Working with the Word List

~ Arctan Computer Ventures' WordPuzzle Pro ~

Working with the Word List

The Word List is a lexicon of words and phrases. It is like a dictionary without the definitions, and can be used to search for possible words and phrases for your puzzles. It can also be used to generate a number of possible anagrams from a given word or phrase.

Note that an entry can contain only those letters that are predefined before creating the word list. A word list can use up to 63 different letters, including letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens and any other chosen punctuation. Note that punctuation is removed when transferred to the puzzle grid. Thus with punctuation, an entry in the word list can be a phrase to include punctuation.

If you wish to add words to the dictionary, there are a number of methods of achieving this. You can enter the words manually, one-at-a-time, import them from another dictionary, or import them from a text document. You can even extract portions of the dictionary and export them either to a text file, or to another dictionary file.

Words can have one of three statuses. Validated (i.e. checked as being OK to use in a puzzle), Unvalidated (added to the list, but not yet checked), and Excluded (words to be ignored when importing, e.g. from a text document). There are facilities for easily updating the statuses of words in any of these three lists. There is the facility to set all unvalidated to words to validate without manual checking, and to remove all excluded words from the dictionary when you no longer have any use for them.

Finally, a late addition is the ability to give a word list up to 4 categories. Any entry can have one of these categories. The category can either be treated as distinct categories, or as a rating (e.g. 1 is difficult, 4 is easy). Selection from the word list can then be restricted either to a given category, or categories larger than a given category (e.g. category 2 or higher to give clues that are quite hard, hard, or easy). Note that at present, most of the supplied word lists are NOT categorised. This will be an ongoing process through future version of the product.

Sections

	Searching for a list of Words
	Searching for a single word at random
	Setting category search level
	Finding Contained Words
	Finding Anagrams
	Dragging word onto Grid
	Link word list to a Puzzle
	Adding a new word
	Deleting a word
	Open the word list
	Save the word list
	Validating, invalidating & excluding words
	Setting category for word
	Importing words from a text document
	Importing words from another word list
	Exporting selected words to another word list
	Exporting selected words to a text document
	Exporting all selected words to a text document
	Mark Selection as Validated
	Remove all items in Exclusion list
	Remove all selected items
	Generate a random selection of words
	Set Title, Author and Notes for a Word List
	Set allowable letters and divider letters for a word list
	Compression
	Set categories / difficulty levels for word list
	Create a new word list

Searching for a list of words

You can search for a list of particular words in the word list using a combination of a word mask and/or a number of categories:-

Open the word list window using the menu Word List and the View option, or hold down the Ctrl key and Right-Click over anywhere on the toolbar above the grid.

If you wish to search for a particular word or wish to find a list of words given some available letters and empty spaces, then you will need to understand how masks work. Click here for further information.

	*Click in the edit box just to the right of the Mask* heading**
	Type-in the mask you wish to use. Note that if you leave this empty, ALL clues in the clue pool will be retrieved.

Click on the Find List button to commence the search.

In the top right hand corner of the window, you can see some yellow writing on a blue background, which will tell you how many clues have been retrieved.

If you wish to search on a series of different masks, you can make the Find List button default by right-clicking over it. This means that you just have to type out the new mask and press the key to find the list - the key now acts the same as clicking on the Find List button.

Double-clicking on a word in the list will fill the mask edit box with the word you have double-clicked on. This is useful if you wish to find an anagram of the found word.

Double-clicking on the edit box will clear its contents.

If you only want to find a few words, then you can limit the number of words to be found by filling in the text box next to the Max Words heading. For example, you would put 10 in this box if you wanted to find a maximum of 10 words. This is useful if you want to cut down the time it takes to search. However, the examples returned will always be those at the beginning of the alphabet.

Searching for a single word at random

If you would like to see a single word that fits the criteria you have specified, taken at random, then simply fill in the mask edit box according to how you wish to restrict the search, or leave it blank if any word will do. Note, setting the word category level will also affect which word can be drawn. Now simply click on the Single word button. A word will be then displayed in a dialog box for you. This is typically much quicker than searching for ALL words of a particular criteria.

