Projects

Check out my Set Solver here [UPDATE: This is no longer working as it relied on Javascript and wasn't fully functional anyway, so I decided to get rid of this for now to keep my website happily JS-free. Maybe I'll get it back up and running sometime]! Not quite fully functional yet, but can detect and identify sets from an uploaded image. (last updated Aug 24, 2021).

I have been a long time enthusiast of the New York Times daily Crossword Minis, as it is fast enough to complete right after I wake up, and before I have to do anything. I admire the authors of crossword puzzles for being able to fit words together so that everything works out.

Sadly, most often at least one or two of the words in the puzzle are compound words like "uhoh" or "seeya", or acronyms like "smh" or "tbh".

I wanted to know if it's possible to make these mini crosswords using only "real" words, so I programmed a quick python script to tell me.

Obviously the word list is important. The first word list I found (words.txt in the GitHub repository) was roughly 10,000 words long, and missed many pretty basic words. It did not give me any perfect 5x5 crosswords, but did give me a few crosswords with some corners missing (which I programmed as an adjustable setting).

The next word list I found was around 370,000 words long (words_370000.txt), which ended up giving me many 5x5 crosswords and even some 6x6 crosswords. I would imagine that it might even yield some 7x7s but it would take too long to run on my computer to figure out. However, it allowed words such as "nikau" (apparently a type of palm tree), which would clearly not be a good or guessable hint for a crossword.

The last word list I found, and the one that I settled on as my go-to, has a length of around 58,000 words (words_58000.txt). It contains most plurals, conjugations, negations, etc., of common words while omitting highly specific words that most people don't know or won't be able to guess. As it turns out, there are many 5x5 crosswords that use only these words, and I was even able to find a decent 6x6 crossword:

scrawl
trivia
roping
iceage
duster
esters

I think that with the right hints, all of these words would be guessable except "esters" and "crocus". Not bad for a 6x6 crossword given the difficulty of even making a 5x5 one!

Finally, here's another much less exciting crossword (dare I venture to say it is the least exciting 3x3 crossword?):

aaa
aaa
aaa

Where all the hints are things like "common battery type", "US motor club", "airport code for Anaa Airport", "informal classification of high budget video games", etc.