When my girlfriend, Marie, told me how she enjoys word search games, I just naturally assumed I’d be able to download some good ones from the on-line services. Actually, I did find a couple of applications that generate the puzzles, but only for the printer. (And, in that capacity, they’re excellent.) I couldn’t find any that would let you play right on the screen. (I can’t believe there really are none. I just couldn’t find any.) Anyway, as a frustrated, and therefore retired, shareware word games developer, I figured I’d just make one myself. Word Hunt-my talent lies in making them, not naming them-is the result.
It wasn’t long before I realized why my confederates in the shareware business are reluctant to tackle this kind of project. For one thing, you really have to be able to display the entire puzzle on the screen at once. For a large array of letters that means a pretty small font. I’ve opted for a 9-point Monaco. I’ll grant it can get a little tedious after awhile, but it works. I’ve not found it too painful. Marie hasn’t complained. Another problem is how the words are selected after they’re found in the puzzle. The Macintosh doesn’t have any convenient routines for drawing a diagonal “circle.” It would have been possible to devise some sort of procedure to do it, but the letters are too close together anyway. I tried lining through words, but that obscured the letters too much. The technique I finally settled on seems to work pretty well. It isn’t classic word search, but it’s the best I could do.
Those of you familiar with my other games know I work on a Macintosh Plus. This isn’t preference; it’s poverty. I can’t give you color. (Mac II donors inquire within.) For that reason, the shareware fee is only $10.00. I think that’s reasonable. Color or none, it’s a good product. All proceeds will go to the Michael D. Speir Buy-An-Engagement-Ring-For-Marie Fund. Alas, it’s not tax-deductable, but a worthy cause, nonetheless.
OVERVIEW
Word Hunt lets you create word search puzzles in sizes from 8 by 8 to 25 by 25 letters. A puzzle may have as 100 words, depending on the size of the puzzle and the length of the words. You can choose word lengths ranging from 3 to 12 letters.
Unlike other puzzle generators, you don’t have to type in any words. Word Hunt has over 11000 words stored in its resource file. These are chosen at random by the application and placed in the puzzle’s letter array. Words may run in up to 8 different user-selected directions. The word list may be sorted alphabetically in ascending or descending order, or by word length, again ascending or descending.
You can print puzzles in three ways: with no answers, only answers you’ve found, or with all answers.
What’s really special about Word Hunt, though, is that you can solve puzzles right on the screen. Just click and drag to select a word. The word list is automatically updated with a check mark to show which words have been played. Puzzles may be saved and later opened either with or without answers.
Word Hunt has extensive on-line helps. Some are in the form of balloons telling about different features of the game’s window. Menu items are explained by help dialogs.
BUILDING A PUZZLE
You need to decide four things before making a puzzle. First, how big do you want it? Word Hunt puzzles may be anywhere from 8 X 8 to 25 X 25 letters. Selecting “Puzzle Size…” from the Puzzle menu brings up a dialog letting you set the size you want.
Second, in what directions would you like the words to run? Basically, by setting the direction you’re setting the difficulty. Choose “Word Direction…” from the Puzzle menu. A dialog will come up with eight buttons. Each button has an icon with arrows indicating which ways Word Hunt will be permitted to place words. Very self-explanatory.
Third, what length words do you want? You can specify a range from 3 to 12-letters. When you select “Word Control” from the Puzzle menu, a dialog comes up with, among other things, two batteries of “radio buttons.” Those on the left specify the minimum permissible word length. Those on the right, the maximum. You can’t goof it up. Word Hunt won’t let you choose a maximum shorter than the minimum, or vice versa. When the puzzle is built, only words within the length range you specify will be added to the puzzle.
Last, on the same dialog, type in the number of words you’d like to have in the puzzle. You must specify a minimum of one word. You may ask for no more than 100. If you type in something outside these limits, Word Hunt will correct the input for you. Now, check the radio button for the “Timeout” delay you’d like. You can choose 30, 45, or 60 seconds. Word Hunt will try for as many seconds as you specify to get the number or words you want into the puzzle. NOTE: There are no guarantees here! Don’t bother trying to put 100 words into an 8 X 8 puzzle. You won’t get anywhere nearly that many. I’ve found that I can get 100 words into a 25 X 25 puzzle almost invariably with the maximum (3 to 12) letter range and a 30-second timeout. You’ll need to experiment.
