The Square Puzzle: 36-40.

We've counted 35 squares in the puzzle so far. 
Now, there are five more hiding within the grid. Let's show them in blue and count.

36 -

37 -

38 -

39 -

40 -

Is that it? In the first post on the squares puzzle I said I'd counted 51 squares. Where are they? or was I wrong? Help!

In previous posts on the squares puzzle, here, here and here,  read how to select individual cell borders in an iWork table and where to use this feature in graphic design. 

Here is one example. The photo on the left and the poem to the right of it sit together on a page as one block. They are a one-row two column table with invisible (white) cell borders. The photo on the left fills one cell, and the centered text sits in the second. The layout here is quite simple. But in a more complex design you may want to move this block in between the columns, make borders coloured, add shadows, — all in one go. Read more in this earlier article.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012). Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+.

The Square Puzzle: 28 - 35.

In previous posts we've counted 28 squares inside the grid shown below. Next, the four larger squares in each corner of the grid. I am showing them here, as in previous posts, by separately selecting the borders of table cells and changing their colour from black to blue for demonstration.

To recap the process described in previous posts:

1. To select a cell border, click once on the table to select it.
2. Click again on a grid line, this will select the whole line, right across the table.
3. And click again - once, not double click - on one of the borders of a cell. This will select only one border in one cell.
4. To select all the cell borders that you want to select, press Shift after you've selected the first one and click on the other one by one.
5. In the Table Inspector, click in the small colour well under Cell Borders, and choose a new colour.

This picture shows a square comprising four smaller squares inside it. I've changed the colour of outer borders of four cells.

31

Inside the table we have four squares like this one (the other three are not shown here.)

In the previous post we counted twenty seven squares. Now we have thirty one: 27+4=31

Next, let's find and show four more squares inside the table, each consisting of three cells across and three down. Use the technique described above to select the cell borders and change their colour to blue.

Here they are.

One -

32

Two -

33

Three -

34

Four -

35

Thirty one plus four, thirty five squares. 31 + 4 = 35. In the next post we'll find another four squares hiding within this table.

As I said in previous posts, the ability to select cell borders separately and change their colour, thickness and colour fill (the colour inside the cell) is an exciting design tool. Like here, you can use it in puzzles, including crossword puzzles. You can design coupons where some cell borders are invisible.

Or you can create 'open angles' to use in the layout of your newsletter or brochure. And another use for tables is when you need to group a photo and a piece of text. To read about this last technique, see an earlier article on I Work in Pages: 'An underused layout tool — tables'.

The Square Puzzle, 25-27.

Continuing with the square puzzle I am now counting the squares in the two small tables of four squares inside the large 16-square table. Adding eight to seventeen we get 25 squares.

25

1. To select the tables, click on the first once, press Shift and click on the second.
2. They will be both selected (highlighted).
3. Go to the Table Inspector, click in the small colour well under Cell Borders and choose a colour when the Colour Viewer opens.

The new colour will be applied to all the lines in the tables' grid.

The outside contours of the small tables form two more squares. Add them, and get 27 squares.

27

1. To show the outside squares, change the colour of the lines inside to black.
2. To do this, click on the table once to select it.
3. Click again on the central horizontal line to select just it.
4. Press Shift and click on the vertical central line. They will be both selected.
5. Click in the colour well and choose black.
6. Repeat for the second small table.

The second picture above shows the two criss-crossing lines in the second table still selected.

I have published an article on how to design coupons using the unique design feature available only for tables — the ability to select just one side of the table or cell grid and change its colour, thickness etc. This can also be used in crossword puzzles and in page design.

How many squares can you count? (tables in iWork)

Here's a puzzle. You must count as many squares as possible in this grid.

I've counted 51.
(update 25 March: after a recount, I could only find 40!)

While you count I want to show you how to design this grid, and then how to highlight the squares you found.

To design the grid, import a table into an iWork document. Go to the Toolbar and click on the Table icon. iWork will create a default table in your document.

1. Go to the Table Inspector.
2. Uncheck header row.
3. Set the number of rows and columns at four.
4. Make the cells square: click in the Row Width and Column Width windows and type the same number.  Here it is 2.63 cm
5. Set the thickness (width) of the lines in the grid. Here it is five points.
6. If you want a colour that is different from default, click in the colour well under Cell Borders (not the large one under Cell Background!) and choose your colour.

