It is really rare to find a fun, full-featured program which you can use over and over again that can bring a bunch of enjoyment to you, family and friends.
   Such programs are available from Stoik Software in the form of four different puzzle creators which you can use with your own images and send the puzzles to family and friends to solve. This will not only get granny off your back, it will also occupy her time! What a neat combination.
   Stoik produces several sophisticated image editing programs and the expertise which has gone into these offerings is evident in Jigsaw, Balls, Mosaic and Switch. Not only can you create these puzzles, but you can do some rudimentary image editing as well as have choices in how the puzzles are presented. Let's take the jigsaw puzzle program as an example.
   You can specify puzzles which are easy to hard – based on the number of pieces in the puzzle. Additionally, you can rotate the pieces if you wish, or have them all be scattered about top-up. The program has the ability to let you rotate the pieces. Really nice. Given the complexity of the pictures, the puzzles can easily range from just fun to an excercise in jigsaw puzzle solving worthy of many you can find in a box at the game store.
   The Mosaic program is like one of those sliding games where you have one place open and have to slide the tiles around to make them work. Even if you know what the picture looks like, this can be a real challenge to get the pieces in the correct place.
   Switch is very much like Mosaic in that the tiles are square. You click on one tile to set the one you are operating on and then click on a second to switch their places.
   I am here to tell you that Balls is well nigh impossible with a large number of pieces. This one is unique in that the program cuts out little balls from a picture, scatters them about, and you have to fill them in to the proper place. You might think this is easy because the base image is shown on the screen. Ha-ha you. It is a real challenge.
   There are a host of options, including a cheat mode. Interestingly, you can stop the cheat mode from solving the puzzle if you seem to "see" the answer. There are a host of other options also. This is a really complete package.
   But the nicest feature is the ability to email or just copy to a disk the runtime version of the particular puzzle and send it to someone who does not need to have the game. Very, very nice.
   Stoik Software has some of the runtime samples on its web site. Try one and you'll be hooked on these neat games.

   Link to the Stoik Software web site.