The reason why I created a program that can solve word search puzzles is because I hate solving word search puzzle myself. Just putting the time and effort was a struggle for me but my girlfriend seemed to enjoy it and brought her mini word search puzzle everywhere we go and always wanted me to solve with her. Frankly, I was bad at it and an idea sparked through my mind which was you guessed it "lets build a program that can solve word search puzzles". Well that's where we're at now.
The program is written in C++ using xcode and uses the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm. It takes in two txt files, table.txt and wordlist.txt, which generates the matrix grid using pointers and a vector of locations respectively. Because the matrix grid is using dynamic memory, the program itself can run any nxn word search puzzle. The program is expected to run at worse case O(n3) due to the fact that it has to scan every row/column/diagonal, each word in the list, and also the KMP algorithm. The program outputs three things: the puzzle, list of words, and the location of where the words are at. The puzzle itself will come with positions in the grid starting from 0 to n - 1 on the first row and each row will have a position on the left to make looking for the words alot easier for the user. The list of words are self explanatory and the location will have 3 parts: word, beginning and ending location, and the type.
Note: If running on VS, include the algorithm library in the WordSearch.h (xcodes didnt need that library for it to work).
- Find a wordsearch
- Count the number of columns and rows (most likely they're the same) and input those values first on the table.txt and follow up with the word search puzzle (can copy and paste from the pdf) after and make sure that the last row does not have a trailing white space. Note: With Windows: When copying and paste, it will leave spaces between characters. Please remove the space in order for it to work
- Copy and paste the list of words that you need to find in the wordlist.txt
Example:
- Compile and run.
After all that you should have something like
Implement Multithreading (since finding diagonal, row, and column can be done independently).
- Anthony Esmeralda