Crossword Puzzles

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Puzzler v1.0 Puzzler Solution Helper Copyright 1992, Acropolis Software Robert Bequette Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628 THE LEGAL STUFF Puzzler is provided on an "as is" basis without warranty of any kind expressed or implied. In no event will Acropolis Software be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of or inability to use the program, even if Acropolis Software has been advised of the possibility of such damages, or for any claim by any other party. Puzzler is copyrighted by Acropolis Software. You are encouraged to give copies to your friends and upload it to bulletin boards. However, sale of the program for profit by anyone except Acropolis Software is strictly prohibited, except for a small fee for duplication. That fee does not register you as a user of Puzzler. If you like Puzzler and find it useful you are asked to register as a users with Acropolis Software. (See "REGISTRATION" at the bottom of this document for information on how to register). INDEX Introduction ...................................... 1 File list ...................................... 1 Requirements ...................................... 1 Installation Floppy Drive System ...................................... 2 Hard Drive System ...................................... 2 Running Puzzler ...................................... 3 Pattern Searches ...................................... 3 Anagram Unscrambling ...................................... 4 Questions or Comments ....................................... 6 Registration ....................................... 7 Page 1 INTRODUCTION Puzzler version 1.0 is a program to help you solve word puzzles that you have found yourself stuck on. It is designed mainly to help with anagrams and crossword puzzles, but I am sure there are other uses for it, such as cheating at hangman. With Puzzler you can find all the combination of a anagram that make proper words and abbreviations. Or you can have is search of all words that match a pattern of letter where you do not know what some of the letters are such as in a crossword puzzle where you only know some of the letter for a word, but can't seem to guess what the word is. Puzzler knows a little over 112,000 words and abbreviations. Puzzler is a shareware product. It is not "freeware" or public domain. If you use Puzzler, you are expected to pay for it just like any other program. In return for the $10 registration fee, you will receive the latest version of the program and the newest dictionary on either a 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" disk (whichever you prefer). FILE LIST Puzzler comes with the following files: PUZZLER.EXE The Puzzler Program. PUZZLER.DOC This manual. ACROP.DIC The dictionary containing all the words. REGISTER.DOC A file with just the registration form. It you give copies of this program away you MUST include all four files in their original form. Distribution with one or more of the files missing or altered in anyway is strictly prohibited. REQUIREMENTS The minimum system requirements to run Puzzler are: 256K of RAM 1 Floppy disk drive MSDOS/PCDOS version 2.1 or higher A hard drive is recommended, but not required. Puzzler will just run a little slower from a floppy disk. Page 2 INSTALLATION Floppy Disk Drive System Installation Setting up Puzzler on a floppy disk drive system is easy. Start up you computer with a DOS disk in drive A:. Now place a blank disk in drive B: and type: FORMAT B: When the formatting is finished, replace the DOS disk in drive A: with your Puzzler master disk and type the following commands: COPY PUZZLER.EXE B: COPY ACROP.DIC B: You now have a Puzzler disk in drive B:. Put your master Puzzler disk away in a safe place so that if something happens to your working disk you can make a new copy by repeating the steps above. To run Puzzler, place the Puzzler working disk in drive A: and type PUZZLER at the DOS prompt. Hard Drive System Installation To install Puzzler on your hard drive you first make a subdirectory to place it in and then copy the files PUZZLER.EXE and ACROP.DIC in to it. To run Puzzler just change to the subdirectory containing the Puzzler program and the dictionary and type PUZZLER at the DOS prompt. Page 3 RUNNING PUZZLER You start Puzzler by typing PUZZLER at the DOS prompt and pressing the RETURN key. There is one command line option when starting Puzzler you can include the option "-m" to force Puzzler into the monochrome mode on color monitors. If for some reason Puzzler cannot find its dictionary it will tell you so and quit immediately. If everything goes well you will be presented with the Puzzler main screen and a menu that lets you select which function you want to perform. The three options are [S]crambled, [P]attern Search, and [ESC] to exit. One other option at any time it to press the F1 key and get some help explaining where you currently are in the program. PATTERN SEARCHES You use the [P]attern Search option to help with solving crosswords and hangman type puzzles. With it you can local words when you only know some of the letters that comprise them. Say you are doing a crossword puzzle and you have a four letter word you can't figure out, but you know all but the second letter in the word. An example would be "C*AT". This is the type of thing pattern searches are good for. Using selecting the [P]attern Search option from the main menu and giving it the pattern "C*AT" Puzzler will come back with the words "CHAT" and "COAT". Puzzler isn't limited to just one missing letter. You could give it a pattern like "*GA*" and it will return the words "AGAR" (a