Setting category search level

There is a blue text display just to the right of the Contained Words button. This shows the category of whichever word was last clicked on. If you left-click on this display box, the category will increase to the next level, and a ToolTip will be displayed showing the new category level. If you left-click again when the level is the highest level (4), the level will go back to the first level again. If the category represents a rating, then only those words that are in the category, or at a higher category level, will be shown. If the category represents a banding, then only those words that are in the category selected, will be shown.

To choose between whether the categories represent a banding or a rating, set the appropriate option in the Word List Properties screen.

Finding Contained Words

The computer can find all of the valid words that can be found within a given word or phrase, together with the letters that are left over. Simply type out the required word or phrase in the Mask edit box, and then click on the Contained Words button.

A list of words that can be found within the given phrase will then be listed in the Words Found section. Note that if any of these words are not of use to you, then you could always exclude them from future searches by clicking on the appropriate words, and hitting the Delete key.

If you click on the Remaining Letters tab, the same words will be shown, together with the letters that remain from the original phrase. This is useful if you want to make a cryptic clue that contains all of a particular word, doing something inventive with the remaining letters.

Finding Anagrams

You can ask the computer to produce a list of anagrams based on words from the word list very quickly and easily:-

Ensure that you are clicked on the Words tab in the Clues window.

Click in the edit box just to the right of the Mask heading

Enter the word(s) for which you wish to find the anagram. A good one to try out is your name

Click on the Anagrams button or press Alt + A.

The results will appear in a list for you to browse.

If you only want to find a few examples, then you can limit the number of anagrams to be found by filling in the text box next to the Max Words heading. For example, you would put 10 in this box if you wanted to find a maximum of 10 anagrams.

If a particular (unwanted) word keeps appearing in your anagrams, you could remove it temporarily. After finding the anagrams once:-

	*Click on the Words Found* tab to show all words that occur within the words you specified.**
	Click on the word that you wish to omit from the search.
	Press the Delete key. When you click on another word, you should see that the word has turned to grey. It has been removed from the Validated list of words to the Excluded list of words. It can be moved back later, if you wish, or removed permanently from the word list by clearing words in the Excluded list.
	Repeat this process for all words that you wish to exclude.
	*Click on the Anagrams* button to obtain a new set of anagrams excluding these words.**

Dragging a word to the grid

You can drag a word to any position on the grid by following this procedure:-

	Click on the word in the word list (not an anagram) that you wish to place on the grid
	Hold down the left-hand mouse button
	Drag the mouse pointer over to the grid, and when it reaches the first square of the space where you wish to drop the word, release the mouse button
	If the word would fit in either Across or Down, the word will be placed in the current direction as indicated by the across/down buttons on the crossword grid.
	If the word would not fit in the space you have selected, then it will not be dropped onto the grid. The exception to this is if you have selected the option from the Puzzle Properties options that allows you to drop words onto the grid into a space larger than the size of the word.

Another method which you may find easier is to ensure that the cursor is placed at the start of where the word is to go on the grid, select the word that you wish to drop at that point from the word list (e.g. by clicking once on it), and then pressing the button. If it fits in the space, this will place the word on the grid at the cursor position, and close the clues/words dialog box.

Link Word List to crossword

You can set the puzzle up to automatically open a particular word list when it is next loaded. This saves you time when you are preparing your puzzle, and wish to come back to it at a later time.
When used in conjunction with puzzle templates, it can standardise the word list to use for different types of puzzle, or globally across all newly created puzzles.

