To do that, click Start, right-click Computer, then click Properties. Windowsįirst, determine whether you’re running a 32- or 64-bit operating system. Python installationįor the installation part, we’ll be covering installation instructions for both Windows, Unix, and Linux. To make this run under Python 3.X, replace all instances of xrange with range. For this project, we would be utilizing version 2.7. There are two main versions of Python-versions 2.x and 3.x. To realize this series of steps in solving a word search puzzle, we will utilize a programming language known for having a syntax similar to pseudo-code-Python. After the successful matching of the second letter of the word in the successful second match’s neighbors, we then follow-through to a straight line from there, hoping to get a third match (and so on) of the hidden word’s letters.

After confirming a successful match for the second letter of the hidden word through its neighbors, we proceed to a much narrower step.

Once we successfully find the first letter of the hidden word inside the grid, we then check the neighboring characters of that successful match and check whether the second letter of our word matches any of the neighbors of the successful match.

We look at a hidden word and its first letter then we proceed to look for the first letter inside the grid of letters.

How and where do we start?īefore going deeper into the computer side of the algorithm, let’s first clarify how we tend to solve a word search puzzle:

In some word search puzzles, a limitation exists in the length of the hidden words, in that it should contain more than 2 characters, and the grid should have a fixed size of 10 × 10, or an equivalent length and width proportion (which this python implementation doesn’t have). After all the words are found, the remaining letters of the grid expose a secret message. The word could be oriented vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and also inversely in the previously mentioned directions. How a traditional word search puzzle works is, for a given grid of different characters, you have to find the hidden words inside the grid. They can be located sometimes in bookstores, around the trivia area, as a standalone puzzle book, in which the sole content is a grid of characters and a set of words per page. Word search is a puzzle we usually see in newspapers, and in some magazines, located along the crossword puzzles. This implementation of Word Search was, in most part, an experiment-to observe how I utilize Python to try and solve the problem of implementing a basic word search solving algorithm.

Word search solver