When you create a table in Pages word processing mode it may appear as an inline object that is anchored to a point in the document. Go to Wrap Inspector and change the setting to Floating.

7. Create another table and set the number of columns and rows to two.
8. Make the colour of the grid and the thickness of its lines the same as the larger grid.
9. Change the size of the second table so that its square cells are (roughly, it's only a puzzle!) a quarter of the size of the cells in the large grid.
10. Drag the small table to sit flush where the middle squares of the first and second rows of the large table come together.

11. Duplicate (copy) the small table and move the duplicate to the middle of the third and fourth rows.

Now that the puzzle is ready, count the squares.

You can try to do it mentally or marking them on a scrap of paper. Here, I will highlight each square with a different colour.

First, click on the large table to select it. In the Table Inspector, click on the colour well under Cell Borders and choose different colour. We have sixteen squares here.

16

Next, the large square that forms the outside perimeter of the grid. It's seventeen squares now:

17

1. To change only the outside lines, click on the large table to select it all.
2. Then click again on the left side to select just the line on the left.
3. Press Shift and click on the other three sides. All four will be selected.
4. In the Table Inspector, click in the colour well under Cell Borders and choose a colour.

I'll carry on counting in the next post, but meanwhile have a look at an earlier article in 'I Work in Pages' to see how the 'select cell borders' feature can help in designing coupons: 'How to design coupons in Pages'. 

How to design coupons in Pages

If you work on a periodic publication with a distribution list or a subscription base, sooner or later you'll face a task of designing a coupon grid. Marketing and publicity material, surveys and community publications also often use coupons or mail-back cut-out forms.

Many coupons I'd seen before designing one of my own have grids with 'open tops'. That is, letter/number cells have borders on the sides and at the bottom, but not at the top.


Use tables to design them in Pages.


Click on the Table icon in the toolbar, or choose Table from Insert menu to import a table into your document.

In Table Inspector select number of rows (1) and columns (18 in my example).

Choose width, style and colour of table borders.

Select the top border of the table (see picture below). In Table Inspector>Cell Borders click on drop-down menu and select None.




Now you have a nice looking grid like in the coupon above. If you need several rows for your coupon select the whole table and duplicate (Command+D) or copy-paste it.

This is what makes tables different from other objects - you can select any side of any cell in the table separately. Click on the table grid line once to select the grid line for the whole of the table (picture above). Click again to select the side of just one cell (picture below).

You can't select each individual side of an Object or a Text Box. This particular feature of tables makes them an attractive tool for various other design tasks.

Check these earlier articles:
- Tables, an underused layout tool
- Sorting out Tables and Charts in Word
- Separating ads by an 'open corner'

An underused layout tool - tables

Tables are widely used to organise numbers and do calculations automatically. But what is often overlooked is that they could also serve as a powerful and easy to handle tool for arranging text and illustrations - putting them in required position on the page and changing dimensions and proportions while avoiding too much hassle with layout breaks or shuffling multiple text and picture boxes.

While laying out a page of my magazine recently I was asked to position a photo and a poem horizontally next to each other. Photo on the left, and poem on the right. And the poem should have looked as the closing text sequence of the article above.

It could be done with a layout break, setting a two column layout, putting the photo as an inline object in the first column, inserting column break and putting the poem at the end of the second column.

Instead:
- I put a table in the page,
- set wrapping to fixed on page,
- set rows number to one,
- column number to two
- and unchecked the header row.

As a result you get a very flexible shape which allows you to adjust the proportions and dimensions while images and text stay inside the table cells.

- So, the photo went into the left cell via image fill (in Object Inspector, scale set to 'fill') and text went in the right cell.
- Then I selected the whole table and set stroke to 'none'.
- After that the table is moved and resized to snap to the columns grid of the whole page and to have the text of the article fit above. The picture cell width is adjusted to be exactly as the column width of the page. Text in the poem cell is adjusted with inset margin, tabs and space before and after paragraphs - all in the Text Inspector.

In the end the picture and text look as though they are independent of each other, but positioned exactly side by side.

This method is also very useful to position photo captions - instead of moving the photo and text box, grouping and regrouping them, you get an object which can be easily resized and repositioned - as one.

Photo: Apple trees in January - will those buds bloom?