To link a word list to a puzzle:-

	Ensure both the word list and puzzle have been opened.
	*From the main (grid) window, click on the Word List* menu, and choose the Link to Puzzle option.**
	Save the puzzle
	*Note that you can unlink the word list from the puzzle by choosing this option again - it toggles* the link between word list and puzzle.**

Adding a new word

You can add individual new words to the word list in the following way:-

	*Ensure that you are clicked on the Pool* tab in the Clues window.**
	*Click in the edit box just to the right of the Mask* heading**
	Enter the word or phrase that you wish to add to the word list. Words can be any combination of letters or digits. If entering a phrase, separate words using either a space or hyphen (dash). No other punctuation marks are permitted.
	Click on the button to add the word to the dictionary. This will leave the edit box empty. Note that if the word was in the dictionary already, it will not be added again. If you typed in a new word, you will see the count (xxx words from a list of yyy) text at the top-right of the window will show the total number of word (yyy) increased by one.
	If you wish to type out a number of words into the word list, you may wish to right-click over the button. This makes it the default button. Therefore, to add a word to the list, just type out the word in the mask edit box, and press the key.
	Note that this adds the word as unvalidated. This means it hasn't yet been checked for correctness - you may have misspelt the word by mistake. This means that the word will not yet be included in normal searches. See section on validation for more information.

Deleting a word

Deleting a word is as simple as clicking on the word from the word list, and either pressing the Delete button on the keyboard or clicking on the

button in the clues window.
Note that this does not remove the word completely from the word list. Rather, it removes it to the Exclusion list, which acts as a sort of recycle bin. It also prevents a user from being able to add the clue to the clue pool again as a usable word.
Note also that this facility is only available in the full version of the application.

To delete the word completely, you would need to do the following:-

	*Click on the drop-down list (to the left of the Find List* button - currently shows Validated Only)**
	*Select the Exclusions* option by clicking on it.**
	The text in the mask box should disappear. This is fine.
	*Click on the Find List* button. After a time, all excluded words should be listed.**
	*Click on the word(s) you wish to exclude, and either press the Delete* button on the keyboard or click on the button in the clues window.**
	To remove all excluded words from the exclusion list (rather like emptying the recycle bin) click here for more information.

Validating, Invalidating & Excluding Words

When you first add a word to the word list, it is set to a status of unvalidated. This means it needs to be manually checked as being OK before it will be included in searches on the validated list. Unalidated words appear in the list in red.
When words are deleted, they are sent to the exclusion list, which is rather like the recycle bin in Windows. However, the exclusion list has benefit of disallowing any words in the exclusion list to be added to the normal validated or unvalidated lists of words. Thus, if you are importing from a series of text documents, you can specify words to exclude when you are validating the results from each document load, thus preventing the word from being loaded in again, and consequently having to delete the word again if it gets reloaded later.

When you first search the word list, you will normally see items from the Validated list. You can view items from both the Validated and Unvalidated list together by choosing Any included word from the drop-down list (just to the left of the Find List button), and then searching again. Note that unvalidated words are distinguished by being coloured red.
You can view items from just the unvalidated list by choosing the Unvalidated only option from the drop-down list, or all items in the exclusion list by choosing the Exclusions option from the drop-down list.

You can browse the word list by using the arrow keys and Page Up / Page Down keys as normal, or using the mouse / scroll bar to navigate.

You can switch between a word being validated and unvalidated by right-clicking over a word, or by clicking on the Validated? check-box on the window.
You can mark a word as validated by clicking on the grey + button on the numeric keypad, and mark it as unvalidated by clicking on the grey - button on the numeric keypad.
You can remove a word to the exclusion list by pressing the Delete button or by clicking on the button.
You can remove a word from the exclusion list (permanent deletion) as follows:

	*Ensure the Exclusions* option is selected**
	*Enter any appropriate mask (or leave empty) and click on Find List* button**
	Click on or otherwise select the word you wish to permanently remove
	*Press the Delete* button or click on the button.**

Setting category for word

There is a blue text display just to the right of the Contained Words button. This shows the category of whichever word was last clicked on. If you right-click over this display box, the category will increase to the next level for the selected word, and will be shown within the blue display box with the new category level. If you right-click again when the level is the highest level (4), the level will go back to the first level again.

This category can be used to restrict the results retrieved when searching for a given word or set of words, or when auto-filling a grid.

Importing words from a text document

Entering individual words into the word list is rather laborious. If you wish to extend the dictionary - for example, add some specialist technical words - by adding all the words from an existing document then follow these steps:-

Save your document as a text document. Most word processors and similar program have an option to save the document as a text (.txt) file.

