[ Editor: What software is there for making word search puzzles?

With Morello WordPuzzler V1.1 Shareware you can produce your own word
search puzzles in a matter of minutes.

Simply type in the words you require, choose the size of the grid, and
hit print...

New release 1.1a is even better and easier to use than the previous
version 1.1.

Pro edition out soon, exports the complete puzzle to most DTP
applications.

Windows 95 only. Check it out at

http://morello.wildnet.co.uk

-- Tom Duncan <morello@mag-net.co.uk> (August 1996)

[ Editor: a product announcement; the address may no longer work. ]

[ Editor: the header comment of a C program WORDSEARCH by Steve Storm
(storm@nas.nasa.gov), dated 10-29-90, sent to the archive by Larry
Schwarcz in October 1994.  The program text itself (about 900 lines of
C) is omitted. ]

WORDSEARCH - - - -  A program that turns a list of words into a
wordsearch puzzle.  A word search puzzle is one where you find the
words in a grid of letters.  The words appear up, down, left, right, or
in any of the diagonals.  Traditionally you circle the words you find
and mark them off of a list.

WORDSEARCH expects a command in the form:
wordsearch vert horiz tries < filename
where vert is the vertical size of the puzzle
horiz is the horizontal size of the puzzle
tries is the number of tries to make at this puzzle.
filename is a file with a list of words.  It is necessary to have one
word per line, in caps.

For example the command line "wordsearch 10 10 50 < words.test" will
try 50 times to put the words in words.test into a 10 by 10 puzzle
grid.  Words.test would contain...

HELLO
WORLD
THESE
ARE
WORDS

etc.

WORDSEARCH outputs several files.

"puzzle" contains the primary output.  If WORDSEARCH runs for several
tries, several puzzles will be in this file.  Use cut and print.

"answer" contains answers corresponding to the puzzles in puzzle.

"progress" contains info about the run.  Useful on really large numbers
of tries, especially if they have been put in the background.

-- Steve Storm <storm@nas.nasa.gov>