There’s one more thing you might consider. You can have Word Hunt sort the words for you automatically as it’s making a puzzle. If “Sort On” under the Puzzle menu has a check mark to the left of it, words will be automatically sorted. Repeated selection of this option toggles the feature on and off. If that’s what you want, also select “Sort Method.” A dialog will come up allowing you to specify how you’d like the words sorted. This can be alphabetically, ascending or descending, or by word length, ascending or descending. If you’d like to sort or re-sort the words after the puzzle has been developed, you can do that by selecting one of the same sort methods available by choosing “Sort Words” under the same menu.
Now, if everything’s the way you want it, choose the first option under the Puzzle menu: “Make Puzzle.” A dialog will appear telling you of the progress of the puzzle’s development. You’ll also notice words beginning to be listed in the Word List Box in the lefthand part of the Word Hunt window. After the words have been added, the letter array will appear in the Puzzle Box, which occupies the whole righthand side of the window.
When the puzzle has been compiled, another dialog will come up asking what you’d like to call the Puzzle. IMPORTANT: This is NOT a file name! It’s merely a puzzle title. It will serve as a heading when the puzzle is printed. The name you choose will be displayed in a box above the Word List Box. The puzzle title may be as long as 60 letters. (If the name is longer than what can be displayed in its box, it will be diplayed as truncated followed by an ellipsis (…). Clicking on a truncated title will expand the Title Box to allow the full name to show while the mouse button is held down. When the button is released, the box will snap back to its original size.) If you want to change it later, choose “Name Puzzle” from the Puzzle menu.
You’re ready to begin solving the puzzle.
SOLVING THE PUZZLE
You solve Word Hunt puzzles by clicking and dragging on letters of words you find in the Puzzle Box. Each letter will be circled in turn. Start on the first letter of the word and drag until you’ve selected the entire word. IMPORTANT: On diagonal drags you’ll need to click on the first two letters before you start your drag. So far I haven’t been clever enough to figure out how to make the diagonal drag method consistent with that of horixontal and vertical drags. If you’d like, you can click on each letter in turn until you’ve selected the whole word.
As you’re selecting a word you’ll notice it forming in the Word Box at the lower left of the Word Hunt window, just below the Word List Box. When you’re done, click this box (Word Box). Three things will happen if the word you found is in the word list. First, the letters you circled in the Puzzle Box will be permanently selected. The first and last letters of the word will have boxes drawn around them. Those letters between will appear in inverted ovals. Second, the word will disappear from the Word Box. Third, a check mark will be displayed to the right of the word in the word list. If your word is out of view in the word list, it will be scrolled into view.
If you’ve made a mistake, just click on the Erase Button, located above the Word Box. Its the one that looks like a pencil eraser. (It’s supposed to, anyway.) The letters you selected in the Puzzle Box will be uncircled and the word will disappear from the Word Box. Try again.
When it’s compiling a puzzle, Word Hunt places all the words it can in the puzzle, and any blank spaces remaining are filled with random characters. Because of this, it’s common for words (especially 3 and 4-letter words) to appear in the puzzle, by chance, that are not in the word list. If you select a word not in the word list, an alert will pop up telling you so and asking you if you want to play the word anyway. Although they’ll be shown as selected just like words in the word list during the current session, such words cannot be saved with your puzzle or printed.
For the same reason given in the previous paragraph, sometimes a word in the word list will also appear by chance in the puzzle somewhere other than where Word Hunt expects it to be. In that case, Word Hunt will be glad to change its mind to accomodate your choice of locations. When you select “Show Answers” (described further below) from the Puzzle menu afterward, there will be a short delay while the answer screen is updated. Word Hunt will be considerate enough to tell you what it’s doing.
You’re ready to move on to the next word. Just keep doing the same thing again until you’ve found all the words.
SAVING AND OPENING
Saving a puzzle is just like saving a file with any other Macintosh application. Choose “Save” from the File menu. If you’ve never saved the puzzle you’re working on, a dialog box will come up asking you to name your file before saving. If you’d like to save an existing file by some other name, select “Save As…” from the same menu.
Opening a puzzle is almost exactly like opening files of other applications, with one exception. When a puzzle is saved, all the words you’ve found are saved with it. But, maybe you, or someone else, would like to re-solve it. You wouldn’t want the words you’ve already found appearing in the Puzzle Box. Well, when the open dialog comes up, click the “No Answers” checkbox. The puzzle will open without the answers.
PRINTING
“Page Setup…” under the File menu acts just like it does in other standard Macintosh applications. I suggest you click the “Tall Adjusted” box when printing vertically. It makes the puzzle more square.
