I’ve never been a big crossword fan, but I finally found a puzzle I could truly appreciate.
The clue for 6 Down is: “The best newspaper column in the world.” And the correct answer is, of course: “CYBURBIA.”
Don’t worry, you won’t find this puzzle in The Times or any other newspaper. I made it myself, using an ingenious piece of software called “Crossword Wizard” that takes a handful of words you choose and builds a puzzle around them.
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Like chess, solitaire and other traditional games, crosswords have entered the digital world. Here’s a look at three commonly available programs:
“Los Angeles Times Electronic Crossword Puzzles” from Random House (available for about $30 in Mac and Windows versions) is a fairly straightforward presentation of 150 Sunday puzzles that appeared in The Times. You start off by choosing a puzzle from a list that groups them into “easy,” “medium” and “expert” categories. A grid and clue list then pops up on the screen.
On its most fundamental level, this handsome-looking program calls upon you to type your answers on the grid. But, as this is a computerized game, you also have additional options, most involving cheating.
You can ask the program to fill in a troublesome letter or a whole word. You can ask it to verify whether or not a word you filled in is correct. You can even ask it to give you instant feedback as you type each letter--if the letter you type is wrong, it will have a slash through it.
When you’re done with a puzzle, the program gives you a score based on how many of the squares you correctly filled (points are subtracted for the use of the cheat features). You can also, if you choose, play against the clock, striving to complete a puzzle within an allotted amount of time.
“Puzzle Power” from Centron Software (available for about $35 on CD-ROM for Windows) includes a variety of word puzzle games, including 400 daily and 100 Sunday crosswords from the New York Times. It has similar features to The Times program, including a scoring system, cheat features and a timer.
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“Puzzle Power” is not as good-looking as The Times program (a color consultant might have warned the creators against the blue, pink and yellow scheme), but it does include a create-your-own feature that allows you to make a professional-looking crossword puzzle, complete with the proper symmetry (the grid on a professional puzzle is the same whether the puzzle is right side up or upside down).
It offers no features, however, to help you search for appropriate words to fit into your grid--you’re strictly on your own.
Finally, we come to “Crossword Wizard” (from Cogix Corp., for about $30 on Mac or Windows discs or CD-ROM), which is the most technically sophisticated of the programs tested.
If you are interested in just solving a puzzle, it will create one for you on the spot according to the size you choose, from seven to 21 boxes square. You can also choose to make the clues easy, medium or hard.
Among its cheat features is the particularly instructive “word builder” mode that helps you complete a word. For example, if you need a six-letter word of which the first letter is S and the third is N, this feature will quickly suggest a number of appropriate choices (41 of them, in this example).
The most impressive feature is the ability of “Crossword Wizard” to automatically build an original puzzle around words (up to six of them) you choose. In addition to the name of this column, I asked it to include in my puzzle the words: digital, Internet, solitaire and Myst. I listed my own clues for these words.
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It was amazing to watch “Crossword Wizard” go to work to make my puzzle, trying thousands of words at lightning speed before coming up with a final grid.
The major drawback is that, amusing as this process is, the puzzles created by “Crossword Wizard” are not all that good. Many of the clues it comes up with would horrify traditional crossword fans.
For example, it sometimes uses a variation of an answer in its clue--the answer to the clue “Remove salt” is listed as “Desalt,” and the “Founder of Babism” is simply “Bab.” It also does not adhere to standards when using abbreviations and many of the clues are extremely obscure (“Type genus of the Anatidae” is “Anas”--but you knew that).
The best way to use this mode of “Crossword Wizard” is as a support for creating your own puzzles, replacing the inappropriate clues with the help of the word builder and another handy feature that suggests clues for thousands of words.
“Crossword Wizard” is certainly impressive, but in order to make a puzzle as inventive, clever and alluring as those found in the Los Angeles Times or New York Times, you still need input from a good old analog human.
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* Cyburbia’s Internet address is Colker@Latimes.news.com.
