Generating Crossword Puzzles

Starting Approaches

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Final Result Preparation

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Final Result Manipulate

I finally made a manipulate wherein there is a column of the title, instructions, hints, extra hints, word bank, crossword, checker, answer key, and an ending text to read. This was done cleanly and with buttons to make a nice output for the user to traverse.

Conclusion

Throughout the entire process of creating and accomplishing goals in this project, I have learned several things and figured out how to do many processes in an easier and more efficient way. I started with the small steps of merely trying to overlay words, but that didn’t work so well. After much thinking, I moved onto using grid. Once this was semi-functioning, I added black squares and white blank spaces into the format of the grid. With this working, I continued on and added spaces for words to get a set crossword pattern. After a couple days, I had the huge and amazing number of a whopping fifteen words in the crossword! I used word data to pick words based on the position of letters, for example if the first word is “Wolfram”, I would pick a word whose second letter is the sixth letter in the first word, one such word being “Language”. I then used several associations of these words to add them into the crossword by calling the number associated with each letter. I also added hints based on the first dictionary definitions of each word. Finally, I refactored my code so that I got rid of over sixty variables, which helped the loom and functionality of the project. Then, I cleaned up the manipulate and made everything look nice and organized in the output cell. In the near future, a incredibly hard, but possible, improvement could be randomizing the layout of each crossword every time the user evaluates the code. This would allow for a true random crossword generator, but sadly, due to the time restraint, I was not able to finish this goal. However, I feel that I have still accomplished the main goal of making a crossword generator, since I made a new interactive crossword that is difficult yet possible to solve. In creating and working on this project, I learnt to continue to try, even when it seems impossible, and also to set incredibly high goals. By using these two teachings, I was able to make the most of this experience and truly grow as a coder and a human being.