Spectrum Puzzles
1) What does the “Multi?” button do?
The “Multi?” button lets you move or rotate a block of adjacent pieces as if they were one piece. To use it, press the button and then drag your finger on the screen over the pieces you want to move or rotate together. The pieces you have selected are highlighted with a semi-transparent grey. Once you’ve chosen the pieces, you can then move or rotate the pieces together as normal: tap to rotate, drag to move. Tapping or dragging outside the selection of pieces starts a new selection.
Multi-select automatically cancels after you move pieces, but stays active if you’re just rotating in case you want to rotate more than once; press the button again when you’re done.
2) When I tap on the icon for the expansion pack, it says it’s not installed! What’s happening?
This happens if you have clicked the button to remove the expansion pack icon, but haven’t yet restarted your phone. Once you restart it, the icon goes away. And don’t worry, this doesn’t stop you from playing the expansion pack photos. (For more technical users: you actually just need to restart your homescreen application, such as “Sense” on an HTC phone. The easiest way to do this is by restarting your phone, but you can also do it from a task killer application.)
3) I’ve bought and installed the expansion, and have the full version of Spectrum Puzzles, but I can’t find how to play the images.
This is easily solved! Just update to the latest version of Spectrum Puzzles (remember, only the full version can play the expansion) and then the button is right there in the main screen.
4) What’s the best size to use for custom photos?
Any size works, but to get the best results, you should use a photo that has an aspect ratio between 4:3 and 6:5 (it depends on the puzzle size you choose), and is about the same resolution as your phone screen. For example, most phones these days are 800×480 pixels, so the best size for portrait photos is 480 pixels wide by between 576 and 624 pixels high and vice-versa for landscape photos.
5) Why are some of the photos dark?
Some phones display the colours differently, particularly by making shadows darker. The Samsung Galaxy S2 does this, and probably others as well. See this page for some side by side comparisons.
6) How do I turn off the music?
You can mute the music from the options menu. However, the button to bring up the options menu is admittedly a bit hard to find on the Kindle Fire! There’s a little button you can press at the bottom of the screen to pop some more buttons; it’s where the back and home buttons are. One of those is the options menu, and from there you can tap “Mute music”. From other devices, it’s much more straightforward: most phones have a dedicated physical menu button, and tablets have a button on the system bar.
7) How do I get a reminder of what the picture looks like?
You can get a reminder from the menu (see above to get to the menu), or by tapping the green and blue button near the “Multi” button.
8) I can’t use custom images anymore on my Kindle Fire. What should I do?
The system update for Kindle Fires that came out end of March broke the Gallery app that Spectrum Puzzles used. See this post for more information on how to get around the problem.
Calibre Companion
Please go to the Frequently Asked Questions page on our support forum.