Word Wheels

[tenochtitlanuk]

My morning rituals include reading the daily paper, doing the quick crossword, wordsearch and word wheel.

Wordwheels have 9 letters and these can make at least one nine-letter word.

You can extend to trying to find the maximum number of words possible with fewer letters, but always using the centre letter and at least two others.

My aim was to use the SOWPODS Scrabble dictionary, but so many words make LB excessively slow or crash it.

Anyway, here's an easy way to generate a puzzle for friends and family, with YOU choosing a nine letter word to use.

nomainwin


UpperLeftX = 100
UpperLeftY = 100
WindowWidth = 300
WindowHeight = 340

graphicbox #w.gb1, 12, 14, 260, 260

pi =3.14159265

global toFind$


open "Word Wheel." for window as #w

#w "trapclose quit"
#w.gb1 "down ; size 3"

#w.gb1 "fill white"
#w.gb1 "font 20 bold"
#w.gb1 "up ; goto 130 130 ; down ; backcolor white ; circle 120"

r =120

for theta =0 to 135 step 45
#w.gb1 "up ; goto "; 130 +120 *sin( theta *pi /180); " "; 130 +120 *cos( theta *pi /180)
#w.gb1 "down ; goto "; 130 -120 *sin( theta *pi /180); " "; 130 -120 *cos( theta *pi /180)
next theta

#w.gb1 "up; goto 130 130 ; down ; circlefilled 45"

toFind$ ="RECTANGLE"

for i =1 to 8
theta =22 +i *45
#w.gb1 "up ; goto "; 115 +80 *sin( theta *pi /180); " "; 145 +80 *cos( theta *pi /180)
#w.gb1 "down"
#w.gb1 "\"; getChar$()
next i

#w.gb1 "up ; goto 115 145"
#w.gb1 "down"
#w.gb1 "\"; getChar$()

#w.gb1 "flush ; getbmp scr 0 0 256 256"
bmpsave "scr", "wordwheel.bmp"

wait

function getChar$()
L =len( toFind$)
pick =int( 1 +L *rnd( 1))
getChar$ =mid$( toFind$, pick, 1)
toFind$ =left$( toFind$, pick -1) +mid$( toFind$, pick +1)
end function

sub quit h$
close #h$
end
end sub

[ntech]

Here's a list of 40727 nine letter words: www.bestwordlist.com/9letterwords.htm

[tenochtitlanuk]

I actually extracted them myself from Sowpods- a fast LB job.

Have also written code to tell me if a suggested word exists in the dictionary.

?tryptich
   tryptich does not exist.
?tri[tych
   tri[tych does not exist.
?triptych
triptych exists in Sowpods.
?diptych
diptych exists in Sowpods.
?monotych
   monotych does not exist.
End.

And printing a list of 9-letter words chosen at random is fun too- in the image I annotated those I either knew or had a good guess at.

As usual I'll be doing a web page on this- and ways round the word$() problem on very long strings...

PS I could INVENT some plausible meanings for some of the others!!