Compound Words and Phrases
By default, the WordFinder functions only find single words. The singlewords file is derived from the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary, a word list for crossword solvers and setters, compiled by Ross Beresford. At the time of writing, it contains 183,768 words.
If the "Include compounds" box is checked, WordFinder also looks through a file containing compound words and common phrases as well as words with accented letters, which are converted to their unaccented equivalent. The words and phrases are stored in three fields:
- the word with spaces and punctuation marks removed, and letters following them capitalized
- the original word or phrase
- the
lengths
of
the
component
words
in
a
form
suitable
for
the
length
displayed
in
a
cryptic
crossword
clue:
AaronSRod Aaron's rod (6,3) balanceSheet balance-sheet (7-5) crosswordPuzzle crossword puzzle (9,6)
WordFinder Software
The software that drives the WordFinder is a collection of Unix
shell scripts. Most of these scripts are available in my book,
Shell
Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress, May
2005). You can run these scripts on any version of Unix, including
Linux, Solaris, and the various BSD implementations. They have not
been tested on Mac OS/X, but they should work there, too. (If you
try them, please let me know how they run.)