CROSSWORD COMPILER v 4.12

Program Features

Design and edit puzzles
Create normal crosswords, barred grids, clues-in-squares puzzles, fill-ins, French-style crosswords, coded grids, skeleton puzzles and free-form crosswords. Colour grid lines and squares, show hint letters in the puzzle, include graphics in the grid, and lots more!

Grid filling
Fill in entire blank puzzles, or a particular section, with words from the supplied word list or one of your own. Create thematic and pangrammatic puzzles automatically from word lists. Optimize the filling process to use more 'good' words.

Create vocabulary puzzles
Type in a short list of words and get the program to build a crossword using as many of them as possible. The computer places the black squares for you, and tries to get as many intersecting words as possible. Create free-form puzzles directly from a larger word list.

Word finding and anagrammatizing
Quickly find words to fit in a slot in the grid. Search for words matching a pattern. Find multi-word anagrams of words and all the words that can be made from the letters of another word. Search through different word lists (including ones you've made yourself).

Clue editor
Facility to write joint clues (link words in the grid together). Find anagrams of the clue word. Look up cryptic abbreviations in the supplied, or your own, look up files. Optional automatic word length after clues, with support for compound words and phrases. Use italic, bold and underline in clues. Add explanations/citations to each clue. Spell-check clues.

Clue database
Add clues from puzzles, paste clues from the database into the clue editor, browse and edit the database. Use clues that are most recent, oldest, or randomly.

Print out and export to other programs
Copy your puzzles to the clipboard or save to a file for use in other programs. Export puzzle, solution, numbered solution, clues, answers and explanations. Export grids as picture, bitmap or Encapsulated Postscript. Export for use with Java crossword program or Across solving software. Print out clues with answers for professional crossword submissions.

Word List Manager
Simply view, edit and create word lists. List manipulations and conversions. Use different character sets for multilanguage crosswords. Word lists can contain words from 2-50 letters long.

Customise most properties of the grid and clues
Change square sizes, size ratios, fonts, colours, line thickness, side numbering, clue numbering, clue spacing, etc. Save settings and grids in template files for easy reuse.

Puzzle information and printout headers
Supply a title, author, copyright and description for each puzzle. Printout headers containing this information or statistics for the puzzle. Customise the headers with different fonts, styles, etc.

Multilanguage support
Supports most Western languages. Create word lists with different Windows character sets (e.g. Cyrillic, Turkish, East European, etc.)

Extensive context sensitive help
Find help related to what you are doing at the press of a button. The help file explains all the features of the program, and tells you how to go about create the various types of puzzle.

Link up to dictionaries from the clue editor
Add buttons to the clue editor ToolBar so you can look up words in dictionaries. Smooth integration with the WordWeb Pro thesaurus/dictionary add-on.

Optional extras
Sets of additional word lists are available, including foreign words, expressions, unusual words and words in categories. You can use these lists for word finding, grid filling, adding to other lists, or basically whatever you like! WordWeb Pro thesaurus/dictionary can be used from the clue editor or to look up a word in the grid.

System requirements
486 or higher PC running Windows 95.