![]() If they couldn't come up with any ideas, they could edit the crossword manually to change constraints or just ask for a total re-generation. If there was no word that could fit, you just marked the whole word as incomplete and moved on.Īt the end would be some uncompleted words which the compiler would have to fill in (and add the word and a clue to the file if desired). Then, for each non-complete word in the puzzle (basically find the first blank square and see if the one to the right (across-word) or the one underneath (down-word) is also blank), a search was done of the file looking for the first word that fitted, taking into account the letters already in that word. A template, basically a bit-mask representing the black and free squares, was chosen randomly from a pool that was provided by the client. ![]() It had a list of words (and associated clues) stored in a file sorted by descending usage to date (so that lesser-used words were at the top of the file). I actually wrote a crossword generation program about ten years ago (it was cryptic but the same rules would apply for normal crosswords). Bigger word lists also have a much higher chance at better word placement numbers. Bigger grids run exponentially slower bigger word lists linearly. It tends to run rather well, but let me know if you have any suggestions on improvement. This is time limited (find the best crossword in x seconds).īy the end, you have a decent crossword puzzle or word search puzzle, since they are about the same. If the next crossword has more words placed on the board, it replaces the crossword in the buffer. So, we buffer this crossword and go back to step #2. We should now have a crossword, but the quality can be hit or miss due to some of the random placements.Back to step #4 until word list is exhausted.Scores of 0 indicate either bad placement (adjacent to existing words) or that there were no word crosses. Loop over the suggested coordinate list and "score" the word placement based on how many other words it crosses.When a match is found, simply add that position to a suggested coordinate list for that word.Move onto next word, loop over each letter in the word and each cell in the grid looking for letter to letter matches.Place the first and longest word at the upper left most position, 1,1 (vertical or horizontal).Shuffle the word list, and then sort the words by longest to shortest.Create a grid of whatever size and a list of words.Unlike a few algorithms I found out there that implemented a random brute-force method of placing words like a few have suggested, I tried to implement a slightly smarter brute-force approach at word placement. It doesn't create the dense NYT style crosswords, but the style of crosswords you might find in a child's puzzle book. Keep track of all the positions and their scores and then choose the best one. When placing a new word, instead of placing it immediately upon finding an acceptable location, give that word location a score based on how much it increases the size of the grid and how many intersections there are (ideally you'd want each word to be crossed by 2-3 other words).A larger crossword might only be chosen from 5-6 possibilities. If you only have a small word list, then you'll get dozens of possible crosswords in 5 seconds. ![]()
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