I've always wanted to beat my friends in Word Hunt, so I built a solver that gives me all possible solutions given a board of letters. This program employs a recursive search algorithm that looks for words in all directions including words that do not have a straight path.
Board input file:
Output:
This program uses many command line options. Each command line option is thoroughly discussed here:
Cardinal Output -c (Recommended): Displays found word's starting position, then traces out the found word using cardinal directions.
Index Output -i: Displays found word's starting position, then traces out the found word using row and column coordinates.
Point Output -p (Recommended): Prioritizes found words that would yield the most points and outputs them first.
Alpha Output -a: Displays found words in alphabetical order.
Search Depth -s (Fun to play around with, but nor required): Requires an argument that specifies search depth of the search algorithm. For example, if a given board obtains a possible traceable solution “APPLES” and the search depth specified is 5, then “APPLE” is solution that is outputted, but “APPLES” is not a solution that is outputted, since “APPLES” contains 6 letters. Generally, the higher the search depth, the longer the runtime albeit not by a significant amount. Testing shows that runtime will generally depend on search depth and size of board.
Board -b (required): Requires argument that specifies what board file the Word Hunt Solver should read.
Linear Search Only -l (lowercase L): If specified, only solutions that are linear are outputted.
Example:
"ANT" is a linear solution because the solution's trace is straight but "DENT" is not a linear solution because the solution's trace is not straight. If -l is specified, then only "ANT" will be outputted as a solution. "DENT" is not considered to be a solution.
Word Hunt Mode -w (required for Word Hunt Game): If specified, only solutions that are valid in Word Hunt for GamePigeon are outputted.
Specify Length Mode -x: If specified, requires an argument that is an integer. Only solutions that are of length that is specified is outputted.
Specify First Letter Mode -y: If specified, requires an argument that is a string of letters. Only words that alphabetically start with these specified letters will be outputted.
- This project indirectly made my Word Search Solver Project redundant due to the Word Hunt Solver did not need a specified work bank. In addition, the user can specify the -l options to output linear solutions only, which is ideal for word searches. In testing, I found that Word Hunt Solver runs circles around Word Search Solver in terms of runtime. At the time, I did not take my Data Structures and Algorithms class when I made Word Search Solver, but currently at the time of writing this, I am in Data Structures and Algorithms. It really helped!
Example: Using Chinese New Year Themed Word Search Command Line Arguments: -c -w -p -l -b chinese_new_year_board.txt -s 20>output.txt
