What is Crossword
Weaver? |
Crossword Weaver is fully automated
crossword puzzle construction software. It is easy to use. It takes takes your words and
makes crossword puzzles out of them. It makes two styles of Crossword puzzles: the
free-form puzzles that are popular with educators, and the stymmetrical style you see in
newspapers. The hard work of making the puzzle is completely handled by the computer.  |
Does it use
only my words? |
| If you want a newspaper-style puzzle, it will mix
some of your words with its high quality crossword puzzle database to create your puzzle. |
If you want a free-form puzzle, it will use only
your words. |
How challenging are the puzzles to solve? |
| For newspaper puzzles: even those people that
find normal newspaper crossword puzzles too difficult will love the puzzles you make with
Crossword Weaver. |
The difficulty of the free-form puzzles
depends solely on which words you use and how you clue them. |
How many of my words can I
expect to get in a puzzle? |
| The English language does put limitations on the
number of theme words that can be placed in a puzzle. The more words you put in a theme
word list and the bigger your puzzle is the more of your words will fit in your puzzles.
For a 15x15 crossword puzzle you can expect to get around 30 theme words in if you have
about 400 words in your theme word list, or it can place 7-9 theme words from a word list
of 20 words, assuming you use fairly short words. |
For Free-form: as many as you want. Realistic
answer: I had a theme word list of 450 words and I set the pattern size at 51x51 (the
maximum). It got over 200 words into my puzzle. Of course it spanned three pages! A more
normal puzzle, (around 23x23 for the free form style) would have about 30 words, depending
on your word length. |
Do I have to write my own clues? |
| For newspaper puzzles, a clue will be assigned
for almost every word in your puzzle. You can keep the clues you like, select among
alternates provided by the software or write your own. |
For free-form puzzles, some of your words may
have clues if your words are in the program's dictionary, but more likely you will need to
write your own clues. |
Do I have to draw my own
patterns? |
| No. A pattern that is appropriate for your words
will be chosen for you. But you can draw your own pattern if you wish. There are many
tools to aid you in puzzle design if you really want to draw your own. |
No. Free-form puzzles don't have patterns. |
Can I export the puzzles I make to other programs? |
| Yes you can. You can export to
almost any Windows program, including Microsoft® Publisher and all Windows®
versions of WordPerfect®. It uses "metafiles" which are resizeable
and work well with Windows programs. |
What
system does it run on? |
| Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98 and
Windows NT. It does not run on a Mac, but does run on SoftWindows. If you have a Mac, click here to learn more. |
Can I put medical terms into crossword puzzles? |
| Yes. You can use any words you want
as long as they use the Roman alphabet (the normal English alphabet) and have no symbols
or numbers. We have also been asked about biblical words and computer science terms. These
also work well. |
Does
Crossword Weaver support foreign words? |
| Your theme words can be in any language you want
as long as it uses the Roman alphabet. The program only has an English dictionary, and so
the filler words will be in English. You can write your clues in any language you wish. |
Yes as long as you use the Roman alphabet. You
can make a theme word list of foreign words, and it will construct a puzzle for you using
only those words. You can also write your clues in any language you want. |
How long
can the clues be? |
| 255 characters, which means
basically as long as you want. To give you an idea of how long that is, this sentence that
you are reading right now only contains 116 characters. |
How long
does it take to construct a puzzle? |
| It is very fast. It is optomized for
creating puzzles very quickly. Most puzzles are done in a few seconds. |
Why
are there red and blue words in my puzzle? |
| Those are your theme words. The
theme words that read across are red and the theme words that read down are blue. |
I
am having a hard time downloading. What do I do? |
| E-mail us your name and address and we will
mail you a demo diskette. You can also try downloading from the other site (there are two
choices, Texas and Utah) or you can try at a less busy time. |
Do I need to be on-line for Crossword Weaver to work? |
| No. Crossword Weaver runs solely on
your computer and has nothing to do with the Internet. |
