Wordsearch Builder: About

Wordsearch Builder takes a list of words and places them on a grid in any direction allowing the to cross-over where possible then fills in the remaining empty spaces with semi-random letters.

Basic algorithm

  1. Foreach word
    1. Pick a direction at random
    2. Compute possible start points based on word length, direction and grid size
    3. Begin placing word. If an occupied cell is encountered which contains a different character than would go in for this word, then abort and start this word again.
  2. When all words are placed, infill the remaining cells with random characters weighted by standard English letter frequencies
The abort-and-retry word placement to try 500 times before giving up.