Quick Help File to Use Acrostic.Exe Program 

Acrostic Puzzle Maker

Industrial Strength!

This is a fully functional puzzle MAKER, it just doesn't print the puzzles out nice. So I decided to give this unfinished program away as freeware.

1. You need a quotation for the puzzles. The program comes with one quote file called "quotes.txt" The quote file is a text file with the following format:

Each line in the text file has the author's name, then the work the quote is from, then the quotation itself, the three items separated by the "at-sign" or "@". You can make these files in any text editor, just make sure it is all on one line. (Don't wordwrap the lines!) Look at the lines in "quotes.txt" and you will get the idea. 
Choose Create File/From Quote List File and then find "quotes.txt" in the same folder the program is in.

When you double-click on a line in the quotes file the program attempts to create a blank puzzle for you to create. It warns you if an acrostic is impossible (remember, each character in the author/work part must occur in the quote).

2. You will also see, on the Create Puzzle menu "From Saved Puzzle File." This is for loading a finished or half-finished puzzle you previously saved with the "Save Puzzle" button. This is a formatted text file I will explain later. 

3. Now you need to find the Answer words which will exactly use up all the characters in the quote. The first letters of each Answer are assigned automatically, because that's what an acrostic IS : the first letters of each Answer spell out the author's name and the work the quote is from! In the beginning you can put in long answers, because the character pool is large. (The right-most window is the character pool, the characters of the quote which are still remaining to make Answers from. If you click on the "Rank" button the least common characters will be at the top. Use these up first!).

You can simply type in the answers if you want. For example maybe you are writing the puzzle for a friend, you could type in your personalized answers first, while the charpool is big. Maybe your "quote" is actually a message for your friend. That would be cool, and some of the Answers are things only he/she would know!

You can load your own wordlists into the 3 wordlist window and search through these for answers which can be made from the pool. There are some sample wordlist files with this program, "actors.txt," "movies.txt," "famous01.txt." To load a list click one of the 1, 2, 3 buttons, then right-click and choose "Load." Right-click on the wordlist window again and select "Scan List".

(NOTE: Be aware the dictionary uses List window 1, so any word list you loaded there will be wiped out with a dictionary search. I use mostly 2 and 3. Later I will add more of those windows).

The third way search for the Answer words is with the Dictionary search (Moby Dictionary, broken into 26 text files, comes with the program. If you have another dictionary file you want to use just break it into 26 files, "a.txt"…"z.txt").

Dictionary Scan

There are two ways to do a dictionary scan: a simple scan, and a scan-with-conditions. A simple scan finds all words of the starting letter on the row you are on the Answer grid. (You can just click on a row to change to that row, or you can use arrowkeys).

The scan-with-conditions finds all words that can be made given certain conditions you apply.

For the simple scan you can just double-click a row in the Answers grid. This will return a list of candidate words for you to choose one. If you double-click on a candidate word it will be laid into the puzzle and the character pool adjusted.

Another way to do the simple scan is press the button with the exclamation point (!) on it. A third way to get to the scan is to click on a row to select it and then use the right-click menu. This menu lets you scan any of the word lists or the dictionary.

Because of the inherent difficulty in constructing a good acrostic puzzle, often you want to scan the dictionary with certain conditions. There are two conditions you can apply:

Must-Contain

The Must-Contain condition means that the candidate words returned on a scan MUST contain the letters in the little box labeled "Conditions:" You can type the letters in here, or you can double-click the middle column of the character pool next to the letter you want to add to the conditions box. You use this feature to use up early any difficult letters in the character pool by specify the characters to use up in the "Conditions" box.

The "Conditons" box allows more than one of any character, so if the conditions were "JTT" each candidate word returned must have at least 1 "J" and 2 "T"s. 

Ways to do a Scan-With-Conditions:
1. Select a row in the Answer grid. Right-click and select "Scan with Conditions."
2. Click on the button near "Conditions" box with "!+" (exclamation-plus).

