crosshare
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Highlight "bad" words getting used in autofill
Or even have an option to mark grid unfillaable if it includes any bad fill. From this email w/ alina:
Sure, so I rank all the words that I'm happy to include in a puzzle w/ a score of 50 (I downloaded the xwordinfo list and have made a ton of modifications), which I set as my threshold in Crossfire. This way, it will only ever show me word options that mean I can fill the rest of my grid in with words that have a score of 50+. So even if I have a word that's 50 points, if using that word forces a 25 point word in another spot, it won't give me the 50 point word as an option. If I come across a word I don't like, I delete it, or bump down to a score of 25. If I'm doing a puzzle with a simple theme (e.g. maybe 3 theme answers in a 15x15), and depending on the venue, I try to keep it all 50+. However, if I had a really theme-dense puzzle, I might bump the threshold down. This is to say, I know that every word I choose will still have high quality fill later on — if not, it'll say "unfillable grid", and I'll undo something, or change the black square pattern.
So when I started building my puzzle in Crosshare, I originally put Kazoo/Kazuo crossing in the first square, and I just couldn't get clean fill. So, I went to Crossfire, and saw that in that arrangement, I was getting "unfillable grid". So I tried a few other arrangements until one of them had multiple options with 50+ words, so I went back to Crosshare with that. Some of the really expert constructors don't rely on the software as heavily as I do, and can think more about which grid patterns and word placement will lead to most options for high quality fill. So, short answer, scored wordlist and a threshold! That way, I know there are options with high quality fill.