Razor Puzzle Improvements in 1.3 Beta
Razor Puzzle Improvements in 1.3 Beta
The first sections summarize progress prior to build 41. After that, I have been maintaining a build-by-build change list.
The "Title and Notes" capability of version 1.2 has been expanded, in 1.3, to a broad set of properties for puzzles and images. These are used (among other things) for recording the sources of photos used as images and helping ensure that the photographers get credit. There is also other useful information about how puzzles are cut, when they were last solved, how long it took, etc.
You can now directly search your Photos from within the app. No need to open the Photos app directly.
You can search Pixabay, Pexels, and Unsplash from within the app. Photos imported via this searching capability have accurate authorship information and their properties include hyperlinks to the photographer's profile page and other information on the providing site.
The notes editor supports markdown.
You can initiate a re-crop or re-cut of a puzzle's image directly from the puzzle thumbnail
There are four new puzzle sizes: 352, 396, 432, and 480 (recommended for tablets only). There is a warning when you export those sizes because only 1.3 users (beta users for now) can import them.
1.0 compatibility popups no longer occur when exporting puzzles or images. The 1.0 release was superceded in 2021 and we no longer attempt to promise compatibility with that release. On the other hand, there is a new compatibility notice when exporting puzzles whose sizes exceed 320.
When exporting puzzles, the 1.2 release favored compatibility with 1.1 over smaller size. The 1.3 release favors smaller size, meaning that exported puzzles cannot be imported into 1.1. Backward compatibility with 1.2 should work fine, as long as the puzzles don't exceed the 1.2 size maximum of 320.
If images came from one of the supported photo sharing sites, attribution lines now appear in the cutter, the cropper, and in the solver when you Peek the image or when the puzzle is solved. Attribution information is always part of the properties, which are shown when you click on a thumbnail caption or the title line in other views.
Several bug fixes, including an annoying one when an in-progress puzzle solution is saved or enters the background with the multi-tray view showing.
There has been a substantial revision of the background color dialog, permitting tinting as well as grayscale.
The help system and the associated tips has been substantially revised to favor smaller quantities of help, delivered as "context help" (use a long press on a feature of the screen that has associated help, which should be most features). This change is only partially implemented as of the December 5 beta but further beta releases should complete the work.
Issued December 5, 2025.
When piece rotation is enabled, pieces can be rotated in a tray view as well as in the solving pane.
There is now a global option to prefer images to be shown initially in the main view rather than always starting with puzzles showing.
Fixed a bug whereby sometimes stray parameters were sent when searching the sharing sites. While this was usually harmless, it had the potential to cause problems.
On phones, the new larger puzzle sizes (> 320) are not offered and cannot be imported.
When there is a failure to import a shared puzzle because it is too large, the app no longer crashes; rather, the failure causes an error popup, similar to what happens when you import from a corrupted file.
Note that releases 1.2 and 1.2.1 do NOT have this change because they are already published. Exporting a too-large file and having it imported by a 1.2 user will still cause a crash. The change here is in anticipation of introducing new sizes in the future.
After a crash (usually) the next restart of the app gives you an opportunity to send a crash report.
This is not foolproof, and, worst case, you can still have "crash loops".
From the main help menu you can log short comments. If you subsequently send feedback that includes the logs, these comments will show up in sequence with whatever else was going on.
Help and Tip boxes are now displayed non-modally and can be dragged to different parts of the screen.
Further improvements to the text of help and tips (interim state --- there are more changes to come).
An attempt has been made to make the user experience better on phones, especially in landscape mode. More work is needed here.
Issued January 4, 2026
Support 500 piece puzzles (tablets only)
Touching the "More" button while searching for images now induces a short scroll response (before, the new images were there but there was no visible indication that they were).
Bug fix: changes to puzzle title and puzzle notes in the properties vIew now get saved.
Bug fix: piece rotation within trays now turns on and off in sync with the rotation option.
Further work on context help and tips ... still incomplete.
Issued February 22, 2026
Context help is now available throughout the app.
The "help box" behavior is improved (more work needed).
The top control in the main view is changed to be easier to lay out and interact with.
There are fewer tips with simpler logic.
Minor improvements to zoom behavior
It appears site search must be periodically re-enabled. The process is simplified and help text clarified.
Some improvements to appearance and behavior on phones (work still ongoing).
Phones now have a max puzzle size of 192. Attempts to import puzzles larger than fail with a clear explanation.
When deleting the last object in a category (images, puzzles, started) another non-empty category is shown. Empty categories are not offered.
More accurate tracking of total and "so far" counts when importing images. Because duplicate images are filtered, both numbers should be decremented accordingly but were not, previously. That also fixes a bug whereby selecting an image to import would actually import a different one.
Issued Feburary 25, 2026
Fixes a backward compatibility bug in build 43. Phone users who had stored puzzles larger than the new 192 piece limit for phones should have been able to continue using them but instead the app crashed. While build 44 fixed most of the problem, a stray bug remained until build 45.
Issued March 20, 2026
New layout for landscape mode on phones, provides more space top to bottom.
Better use of screen space for some dialogs
Use thumbnail sizes and shapes that won't distort when the device is rotated
Fix stray bugs related to the new size limit of 192 on phones
Fix positioning bug in end-of-game checkmark
Improvements to help box sizing and positioning, mostly for phones but not limited to them.
New algorithm for minimizing overlap of help box with popup dialogs