
function is on. If you input
an incorrect number, the

INCORRECT NUMBER ALERT

function will display the
inputted number in white.
You have the option of turn­ing these functions off by
selecting the OPTIONS choice
in the opening menu screen.

If you've entered an incor­rect number, you can delete
that number by moving the
cursor to that square and
pressing the START/ENTER
button.

If you're stuck, you can
select AUTO PLAY for help.
Your Plug & Play will calcu­late where you should fill in
your next answer choice. If
you press and hold AUTO

PLAY

for two seconds, the

unit will begin to fill in all of
the squares one-by-one at
the speed of one square per
second.

You can stop AUTO PLAY
from filling in additional
squares by pressing AUTO

PLAY

again. However, if
your game contains incor­rect entries, the AUTO PLAY
function will not work. It
will move your cursor over
the incorrect number. Delete
the number by pressing

START/ENTER button.

Once you've deleted all
incorrect entries, you can
use the AUTO PLAY function
again. If for some reason the

AUTO PLAY function doesn't

work, an ERROR icon will
appear on the screen. If the
game does not respond after
the ERROR icon appears, you
may input the remaining
squares manually if you are
sure that your input puzzle is
correct or press MENU and
select QUIT GAME to return to

main menu.

If you want to know a HINT
for a square, you may move
the cursor to that particular
square and press the START
button. Move the cursor to
the HINT icon and press the

START/ENTER button again.

The number will flash for a
few seconds and then disap­pear.

When you've filled in the
last square of a puzzle and if
all the filled-in entries are
correct, the timer will stop
counting, cursor will disap­pear. When you fill in the
last square of a puzzle, if
there is a wrong answer, the
cursor will automatically go
to the incorrect number so
you can fix it.

When you have completed
one puzzle correctly , pressed
the START/ENTER button. The
screen will show LEVEL,

TIME, BEST TIME, SCORE,
HIGH SCORE, AVERAGE and
DONE. DONE refers to the

number of puzzles complet­ed per number of puzzles in
that level.

Press the START/ENTER
button for the screen to show
the next puzzle. The puzzle
number will flash indicating
you can select another puz­zle by pressing the DIREC-

TIONAL KEYPAD. Press the
START/ENTER button to con-

firm your selected puzzle. If
you've selected a puzzle that
was already completed, the
icon DONE will be shown
below the sequence number
of that particular puzzle.

Points:

+100: Filling in an empty
square

-200: Erasing each number

After 15 minutes pass,
your total bonus will be
reduced by 100 points for
every elapsed minute. After
60 minutes, your bonus will
be zero.

98

20,000: Expert
15,000: Hard
10,000: Medium
5,000: Easy

If you complete a puzzle
with the AUTO PLAY or HINT
function, you will have no
bonus for that game.

Menu Options

During a game, press the

EXIT/MENU button any time

to display the menu screen.
Use the UP or DOWN button
to scroll through the follow­ing menu options and use
the START/ENTER button to
confirm your selection. YES
and NO will appear alongside
the menu item. Press the

START/ENTER button to con-

firm your selection.

NEW GAME: Select to

return to the puzzle-selec­tion screen. This will take
you to the same level of dif­ficulty as your previous

game. If you wish to select a
different level of difficulty,
press the EXIT/MENU button.
Select a level of difficulty
and press the START/ENTER
button to begin a new game.

RESTART: Select to restart

your current game.

SAVE: Select to save your

current game.

QUIT GAME: Select to quit

your current game.

SOUND: Select to turn the

sound on or off.

SHOW POSSIBILITIES: Select

to turn the SHOW POSSIBILI-

TIES function on or off.

When on, the possible
answer choices will be
shown on the right side of
the screen.

INCORRECT NUMBER ALERT:

Select to turn the INCORRECT

NUMBER ALERT

function on

or off. When on, incorrect
numbers will appear white.

DONE: Select to confirm

the changes you've just
made to your game settings.

Selecting DONE and YES
will save your game settings
adjustments. If you select NO
and press the EXIT/MENU but­ton, you will return to your
game but your settings will
not be saved.

Creating a New Puzzle

You can recreate any
SuDoku puzzle. Transfer
your favorite SuDoku puz­zles from the newspaper,
books or make one up your­self.

Every time you select CRE-

ATE A PUZZLE on the opening

menu screen, the following
screen will appear.

Figure 5: Blank Create a

Puzzle Screen

Use the

DIRECTIONAL KEY-

PAD and NUMBER buttons to

fill in the puzzle. Once
you've finished creating the
puzzle, press the DOWN but­ton until you reach the DONE
icon on the bottom right cor­ner. Press the START/ENTER
button to confirm your puzzle.

The following screen will

appear on your television.

10 11

Figure 6: Filled-In Create

a Puzzle Screen

The HINT function and the

INCORRECT NUMBER ALERT

function is not available for
customized puzzles.

If you press the EXIT/MENU

button during the creation of

Battery Information

1312

• The New York Times SuDoku Plug & Play requires

four AAAbatteries, 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.

• 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.

Your unit may occasionally “freeze up” or function

improperly because of static electrical discharge. If this

happens, press the

RESET button to restart.

EXCALIBUR ELECTRONICS,
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 warranties 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

warranties are hereby excluded.
Some states do not allow limita­tions on the duration of implied
warranties and do not allow
exclusion of incidental 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 packed,
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!

LIMITED 90-DAY WARRANTY

Special Care & Handling

• Avoid rough handling such as bumping or dropping.

• Avoid moisture and extreme temperatures. For best
results, use between the temperatures of 39˚ F and 100˚
F (4˚ C and 38˚ C).

• Unplug the electrical cord prior to cleaning. Clean
using only a slightly damp cloth. Do not use cleaners
with chemical agents.

14 15

Excalibur Electronics, Inc.

13755 SW 119th Avenue

Miami, FL 33186

T: 305.477.8080
F: 305.477.9516

www.ExcaliburElectronics.com