JCSM Shareware Collection 1996 September/JCSM Shareware Collection (JCS Distribution) (September 1996).ISO/gameothr/crypsrch.zip/CRYPSRCH.DOC

Text File | 1993-12-08 | 15KB | 271 lines

                             CRYPT-O-SEARCH (TM)
                   Copyright  1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993
                        Castle Oaks Computer Services
                            Post Office Box 36082
                         Indianapolis, IN 46236-0082

CRYPT-O-SEARCH (TM) is a word search puzzle generator.  It can create ordinary
word search puzzles, but it also has the capability of encrypting the word
list to add a little more challenge to the puzzle.

CRYPT-O-SEARCH (TM) is a shareware program which has been released for trial
use (up to 30 days.)  After the trial period, if you wish to continue use of
the program, you must register by sending a registration fee of $10.00 to the
above address.  Upon registration, you will be sent the latest version of the
program and you will be notified of any upgrades and other products available
from Castle Oaks.

You may create puzzles which you sell for publication.  However, when the
program is used for monetary gain, registration is required and a royalty is
payable on all puzzles sold.

The following rules must be followed in such cases:

     1.  Puzzles must be in good taste as judged by the mores of the
     general population.

     2.  The Puzzle must display the trademark and its owner, Castle Oaks
     Computer Services.

     3.  A royalty must be paid for each puzzle published.  The fee is
     $5.00 or 15% of the amount received for the puzzle, whichever is
     greater.

     4.  A copy of the puzzle being published must be sent to Castle Oaks
     along with the royalty payment.  Also include the name and date of
     the publication in which it will appear.

Failure to abide by the above rules will lead to legal action.


                                    USAGE

CRYPT-O-SEARCH (TM) is easy and fun to use.  It is great for creating puzzles
for educational use.  Or you might want to use it for entertainment at a
party.  You can make up puzzles containing the names, interests, etc. of per-
sons attending the party.  No installation is required.  You can run it from
floppy by entering the name of the executable file or you may copy it to hard
disk and run it from there.  There are certain requirements and restrictions.

     1.  You must have a printer and it must be turned on, on-line and
     the paper should be positioned at top-of-form.  In order to use
     version 2.2 (and later) your printer must be capable of backspacing.
     If it does not have that capability, some lines in the solution
     printout may not be correct.  The solution will probably look best
     when printed in draft mode.  You should experiment with number of
     characters per inch and number of lines per inch on your printer to


     achieve the most pleasing printout.  In order to show the
     connections between words, it was necessary to add extra lines in
     the solution. This was done so that the solution could be displayed
     on most printers; therefore the aspect ratio of the solution will be
     different from that of the puzzle.

     (Actually the program may be run without the printer.  When asked
     for number of copies to be printed you may respond with zero.
     However, the program is not very useful without hard copy output
     unless you have saved the puzzle and/or solution to file for later
     printing.)

     2.  Your puzzle can have dimensions of up to 40 by 40.  In most
     cases, much smaller puzzles, 20 by 20 or smaller, are quite satis-
     factory.  (Note: Dimensions are to be given in columns and lines.)

     3.  Words for the puzzle may only contain alphabetic characters.
     Although you may enter lower case, all characters will be converted
     to upper case.  Non-alphabetic characters will be discarded.  You
     may enter up to one hundred words.  Again, a shorter word list (e.g.
     25) is usually satisfactory.

     4.  On screen prompts are provided to guide you through the process.
     After printing the initial screen, the program pauses and waits for
     you to press a key to continue.  During this time, the program is
     preparing to seed the random number generator.  Since the amount of
     time spent in this delay is variable, the program will usually use a
     different seed each time the program is used.  If you press the
     letter "R", the program will request a number with which to re-seed
     the random number generator.  The program will request the width and
     length of the puzzle and a heading for the puzzle.  (Note: The
     puzzle does not have to be square.  However, all words must be no
     longer than the shorter dimension of the puzzle.)

     5.  The puzzle will give you instructions about entering the words.
     You may correct any word before hitting carriage return.  The latest
     version gives you the option of entering your words from the
     keyboard or entering them from a file.  If entering them from a
     file, you must first build the word file using a text editor or
     suitable word processor. The file must contain one word per line
     with the line terminated by a carriage return and line feed.  If the
     file contains duplicate words or words that are too long, they will
     be rejected.  If you enter the words from the keyboard, when you are
     finished entering words, just press ENTER to terminate the list.
     The current version prints out your list of words after you finish
     entering them.  You are then given the opportunity to correct a
     specific word if necessary.  This process continues until you are
     satisfied that your word list is as you want it.

     6.  A special feature is included for avoiding situations that might
     be undesirable.  For example, you may want to enter the two words,
     "BACKROOM" and "ROOMMATE".  If you do, there is the possibility that
     they will share all the letters of "ROOM".  You may like that or you
     may not, if not, just prefix "ROOMMATE" with an "X".  The puzzle and
     the word list will then contain just the word "ROOMMATE".  This
     means that no words can begin with the letter "X".  If you want a


     word to begin with an "X", just prefix it with another "X" which
     will be purged from the word list.  Another example where you would
     be more likely to use this feature is when one word would be con-
     tained entirely in another word.  "VIRGINIA" and WESTVIRGINIA" or
     "THE" and "EITHER".  In such cases, just prefix the shorter word
     with an "X".

     7.  After accepting your word list, you are asked if you wish to
     have the word list encrypted.  If you respond "Y" or "y", the word
     list will be encrypted, and will be printed out with the puzzle
     (words in the puzzle are not encrypted.)  The printout of the solu-
     tion will contain the word list in unencrypted form.