From the main menu, click on the Word List menu, the Import/Export> option, and then Import From Text File...

A dialog box will be shown with some options for how to import the text document.

Next to the Filename box, you can type the path and filename of the text document to scan. Otherwise, you can click on the button and choose a filename using the normal open-file dialog box. When you have chosen the filename, it will be placed automatically into the Filename text box

There are a number of extra options you can use to customise how text should be imported. Normally, you would not need to change these:-

	You can specify what you characters you wish to represent a word division. This is set as default to cover most likely punctuation marks. However, you may wish to exclude some of these in cases where they are irrelevant, or used in a different way - for example, you may wish to state that only spaces and dashes should be treated as word dividers, and any other punctuation mark should be ignored. In this case, you would replace the text in the text box next to the heading Word Division Characters with a space followed by a dash.
	Sometimes, text documents are structure in such a way that you are only interested in words that appear within certain blocks of text, delimited with a start and and set of characters. For example, if you were imported text from a html document and you only wanted to include words from within the body of the document, then the block prefix might be <body> and the block suffix might be </body> - only words between the prefix and suffix will be imported. Normally, you would leave this blank.
	Sometimes, only a portion of a text file should be imported - the rest may be rubbish, or perhaps you want to import a particularly long document in chunks. You can achieve this by selecting a start line from which to start importing, and a stop line. As default, the start line is 1 and the stop line is the last line in the text file.
	The Keep Hyphenated Phrases check-box should be checked if you want word separated with hyphens to be imported as a single phrase in the word-list. This will normally account for hyphens at the end of lines too. This is checked as default.
	The Terminate blocks at line end check-box will force the computer to treat the end of a line as the end of a block. This is useful in case the document contains an error, where there is no block suffix to accompany a block prefix, thus rendering the rest of the document unreadable.
	The Mark as Validated check-box will add the words as though they had been validated manually. This is not avisable unless you are adding from a straight list of words that have been pre-checked.

Click on the Start button to start the import process. The Start button turns into a Stop button. You can click on this to stop the import process if it seems to be taking too long.

A running total of words added is shown on a status bar, with the progress through the file shown on a Progress meter.

When finished, you can click on the Close button to return to viewing the main (grid) window.

Importing words from another word list

Over time, new word lists may become available that you would like to include in your main word list. You may wish to keep a number of different themed word lists separate from each other, but combined them into your main word list for general puzzles without having to go through the validation process again.

You can achieve this by following this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Import/Export> option, and choose the Import... option.**
	An import file dialog box is shown. Select the word list (.lex) file you wish to import, and OK the dialog box to continue.
	If there are any unvalidated words in the source file being imported, you will be given the option of whether you wish to import them.
	Similarly, if there are any excluded words in the source file being imported, you will be given the option of whether you wish to import them.
	When the process is finished, you will be told how many word were scanned for importing, and how many were actually added (some may already exist in the current word list).

Exporting selected words to another word list

You may wish to reduce the size of the word list that you are working with - for example, if the memory or speed of your computer is too limited to effectively support the full word list size. You may also wish to export a list of excluded words for archiving before you delete them permanently from the current word list.

You can export a selection of words by finding a list of words in the word list as normal, and then following this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Import/Export> option, and choose the Export Selection... option.**
	An export file dialog box is shown. Choose the required directory, and enter the word list (.lex) filename you wish to export to, and OK the dialog box to continue.
	If the filename already exists, you will be warned that continuing will overwrite the existing file, which means that the original file and all of its contents will be lost.
	The selected words will be exported to the new file. The notes in the new file will give the originating file for the words, and the date they were exported.
	You will then be asked whether you wish to delete the words in the current word list, now that they have been copied to another file. Click on if this is what you want, otherwise click on .

Exporting selected words to a text document

You may wish to export a selection of words to a text file, perhaps for reference in another application. An example of this may be of a word processor, where you may wish to add the words to the word processor's dictionary, and by spell checking the text document, you can force the word processor to add all of the new words, which you know to be correct from having validated them yourself!