gelatin extracted from algae) and "EGAD". In fact you can use the wild card character "*" for any number of the letters in the word, even all of them. But be warned if you make the pattern too general such as "*****" (all five letter words) you may not have enough memory for Puzzler to keep a list of them all. Nothing nasty will happen, but it will tell you that it cannot display all of them for you. Additionally there isn't anything magic about the "*" character. Puzzler will automatically replace any character that isn't a letter or the apostrophe "'" with the wild card asterisk. Once Puzzler has found any matches to pattern it will display the list and way for you to press the RETURN key (to do on to the next page of words if there are more) or the ESC key to return to the pattern prompt. You can return to the main menu by pressing either the RETURN or the ESC key at the prompt for the pattern. Page 4 ANAGRAM UNSCRAMBLING The anagram descrambler operation of Puzzler is the most powerful function it performs. With it you can give it a group of letters and it will find all the words that can be made from those letters. The reason it is so powerful is the shear number of combinations that there are to be tested. With two letters there are only two combinations, with three letters there are six combinations, but at you increase the number letters the number of combinations possible grows at a fantastic rate. For example fourteen letters can be arranged in 87,178,291,200 combinations. The following is a table showing the number of combinations possible with one to twenty letters. Combinations Letters Combinations Letters ------------ ------- ------------------------- -------- 1 1 39,916,800 11 2 2 479,001,600 12 6 3 6,227,020,800 13 24 4 87,178,291,200 14 120 5 1,307,674,378,000 15 720 6 20,922,790,048,000 16 5,040 7 355,687,430,816,000 17 40,320 8 3,402,373,754,688,000 18 362,880 9 65,045,101,339,072,000 19 3,628,800 10 1,300,902,026,781,440,000 20 Fortunately, Puzzler is bright enough that it won't take until the end of the universe to test all the combinations for a 20 letter word. Puzzler will stop searching some pointless chains of combinations when there is no reason to do so. An example would be a 20 character string of letters that has the letters "Z" and "X" in it. Since it cannot find any words that start with the letter combination "ZX" is can drop 3,402,373,754,688,000 combinations that start with that arrangement of letters (also the same amount again because there are not any words that start with the combination "XZ"). That and other tricks allows Puzzler to return an answer in a reasonable amount of time. Also those numbers are assuming that all the letters in the group are different. When some of the letters are repeated the number of combinations is reduced, but the math used to figure out the actual number of different combinations when some of the letters are repeated is even scarier then the above numbers. Don't let the big numbers scare you, Puzzler really is rather quick at finding all the valid combinations. On a 386 computer the unscrambling of even 20 letter words typically takes less than 15 or 20 seconds. With the normal use of it being with four to seven letter words that are really quick. Page 5 USE THE SCRAMBLER Now that the explanation of what Puzzler is doing when it unscrambles a group of letters for you let's see how to make it do it for you. After selecting the [S]crambler option from the main menu you will be prompted for the group of letters to find valid word combinations from. After entering the words it will display the number of combinations possible and start the search for valid words. Once it has tried all the combinations if there where any words that it could make for the group you gave it, it will display them for you and then wait for you to press the RETURN or ESC key. You will then be prompted to once again enter the group of letters to search try. You can return to the main menu by pressing either the RETURN or ESC key. Page 6 QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS If you have any questions or comments I can be reached through the U.S. Mail at: Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628 Or electronically: On CompuServe by sending EasyPlex mail to 75146.3471 On America On-Line by sending mail to RobertB377 Page 7 REGISTRATION Puzzler is a shareware product. This is not a demo or crippled version, but a full working copy. If you use Puzzler, I ask you to send $10 to Acropolis Software to register your copy in return you will receive a disk containing the latest version of both the program and the dictionary. When you register your copy of Puzzler please use the order form below. If you do not use the form, please specify that you are registering Puzzler and indicate your preferred disk format (5 1/4" or 3 1/2"). _______________________________________________________________________ Registration / Order Form Name : __________________________ Company : __________________________ Address : __________________________ __________________________ City/State : __________________________ Zip Code : __________________________ (Optional) Phone : __________________________ Registration : $ 10.00 California residents add sales tax : ______ TOTAL : ______ Disk Format: 5 1/4" ___ 3 1/2" ___ (360K) (720K) Forgien checks MUST be payable in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank. The product being registered is Puzzler v1.0. You will receive a registered copy of the latest version of Puzzler without the shareware screen at the end, and the latest dictionary. Send check or money order to: Acropolis Software P.O. Box 5037 Fair Oaks, CA 95628