“Print” actually has three options: “No Answers,” “Played Answers,” and “All Answers.” They work pretty much as you’d guess. “No Answers” will print out the puzzle with no solutions shown. “Played Answers” prints the puzzle only highlighting the words you’ve found. “All Answers” will print the puzzle as though solved. When you print from the Finder, a dialog will appear giving you the same choices.
HELPS
I overdid the helps. They were an experiment, really.
Try holding down the Option key. You’ll notice the cursor will turn into a comic-strip-type balloon with a little question mark in it. You might say Word Hunt is in the “help mode” now. It will be until you release the Option key.
While in the help mode, clicking anywhere in the window will bring up a balloon pointing to the item clicked. A short explanation of the item will be in it. If you click somewhere of no significance, you’ll be told that too.
Selecting a menu item while in the help mode brings up a dialog telling you what that item does.
CHEATING
I’ve already mentioned the “Show Answers” option under the Puzzle menu. When you choose this, the letter array in the Puzzle Box will have the words in the puzzle selected just as they would be if you had found them yourself. Play cannot continue while answers are shown. Select the same option (This time its called “Hide Answers”), and the answers will be replaced by the puzzle again.
Another way to cheat is to double-click on a word in the word list. The word will flash in an outlined style in the puzzle to betray its location.
Serious puzzlers will never use either of these capabilities, of course.
COMPATIBILITY
I started Word Hunt running under System 6.07 and finished it under 7.0. I found an old copy of System 1.1. That version didn’t support hierarchal menus, of course, so the Print and Sort Mode menus were put in the menu bar. Otherwise, all seemed to work well. Word Hunt runs fine under Multifinder.
As to hardware compatibility, I’ll only promise it works on a Mac Plus with 2.5 meg. It ought to work on a 512K machine. It’s not that much of a memory hog. The newer Macs will usually run anything a Plus will. I can’t imagine a problem there. There’s no color. I only tested printing on an Imagewriter II. That’s all I have. That machine’s pretty much the standard, though. It will probably work on most other printers.
KEYWARE
Word Hunt is a kind-of benign form of keyware. Oh, it functions just like I’ve said it will. (If is it doesn’t, it’s a bug, not a designed limitation. I’d like to know about it.) Every now and then, though, you’ll see a little message come rolling across the screen reminding you that the shareware fee hasn’t been paid. It takes a little while to play out. You can’t do anything while this is going on. It can get a little annoying after a few episodes.
Ah, but there’s hope! Just bring up the “About Word Hunt…” dialog from under the apple menu. Turn on your printer. Click the “Print” button. Send the result to me along with a check for $10.00. I’ll tell you how to get rid of the confounded messages. (If you’d rather just write a note, be sure to include the serial number found in the dialog. Please make sure you get it down right. Everything depends on it.)
The key you get back from me will work only for copies of Word Hunt on the disk where you originally put it. If you copy it to another disk, you’ll need to ask for another key for that copy. Needless to say, I won’t charge registered users a second time. You will have to request another key, though.
DIFFERENCES FROM VERSION 1.0
The purpose pf version 1.1 was to allow 25 X 25 letter puzzles. (Version 1.0 allowed up to 24 X 24.) In order to do that, I had to change the way the window looks a little. The title bar is fake, though you’ll find it’ll work about the way you’d expect.
The new game has over five times as many words as the old. Consequently, it’s quite a lot larger. I’ve also used a more clever system of storing the words in memory. The extra words don’t take up as much more memory because of that.
When opening a file saved with version 1.0, Word Hunt has to do a little conversion. That should be fairly transparent to you. You will be asked if you want to save it afterward, even if you didn’t change anything though. VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t try to open puzzles saved with version 1.1 with version 1.0. The other way around works fine.
I really didn’t fix any real bugs-I don’t know of any. The older Word Hunt would let you save a file before a puzzle was even made. That would have caused some trouble if someone had tried to open a blank file.
Before, when you opened a file, the puzzle size would change to whatever size the saved puzzle was. That meant you’d have to reset it every time you opened a puzzle if you wanted to maintain a certain default size. It doesn’t work that way anymore.
CONCLUSION
That’s it! I hope you like it. I hope you send me $10.00. I put a lot of work into Word Hunt, and I reserve all rights to it. If you use it, please pay for it.
I DO NOT consent to commercial distribution, except with shareware package offers where the charge is for the disk (plus handling, etc.) rather than the software. I did the work. I want the money. I encourage noncommercial distribution. Feel free to post Word Hunt on bulletin boards, etc. Pass it around.
Please do not alter the program. Good or bad, I’d like folks to know who developed it.
