http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/ A list for programmers of word games. Ve Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:10:22 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/960 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/960 I got some news about the benchmarks by Hadrien Cambazard. Last year, there have been a competition about CSP solvers. More information here: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:58:19 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/959 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/959 ... After 6 hours of computation, I got: (334/462) 2295321 nodes STROBE#ASLEEP#SIR#DOBBS NEEDED#STAGER#CREMATORY INTERESTINGLY#ROBERTSON Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:04:16 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/958 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/958 There is a site proposing a set of crosswords puzzles to fill, with some test dictionaries (english and french): Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:22:41 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/957 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/957 BTW, the current record for a 15x15 american crossword is 19 cells: http://www.mathpuzzle.com/Manny19.gif I'm interested with a better result. Any volunteer ? Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:12:58 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/956 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/956 ... Very nice ! My french lexicon for such grids contains 120000 words (with no conjugation), and I have been unable to find such a grid. BTW, there is a Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:58:19 GMT Andy Cook http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/955 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/955 ... Such things are all strongly dependent on the word list, of course. Number 2 seems relatively easy using Sowpods: ULTRAHEATED MORIBUNDITY BRIGANDS AE Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:32:23 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/954 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/954 ... Hum, you are right, your patterns are too simple. First, notice that I'm french, and we use different rules for crossword filling. In France, it's not good Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:06:10 GMT Warwick Allison http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/953 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/953 ... Re-reading my code, it's not *purely* brute force - it has one heuristic optimization: as the search progresses, it tries the possible words in order of Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:23:21 GMT Warwick Allison http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/952 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/952 ... Indeed, filling something like: .....#....... .....#.#.#... .......#..... ##.#.....#.#. .....#.#..... .#.#.....#.## .....#....... ...#.#.#..... Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:04:53 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/951 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/951 ... I finally found a way to perform a very fast words checking. For every word of the grid, I keep a table of bits representing all the words that can fit Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:58:33 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/950 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/950 ... BTW, here are some new links: Filling with dancing links: http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/xword/ A freeware Linux solver (seems to fill with Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:22:58 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/949 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/949 I'm currently trying the CSP approach, but previously worked with the program from Laeuter, which fills the grid letter by letter. CSP means Constraint Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:00:19 GMT Graham Toal http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/948 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/948 I haven't tried running them for 10 years or so, but I would imagine that the old C command-line programs that used to take an hour or so would be pretty Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:30:15 GMT David Levy http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/947 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/947 The latest version of the Australian program "Crossword Express" seems to be able to fill a grid from any given dictionary very quickly. Do any of you have any Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:57:52 GMT Jean-Charles Meyrignac http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/946 http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordgame-programmers/message/946 Oups, here is the real distribution of my wordlist: size 2: 93 words size 3: 538 words size 4: 1745 words size 5: 4244 words size 6: 7757 words size 7: 11117