You can export a selection of words to a text file (one word per line) by finding a list of words in the word list as normal, and then following this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Import/Export> option, and choose the Export To Text File... option.**
	An export file dialog box is shown. Choose the required directory, and enter the text (.txt) filename you wish to export to, and OK the dialog box to continue.
	If the filename already exists, you will be warned that continuing will overwrite the existing file, which means that the original file and all of its contents will be lost.
	The selected words will be exported to the text file, one word per line.
	You will then be informed how many words were written to the text file.

Export ALL words to a text document

You may wish to export all of the words to a text file, perhaps for reference in another application. An example of this may be of a word processor, where you may wish to add the words to the word processor's dictionary, and by spell checking the text document, you can force the word processor to add all of the new words, which you know to be correct from having validated them yourself!

You can export a selection of words to a text file (one word per line) by finding a list of words in the word list as normal, and then following this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Import/Export> option, and choose the Export To Text File... option.**
	An export file dialog box is shown. Choose the required directory, and enter the text (.txt) filename you wish to export to, and OK the dialog box to continue.
	If the filename already exists, you will be warned that continuing will overwrite the existing file, which means that the original file and all of its contents will be lost.
	The selected words will be exported to the text file, one word per line.
	You will then be informed how many words were written to the text file.

Mark selection as validated

Rather than marking each unvalidated item as validated individually, you may instead wish to scan through the list, delete those that are wrong, and then click on the Find List button again. You now know that all of the words on the list are validated.

To mark all of the words in the list as validated, follow this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, and choose the Mark Selection as Validated option.**
	You will be asked to confirm that you are sure you wish to mark these words as validated by clicking on the button.
	When the computer has finished setting all of the words as validated, you will see a dialog box that tells you how many words have been marked as validated.

Remove all items in exclusion list

After you have finished removing unwanted words during the validation process, and/or do not wish to import any more documents, you may wish to remove the excluded items from the word list, as they take up space in memory, on your disk, and to a small extent, slow down any searches you perform.

The task is comparable to that of emptying the recycle bin in Windows.

To permanently delete all excluded words, follow this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Clear option, and from the submenu, choose the ... Exclusion List option.**
	You will be asked to confirm that you are sure you wish to permanently remove the words by clicking on the button.
	When the computer has finished removing the excluded words, you will see a dialog box that tells you how many words have been removed.

Remove all selected items

You may wish to remove a selection of items from the word list. In order to do this, you would need to extract a seection of words and then perform the following task.

Example uses of this might include making a random selection from a list and then deleting these items in order to arbitrarily reduce the size of the list, or delete words from a given category in order to reduce search time if wishing to use the AutoFill function to search within a particular category.

To permanently delete all selected words, follow this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, choose the Clear option, and from the submenu, choose the ... Selected Words option.**
	You will be asked to confirm that you are sure you wish to permanently remove the words by clicking on the button.
	When the computer has finished removing the selected words, you will see a dialog box that tells you how many words have been removed.

Generate a random selection of words

If you are finding that the word list you are using is too unwieldy, and slowing down searches intolerably, or if you wish to produce samples of your own word or phrase lists for distribution to others, then you could use this facility to take a random sample of words from the word list, and then export this randomly selected sample to another word list file.

By default, the number of words will be the number that appears in the Max Words edit box, which appears on the Words tab within the Clues window (the screen you use for searching for words in the word list). If this is blank, then the computer will take a sample numbering approx. 10% of the total number of words, or 32767 words, whichever is smaller.

To generate the random selection of words:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu from the main menu, and choose the Generate Random Selection menu option.**
	If you are generating more than 1,000 words the computer will display a dialog box asking if you are sure you wish to generate this many words, as it may take some time (e.g. for 20,000 words it make take 10 minutes or more). Click on the button to start the process.
	On completion, another dialog box will show you how many words have been selected.
	*You can look in the Clues* window on the Words tab to view the list of words that have been selected.**
	*You can also use one of the Export* options to export the words to another word list, or even a text file.**

Save the Word List

To save changes to the word list, you can either click on the global save button on the main (grid) window, or choose the Word List menu, and click on the Save option, or Save As if you wish to save the word list under a different name. Note that if you do this, the currently open puzzle stays linked to the previous word list name.

