There is a game on the iPhone called Lights Out where the object of the game is to light up or knock out all the lights in a 5x5 grid. When a square is selected that square and its four immediate neighbours, above, below, and to each side invert. There is no wraparound. The object of the game is to get all the squares black.

At the risk of revealing my age, I saw a hand held version of this game in the early 1980's.

When mastering any new programming platform, this application becomes the standard with which I start. I know the logic, so the problem merely becomes getting the thing to run under the new platform. I wrote this in 2005 while fighting my way through the very steep learning curve of Embedded C++. Previous platforms for this program have been, ZX81, BBC Micro, DOS, Windows and finally Windows Mobile. Next stop Linux!

It is an example of minimalist programming on WM. Written in Embedded C++ as a Win32 application it is targetted at ARMv4 chipsets. As such it should run on all PPC versions from Windows Mobile 2002 onwards. The menu is limited to two main items, so WM 5/6 will display it as a WM 5/6 app. Minimalist programming means it can be distributed as as a single .EXE file of a mere 9.5 Kb in size. The DLLs it calls are already on your device, there is no need for a .CAB installation.

The upside: It will run on Portrait, Landscape or 240 pixel square Pocket PC devices, and is aware if you switch the screen orientation.

The downside: It is Pocket PC only. No smartphones unless you have touch screen capability.

It has 5x5, 7x7 and 9x9 grids, all are solvable.

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