[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] stephj:
This program, SUGET.EXE, is a companion program to Sudoku Player 1.5 in the signature below, or in the post at:-

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=649309.

It is a console C# application that will download a sudoku puzzle of the day from the internet, and store it in on your device, in the file format that Sudoku Player uses.

It uses today's date, then uses any open data connection if active, or it will open a GPRS data connection if it is closed. (Windows Mobile does this, not the program.)

It only uses a few hundred bytes of data access to get today's puzzle.

If, on your device, the storage card appears as '\Storage Card\' and you have created a directory in it Named 'Sudoku' it will store the file in that directory, otherwise it will place the file in the root directory of your device. You will have to move the file out of the root directory for Sudoku Player to be able to see it. The open file dialog does not seem to allow access to the root directory of the machine. I appreciate that on non English versions of Windows Mobile the card is often named in the native language of that release. In this case it will not be able to store the file on the card, and will just dump it in the root directory. You will have to manually move it/them yourself.

The downloaded file will have a named format of SUxyyddd.TXT, where x is the difficulty of the puzzle G=Gentle,M=Moderate,T=Tough and D=Diabolical, yy is the last two digits of the year and ddd is the Julian date for that year, 001 to 366

The difficulty of the puzzle changes from one day to the next, and follows this pattern:

Mon Gentle

Tue Moderate

Wed Moderate

Thu Tough

Fri Diabolical

Sat Moderate

Sun Diabolical

As an example, the puzzle for Friday the 10th August 2012, would be downloaded as SUD12162.TXT

The puzzle files are loaded from a website that operates as a central feed for several other sites.

Caveat:- If the access method or access code to the feed site changes, the program may suddenly stop working. If it does, I may have to fix it.

It is written in .NET CF 1.1, but it will run on all later versions of .NET CF without a problem, as all it uses are fundamental .NET objects. A DateTime object, a couple of strings, an XmlReader and a StreamWriter and that's it.

The program is a console application, so when it is run, the wait icon appears for a few seconds, then disappears after the program has completed. If it didn't throw an error it probably worked, but see the update below.

The zip file contains a single 6Kb executable. Just drop it on your device and run it.

UPDATE:

It appears that there was a problem with this program at the start of September, caused by puzzles within the serving web site not being loaded. Unfortunately that was completely out of my control. The site was fixed a few days later, and this program is now working correctly again. If it receives an error message from the serving site, it quietly terminates without saving anything, rather than just slapping an error in your face.

FURTHER UPDATE:

It appears to have stopped working again from 1 January 2013, but still works fine for dates in December 2012. (It will accept a command line parameter of dd-mm-yyyy, but this cannot be done directly under Windows Mobile, unless you are running some sort of command line tool.) I may have to pull the program, but not yet, we'll see what happens.

UPDATE: They've fixed it! 20th Jan.