What dictionaries, thesauri and other reference works can a puzzle solver search on line?

[ Editor: these addresses date from April 1995 and may no longer
  work. ]

I've found several on-line references that may be of interest.  Most
of these require a program like Mosaic to access as they are hypertext
documents.  The only exception is one version of Roget's Thesaurus
which is accessible via gopher.  Besides Roget (one gopher, one
hypertext), I've found Britannica [Editor: spelled "Brittanica"
throughout the original] Online(*), Oxford English
Dictionary(*), a hypertext Websters dictionary (not sure which
edition), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the complete works of William
Shakespeare and the Internet Movie database.  The two I've added a (*)
to require some sort of subscription to access which probably costs a
lot of money but MIT pays for my access.  I'll go through the lot and
give you the address and a brief description of what sort of searches
are possible.  Some may consider using these refs as cheating, if you
do, then don't use them.

Britannica Online (requires subscription)
http://www.eb.com/

   This is an online encyclopedia which is searchable by index or text.
   It supports boolean searches using AND or OR.  It also allows
   searching for a specific combination of words using the ADJ
   function: for example, searching 'supreme ADJ court' finds all
   instances of 'supreme court' whereas searching 'supreme court' finds
   all instances of 'supreme' or 'court'.  It supposedly allows normal
   question searches like 'why is the sky blue?', but that doesn't work
   so well.
   In addition to the encyclopedia you can search the Britannica Book
   of the Year, 10C and Nations of the World.  The 10C is searchable by
   prefix only but in some cases it will be more general.  For example
   searching 'and' allowed me to find 'hole-and-corner'.  The Nations
   of the World has some nice little maps of countries showing major
   cities.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (requires subscription)
http://bion.mit.edu/oed.html

   This is an online version of OED.  It is searchable in a variety of
   ways.  You can use it as a normal dictionary in the lookup mode.
   You can browse all entries with a given prefix.  The entire entry
   (definitions and quotes) is searchable for the occurrence of a given
   word.  You can search by etymology and quotes by century.

Roget's Thesaurus
gopher//odie.nih.gov/77/.thesaurus/index

   This searches for any instance of a given word in the thesaurus and
   displays the result by headword.  Then each headword can be selected
   individually to browse its contents.

Hypertext Roget's Thesaurus 1.02, supplemented July 1991
http://tuna.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html

   A hypertext Roget.  It is searchable via full text like the previous
   Roget, and also via headwords only.  You can search via prefixes
   also like 'hyper*' but this generates a list of all entries that
   have a word starting with 'hyper' anywhere.  The headwords are
   connected with hyperlinks so that browsing Roget is easy.

Hypertext Websters Interface
http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/webster?

   This is a hypertext Websters dictionary (I'm not sure which version
   it is, but it's not 10C) that is searchable in a variety of
   Franklin-like ways.  Part-words can be searched for with wild cards
   like '*tot' for all words ending in 'tot' or 'tot*' for all words
   starting with 'tot'.  If you know the number of unknown letters,
   question marks can be used as in '????tot' for a seven letter word
   ending in 'tot'.  I haven't been able to figure out if anagrams are
   possible.  Virtually every word in the definition is a hypertext
   link which allows fast searching for synonyms.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
http://www.columbia.edu/~sv12/bartlett/

   Allows searching for specific words or phrases from Bartlett.  You
   can also look up a specific author and see what quotes were
   attributed to him/her.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html

   Allows searching for specific words and phrases.  You can also look
   up a given play or poem that may be of interest.  I searched for
   'Golden lads' and found part of the solution to AprNig 67-68.

Internet Movie Database
http://www.msstate.edu/Movies/

   An easily searchable movie database.  It is possible to search by
   name (actor, writer, choreographer, ...), title, character, genre,
   location, quotes, plot summary, ... a lot of ways.  For example,
   MarNig 41 lists Grisham as the writer and Cruise as the actor.  A
   name search of the database with Grisham and Cruise with actor and
   writer selected comes up with a single movie.

-- Pugsley <galejs@ll.mit.edu>

[ Editor: "AprNig" and "MarNig" refer to puzzles in the April and March
  issues of the NPL's _The Enigma_. ]