     8.  After you respond to the above mentioned question, the program
     starts to build the puzzle.  During this process, the program dis-
     plays some information about how it is progressing.  This is to
     provide you with the assurance the program is functioning, and also
     to give you information that you may use if you decide to do the
     puzzle over.  So that you can understand what the program is telling
     you, an explanation of how the program functions is given below in
     the section describing functionality.

     9.  After all words have been positioned in the puzzle, it will be
     displayed on the screen without the fill characters.  (Note: If your
     puzzle is more than 23 lines long, the display will only show the
     last 23 lines.)   A new feature has been added beginning with Ver-
     sion 2.5.  It is sometimes difficult to judge the quality of the
     puzzle from the screen display.  You are now provided the option of
     sending the tentative solution to the printer.  After looking at the
     printout, you can then select one of the following options.  You may
     accept the puzzle, abort it entirely, or you may ask the program to
     reposition the words if you do not like the looks of the puzzle.  If
     you have the puzzle done over, remember that any tentative solutions
     printed out (except the last one) should be discarded.

     10.  After accepting the puzzle, you will be queried if you want to
     place the puzzle and/or solution in a file(s); it will also query
     for the number of puzzles you want printed and the number of solu-
     tions you want printed.  The printout of the solution gives only the
     letters of the word list and does not printout the fill characters
     put in the puzzle itself.  In addition, connecting lines are includ-
     ed to help define the individual words.  This is not as satisfactory
     as printing "bubbles" around the words but adding that capability
     would require that the user have a printer with graphics capability
     and it would be necessary to add drivers for all different types of
     printers.  Such an approach is not economically feasible for a
     shareware product.

     11.  WARNING - When answering the on-screen queries, be sure to
     provide only one of the options requested.  Several queries require
     only a single letter for a response.  They do not require that you
     press ENTER.  If, for example, in response to a query you press Y
     and then ENTER, the ENTER may be accepted as the response to the
     next query.  Queries that require that you press ENTER are those
     that may require more than one keystroke.


                    WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 3.0 (and later)?

Version 3.0 now provides the capability for you to input your word list from a
file instead of from the keyboard.  This is especially useful if you wish to
make several puzzles from the same word list but would like for each puzzle to
have the words arranged differently.

Another new feature is that you may cause the program to start with the same
random number so that you can duplicate a puzzle made previously.  When you
are asked to PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE, if you press 'R' the program will ask
you for a number to Re-seed the random number generator.  If you use the same
number that you used during a previous session (and use the same word list in
the same order,) you will get the same puzzle as before.

If a word will not fit in the puzzle, you are given the option of starting
over.  Now, if you respond with "Y", the program also provides the option to
increase the puzzle dimensions (or not.)

In the past, Castle Oaks supplied versions 2.4P and 2.4S.  These versions were
provided especially to meet the needs of persons who want to make simpler
puzzles for children and/or the learning disabled.  The P (Primary) version
only positioned words in the left-to-right direction and the downwards direc-
tion.  The S (Secondary) version positioned words as in the P version but also
in the two diagonal directions: upwards left-to-right and downwards left-to-
right.  Now, version 3.0 provides the P and S versions as part of the general
program.

In order to obtain a P or S version, the general program is invoked with a
command line parameter.  Thus:

CRYPSRCH P

causes the program to generate a P version puzzle, and

CRYPSRCH S

causes the program to generate an S version puzzle.  The command line parame-
ter may be either upper or lower case.

If no command line parameter is present, the general type puzzle will be
generated where words may appear in eight different directions.

Version 3.0 also corrects a minor error that could occur in previous versions.
Occasionally the solution printout would contain erroneous characters instead
of the connecting lines that were supposed to appear.  This no longer can
happen.


                                FUNCTIONALITY

The program functions as follows:

The word list is sorted by word length, longest word first.

The longest word is positioned near the center of the puzzle diagonally.

Then attempts are made to insert each of the other words.  For each word, one
of the letters is selected at random; the puzzle is then searched to see if
that letter exists in the puzzle; if it does, an attempt is made to insert the
word in some direction to cross another word.  The program shows you the
number in the sorted list of the word being positioned, the word being posi-
tioned, the starting direction ("S", "SE", etc.) and then each letter of the
word as it is tried.  For example, suppose the third word in the list, "EXAM-
PLE", is being positioned, the display might show:

3 EXAMPLE SW AMPLEEX NE AMPL

This means that it is the third word in the list and an attempt was first made
to insert the word in the southwest direction, first with the letter "A" as an
intersection, then with other letters as the intersection.  After cycling
through all letters of the word, a new direction was selected and the cycling
of the letters was restarted at "A".  In the new direction, NE, success was
reached with the letter "L" intersecting with some other word that had already
been inserted.  (There may be other intersections also.)  If all 8 directions
do not yield an intersection with another word, then an attempt is made to
insert the word elsewhere.  The display will show only the direction, if
successful.  If after a number of attempts, the program cannot fit the word
in, a message will appear to that effect and you will be given the options of:
discarding the word from the list, or requesting that the program starts over
in the hope that different positioning of other words will allow this word to
fit in.  If you have discarded one or more words from the input list and then
decide to start over, the program will start over with all the words from the
initial input list.  Now, you also have the option of increasing the size of
the puzzle when you start over.

The display of the progress may appear too fast on the screen for you to read
it, let alone understand it.  You may pause the display by using control-S.
You may also send the screen output to the printer by using control-P.  If you
do the latter, you should toggle it off and reposition your paper before
printing the puzzle and/or the solution.

Note: Each time the program starts, the random number generator starts with a
different value.  This is to assure that each puzzle is different even if they
have the same wordlists.  As noted above, you may defeat this and cause the
puzzle to start with your given random number seed.