Word length

The word length condition, in the little box labeled "Len," means only look for words of that length. So a 5 in the "Len" box means only look for 5-letter words. To turn off this feature and, find words of any length, just type a zero "0" in the Len box.

You can get to the scan-with-conditions either from right clicking on a row in the Answer grid, or by clicking on the little button next to the "Conditions" box that has "!+" on it. (exclamation-plus).

4. The Status Panels

The status panels give you important information you NEED to get a good Answer word fit. Most important I guess are the Average word length and the bottom right panel, which shows "Chars Remaining" and "Problem Chars."

Average Word Length

The average word length means the average length for words yet to be filled in. You will want to maneuver it so that the average word length at the endgame (last 2 or 3 Answer words) will be low enough to finish the puzzle, say not more that 5 with 2 words remaining.

Also, you will want to note the average word length at the beginning of the blank puzzle. If this is too high, then an acrostic may simple be impossible. That would depend on your wordlists, having lots of very-long-answers. In several months of using the program Acrostic.Exe I have found (with my limited lists) that a starting average word length of more that 12 is pretty hairy. A starting average word length of 5 or 6 might not make such an interesting puzzle, but it might be just right for a child.

If you double-click the bottom right status panel, you will see that it switches back and forth between showing the Problem Chars remaining, and the Total Chars remaining. Problem chars are simply the least-used-letters of the English language. It is harder to get rid of these letters so you want to use them up early, before the pool gets too small.

Hopefully, about halfway through puzzle construction you will have used up all the problem chars. (The Problem Chars I defined as the least-common-third of the alphabet, based on a dictionary analysis).

Pesky "W"s and "H"s !
There are two other letters you should know about, "W" and "H". These appear way more in written text than in the dictionary. I figured out it was probably the often used words like "where," "when," "who," "what," etc. and the "H" from the many "the"s and "that" and "this" and "those" and "them," etc. So use up "W"s and "H"s early, or it will be impossible to make a fit in the endgame. You use them up by adding them to the "Conditions" box and doing a Scan-with-conditions.

Another thing you must watch as you go along is the Vowels, and Consonants, and the Vowel percentage. You can't make a word at the end with seven consonants. I have found that when vowel percentage start going below 30% you are in trouble. Of if it goes too high, like 70% you will wind up with all vowels at the end.

5. Finishing Up

When you have completed fitting the answer words and the pool is used up, you can click on the "Clues" button and enter the clue for each answer word.

That's it! You will want to save your puzzle now by clicking the "Save Puzzle" button. This saves the puzzle as a special text file, allowing you to load it up later if you want to change it or re-do the clues, etc. Once you have saved it you can load it up again by choosing on the main menu Create Puzzle/From Saved Puzzle File.

The "Puzzle Key" and "Puzzle" buttons (above the wordlist window) write out the puzzle or its key in a plain text format. This file can be printed correctly if you choose a fixed-font style such as Courier or Courier New. That way the boxes of the puzzle will show up right. It's funky but it's a puzzle, hey!, and this program is FREE!

So finishing up your complete puzzle entails writing clues, saving the puzzle, and saving the actual puzzle (to be filled in by your friends).

So first you load a quote from the quotes file.

Next you fill in the Answer words by various methods (above)

Then you write your Clues

Save the puzzle in puzzle format

Save the puzzle and/or puzzle key as text characters.

Print the puzzle (...printing routines coming real soon now.)

Acrostic cannot yet print the puzzle in "professional" style. It WILL print out the whole puzzle using text chars only. It is good enough for having fun.

If you hit the "Print with Text Only" button, it will print the whole puzzle with just text chars, not graphically. New version will have full printing options.

To be notified when full version is ready email me at prema@prahlad.org.

For that version I plan to add a heuristic search for the endgame which will automate the filling of the last 3 words.

I think the full version will not cost much. Anyway, if someone is poor I would want to give it to them.