Word Games
                                       
   [1]Perl is a great language for coding solutions to many types of word
   games (actually it is just a great language). Here we provide a brief
   description of some of the word games we provide solutions for. The
   [2]perl scripts are available for download. We also provide an online,
   cgi based server running these scripts. This server is a PII 266
   running [3]Linux of course. Note that the cgi version runs at low
   priority and I do use it for real computations. If you really want to
   have fun you should grab the scripts yourself and play with them at
   your leisure. You need to provide your own dictionary. The small
   dictionary we use is just /usr/dict/words that should be on all unix
   type boxes.
   
   These scripts are provided by [4]Craig J Copi and [5]Peter Kernan.
   
Toggle

   This is the name we have given to the game where you try to get from
   one word to another in a fixed number of steps by only changing one
   letter at a time and producing a valid word at each step. For example
   the one solution (in our small dictionary) to get from loss to gain in
   6 steps is

loss
lost
loot
loon
loin
lain
gain


   You can grab the [6]Toggle script yourself or [7]try it out online if
   you like.
   
   This script has evolved quite a bit from the original brute force
   approach. I tried to run the original script on loss to gain in 10
   steps and ended up killing it after 3 hours of searching and not
   finding a solution. Putting a little bit of thought into the algorithm
   and pruning the search tree the current version will find all 20,000
   solutions (in the small dictionary) in about 6 minutes.
   
Jumble

   This is the type of puzzle that appears in many newspaper puzzle
   sections. Finding solutions is very easy in [8]Perl. In fact, it takes
   more time to read in the dictionary than it does to find solutions
   (hashes are good things). We are still finishing up the script for
   this one. It should appear soon.
   
Diagramless Crossword Puzzles

   It turns out that good crossword puzzles follow a strict set of rules
   regarding the structure of the puzzle. Because of this just from the
   list of numbers of the across and down clues you can reconstruct the
   puzzle. Of course it is frequently the case that the puzzle isn't
   unique. For 15x15 square puzzles there maybe a few possible solutions
   usually with regards to where the black squares appear near the middle
   of the puzzle. So it still helps to be able to fill in some of the
   words.
   
   I have some C code I wrote a long time ago to do this. It is currently
   not available and if I ever get some time I may try to resurrect it
   (and maybe rewrite it in [9]perl). If you can't live without this
   program feel free to [10]email me.
   
   CJC Copyright © 1998, Craig J Copi
   
   Valid HTML3.2 Html 3.2 Final DTD . . . valid!

References

   1. http://www.perl.com/
   2. http://www.perl.com/
   3. http://erebus.phys.cwru.edu/~copi/linux.html
   4. http://erebus.phys.cwru.edu/~copi/
   5. http://theory2.phys.cwru.edu/~pete/
   6. http://erebus.phys.cwru.edu/~copi/sources/Toggle
   7. http://iris0.phys.cwru.edu/cgi-bin/Toggle
   8. http://www.perl.com/
   9. http://www.perl.com/
  10. mailto:cjc5@po.cwru.edu