ANN: BoggleSolver now on sample stacks

[Mark Smith]

Wow, very cool Alex. Thanks for sharing. 

Mark


> On Jan 2, 2022, at 11:42 PM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> I've put a little 'game' up on "sample stacks", and also on the web.
> 
> It "solves" Boggle style puzzles, i.e. you give it a 5x5 grid of letters, and it finds all words within it, following the prescribed rules - words are formed by moving to adjacent (including diagonal) grid positions, and you cannot re-use a grid position within a word. You can modify the input field, and click on "Solve it" to see the new results.
> 
> The list of words is that used by Jacqueline in her JQBoggle game.
> 
> The UI is very basic - but there is one clever (I think) thing within it. It uses a dictionary of words which is a hierarchical character-by-character array, so it represents not only "what is a word" but also "what can be the initial substring of a word", and therefore it can prune the search tree immediately. This takes the time to solve a puzzle down from approx 10 - 50 minutes using a simple dictionary, to around 40 millisecs.
> 
> NB I have also built a Web-based standalone version of it using 10.0.0 (dp1), which can be found at
> 
> https://www.tweedly.org/BoggleSolver/BoggleSolver.html
> 
> Note - the "Load URL ..." portion does not yet work in the web version. Loading is fairly slow, but the run times re (IMHO) impressive - 80msecs against the 40msecs or so running in the IDE. I am very impressed by the performance of this early web implementation.
> 
> Having a 'solver' like this opens up possible new games such as:
> 
> 1. given we have 25 grid positions, and 25 letters (omitting 'Q'), what arrangement of letters gives the most, or least, words.
> 
> 2. given a random selection of letters, what arrangement gives most/least words.
> 
> 3. (a 2-player game) given an arrangement of letters, change one letter and increase the number of words that can be formed; score the value of the increase (or decrease), playing alternately, until neither player can get a positive score change.
> 
> Alex.
> 
> 
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