Puzzle Assistant by Epsoft Computer Services

Puzzle Assistant helps you solve crosswords and other word puzzles, it's also handy for puzzle creators.

Puzzle Assistant is designed to help you to solve crosswords and other word puzzles by finding words matching a given pattern. Puzzle Assistant does this using four different methods:

Before you can use Puzzle Assistant for the first time you need to create a database and import a word list. Download a list below, then open Puzzle Assistant, click on the File menu and select New. Select an appropriate location folder and filename for your database then click Save. A message will advise you that the database is empty...of course it is, it's a new database! Click OK to close the message then click on the File menu again and select Import/Export. Select a text file from the "Select file" window. The supplied sample file should be in your Puzzle Assistant program folder or you can use any text file containing a list of words. Select any additional options you require, the default options will import all words in the file. Click the Import button to begin importing. When importing is complete a message will tell you how many words were imported. Click OK then Close to exit the Import/Export window. You are now ready to begin using Puzzle Assistant.

An anagram is a word made up from the letters of another word and using the same quantity of each letter. You type in the word or list of letters and Puzzle Assistant finds words which contains only those letters.

For example, given the letters "t","r" and "a", Puzzle Assistant would return the words "art", "rat" and "tar".

The word length for anagrams is fixed as words can only be the same length as the given word or letters.

A synogram is a word which uses the same letters or another word but not neccessarily the same quantity of each letter.

For example, given the letters "a", "c", "d" and "e", Puzzle Assistant would return the words "accede", "acceded" and "decade".

Given the same set of letters as used in the Anagram example, "tra", Puzzle Assistant would return the same three words, "art", "rat" and "tar", but would also return "tart".

You can also specify the minimum and maximum word length so that Puzzle Assistant only returns words with a given number of letters.

A palindrome is a word that can be reversed to form another word. Ie "stressed" = "desserts". The palindrome function searches the entire database for words that can be reversed.

You can also specify the minimum and maximum word length so that Puzzle Assistant only returns words with a given number of letters.

This function finds words that contain the given letters but can also contain other letters.

For example, given the word "modem", Puzzle Assistant finds "bombed", "boomed", "combed", "comedy" etc

You can also specify the minimum and maximum word length so that Puzzle Assistant only returns words with a given number of letters.

This is probably the most useful function when solving or creating crossword puzzles. Puzzle Assistant finds words matching a given pattern. For example, if you're looking for a word that has 5 letters, the second letter is O, the third letter is T and the last letter is L. You enter ?O??L and Puzzle Assistant returns the words "hotel", "motel" , "total" etc

dare*	dare, dared, darer, dares, daresay
k@#	keg, ken, key, kid, kin, kip, kit
?h?	aha, chi, she, shy, the, tho, thy, who, why
?h?to*	photo, photon, photons, photos, rhetoric, shutoff, shutout
?o?al	coral, focal, local, loyal, modal, moral, nodal, royal, tonal, total, vocal, zonal
*o?al	amoral, approval, auroral, bestowal, bifocal, collosal, coral, corporal, diagonal disloyal, disposal, doctoral, episomal, femoral, floral, focal, global, immoral, local, loyal mayoral, modal, moral, national, nodal, notional, opal, optional, oral, oval, pastoral personal, pivotal, proposal, rational, regional, removal, royal, seasonal, subtotal temporal, total, trifocal, tripodal, unmoral, vocal, zonal.

Obviously these are simple examples but you can see the potential. Puzzle Assistant won't do the puzzles for you but it should make them much easier.

V1.00.0043
Changed registration system
Removed all custom controls (100% API calls)
Minor display refinements

V1.00.0037
The HTML documentation has been replaced with a Windows help (.hlp) file.
A new option was added for deleting selected words.
Added online registration system
Some minor bug fixes

If you're having trouble opening databases you may need to download the following file:
Download system.mdw file (123kb), extract this file to your Puzzle Assistant folder.

Additional dictionaries (text files)
Download these zipped text files and import them into new or existing databases

Dutch dictionary	dutch.zip 334kb
English dictionary (Enable version)	enable.zip 447kb
French dictionary	french.zip 298kb
Italian dictionary	italian.zip 141kb
Others including: bodyparts.txt , capitals.txt , cars.txt , country.txt , designer.txt , elements.txt , flora.txt , footballclubs.txt , londonstations.txt , names.txt racetracks.txt , rivers.txt and others.	others.zip 42kb