================================================================== SPELLBOUND! Word Search Creator Update History ================================================================== NEW IN VERSION 1.10 VERSION 1.10 NOW WORKS FOR OUTIES! It was widely rumored that the previous version of the Word Search Creator would not work properly if your belly button were an "Outie". The program now prompts you to enter your belly button type on the Configuration Screen so that the program can adjust itself accordingly. We believe that we have fixed the problem in this version. We apologize to any of you who were inconvenienced by this oversight on our part, but the author of the program had never attended the Navel Academy and was consequently ignorant of the intricacies of this timely subject. We especially apologize to those loyal (albeit misguided) users who actually had the corrective surgery just to be able to use the previous version. (We do however gladly welcome you to the ranks of "Innies" -- INNIES RULE!) WORD SEARCH CREATOR CAN NOW PRINT SOLUTION TO PUZZLES By placing an "A" into the "Diag, Backward, Hard...", field on the Configuration Screen, you can force the Word Search Creator to print out a solution to the puzzle you are creating. The solution will be printed out on the page following the puzzle page. The solution is in the format: Solution for: A WORD SEARCH PUZZLE ========================================================== # WORD (Insert Order) ACROSS, DOWN DIR SHARES ========================================================== (1) WORDS --> 14, 14 SW N/A (2) PRUNE --> 13, 16 W 1 (3) SHORT --> 10, 18 NW 1 (4) DARE --> 12, 18 N 1 (5) LATE --> 9, 12 SE 1 (6) MATE --> 13, 14 W 1 (7) JADE --> 9, 13 S 1 (8) FADE --> 11, 15 W 1 (9) RATE --> 7, 15 N 1 =========================================================== TOTAL SHARES: 8 The word is followed by the Across, Down coordinates (horizontal, vertical) of the first character of the word in the grid, the compass direction of insertion, and the number of occurrences of shared letters encountered when the word was inserted. When you specify that a solution is to be printed, it is a good idea also to specify in the appropriate field on the Configuration Screen that you wish the row and column numbers to be printed with the puzzle to save you having to manually count them! CREATE NUMERIC, ALPHANUMERIC, AND PUZZLES CONTAINING PUNCTUATION! The program now automatically scans the type of words being used and uses only the character types used in the puzzle to fill the puzzle when insertion of words is finished. If only letters are used, only letters will be used to fill the remaining positions in the puzzle. If only numbers are used, only numbers will fill. If a combination of letters, numbers and or punctuation are used, then the fill characters will be comprised of characters from each of three sets recognized: Numbers, Letters, and Punctuation. Any words containing characters not found in the internal tables will be rejected from the puzzle whether entered manually or from a word list. The following comprises the entire set of allowable characters. Alphabetical Numeric Punctuation ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890 -_',./ CONTROL OF PUZZLE FILL COMPLEXITY You now have control over the complexity of the fill characters used to fill the empty spaces in the finished puzzle. By specifying a number in the range from 1 to 20, you can specify that only characters which appear in the set of words used or a limited number of other characters will be used to fill the puzzle. By specifying 20, only characters appearing in the puzzle word list will be used. Imagine how difficult it will be to find a word when its letters comprise a majority of the fill characters. By decreasing the number from 20 to 19 and so on down to 1, you increase the chances that other characters will be used to fill the puzzle. By specifying 1, all characters from the allowable set will be used! TWO ALTERNATIVE SORTS You may now specify that you wish the words to be inserted Shortest first or Randomly rather than Longest first which was the sole method in the previous version. Longest first is the best method to fit words, but sometimes a very long word can influence an excessively large number of subsequent words to be inserted in the same direction that the first word was. In such cases, you might wish to try one of the other two sort methods to find which works best for the current puzzle. LIST MANAGER When you have entered a list of words into the puzzle either manually or from a file, you may now invoke the List Manager which will allow you to delete words from or add words to the current list. The words in this case are NOT added to the puzzle directly, but to the current list. When you have finished, the word list will then be sorted and reinserted into the puzzle! YOU NOW HAVE THE ABILITY TO FORCE SHARING OF LETTERS! You may now force words to share letters with other words rather than allowing it to happen by chance as in the previous version. To do this you must indicate a number greater than zero for the number of attempts to search for sharing opportunities. To do this, enter a number between 1 and 32440 into the appropriate field on the Configuration Screen. The program will then scan the specified number of times for opportunities to share letters with other words. If in the specified number of times the program is unable to find one, it will then resolve the insertion instantly by initiating the FINAL SCAN. By adjusting the number of iterative attempts, you can control how much sharing occurs. Forcing sharing of letters does slow down the insertion at first, but as more words accumulate on the puzzle, the opportunities are easier to find and it speeds up a bit. An added benefit to forcing sharing of words, is that you can more easily fit a greater number of words into the puzzle! YOU CAN SAVE YOUR WORD LISTS WITHOUT PRINTING THE PUZZLE You can now save your word list without having to first print the puzzle. When the words have all been inserted into the puzzle, the option, "[S]ave list" has been added. If you enter "S", the word list will be saved and you will then be returned to the Configuration Screen. WE ALSO ADDED A SAFETY FEATURE TO THE PUZZLE SCREEN In the previous version, if you pressed ESC from the puzzle screen, you would lose any words you entered manually. You are now warned of this and given the opportunity to save your list. We are sorry if this caused you any grief! We hope you will find these new features useful, and that you will register your copy if you haven't already.