Set allowable letters and divider letters for a word list

You can set the letters that can be used in the word list (e.g. a typical crossword need only A to Z, and perhaps space and dash to separate words) by following this procedure:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu and click on the Properties option, or click on the Properties button from the word list screen.**
	The two long edit boxes at the bottom of the screen show the Allowable letters for words in the word list, and the letters used to show what characters may be used to separate words in a phrase.
	If these appear in grey, this implies that words have already been added to the word list. The allowable letters and divider characters can only be set when the list is empty (i.e. before you start adding words). Changing the letters later would cause the word list to become corrupted.
	You can type new letters in either of the two text boxes to fit your requirements. Up to 63 different letters can be used in a word list. Space and - characters are ALWAYS included and cannot be removed, and wildcard characters cannot be included - these are *, ?, ^, <, >, and @ symbols.
	Click on the Ok button to return to viewing the main (grid) window.

Compression

Click on the check-box entitled Compress (Incompatible with v1.4 or less) to turn on compression for the word list. This means that the word list will be compressed to make it take up less space on your disk, but in consequence, will not be able to be opened by older (v1.4 or less) versions of the application. Typically, checking this option will make the word list file about half its previous size.

Set categories / difficulty levels for a word list

A word list can be given four categories. Each can be given a name, and each word in the word list can be assigned to one of these categories. This can be used for one of the following purposes:-

	For information only (e.g. as a reference when browsing the word list)
	For splitting the word list into different bands or categories - e.g. to ensure that when searching, only those words from a specific band are included
	For rating words in the list - for example, in terms of how unusual the words are. For example, cat 0 could be unrated, cat 1 could be difficult, cat 2 could be common, cat 3 could be easy. When you search, you could restrict the search to all categories that are 2 and over (for example) to give only words that are either common or easy, or to 0 and over to give EVERY word.

Note that all new words default to the first category (category 0).

To set the category names, or change the category type, or change the current category, follow this procedure:-

To change the properties (e.g. name, author, notes) for a word list, and see the filename of the current word list file:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu and click on the Properties option, or click on the Properties button from the word list screen.**
	In a boxed-off section labelled Categories, you can fill in the category names in the edit boxes labelled Categ 0 through to Categ 3 - Categ 0 is the default category, or the category that all new words will be assigned to. As default, Category 0 is Undefined, Category 1 is Obscure, Category 2 is Challenging and Category 3 is Common
	To change the category type so that categories are used as described above, click on the drop-down list labelled Cat Type, and choose one of the three options: Rating, Banding, or Information Only.
	To change the current category, which will restrict the words that will be shown in searches and auto-filling according to the category type chosen, you can change the category using the drop-down list labelled Min. Cat. Alternatively, you can change the current category whilst searching for words / anagrams etc. from the Words tab in the Clues window.

Open the Word List

To open a Word List in order to use it:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu and click on the Open option.**
	If you have made any changes to the current Word List, you will be asked if you want to save them.
	An open file dialog box will be displayed. You can select a file to open from here.
	When you see the file you wish to open, click on it, then click on the Ok button.

Set Properties for Word List

To change the properties (e.g. name, author, notes) for a word list, and see the filename of the current word list file:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu and click on the Properties option, or click on the Properties button from the word list screen.**
	*Change the details in any of the Title, Author,* or Notes edit boxes. These are for identification purposes only.**
	Change the category options and allowable/divider letters as described above, if required.
	Click on the Ok button to return to viewing the main (grid) window.

Create a new Word List

If you wish to start a brand new word list:-

	*Click on the Word List* menu and click on the New option.**
	If you have made any changes to the current Word List, you will be asked if you want to save them.
	A blank word list will be created. You may wish to save it at this point (using Word List \| Save As...) to give it a filename.

(c) Copyright 2000-1 Arctan Computer Ventures Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
If you have any issues regarding this on-line help, please contact the author by clicking here.
This Page was last updated: 06 July 2001 23:33