Typesetting crossword & word search puzzles

Meghan wants me to help her make some crossword & word search puzzles from a list of words she prepares. (For example, names of US states, though her list is only up to fourty-four—not sure which six she is missing yet.)

While there are a lot of shareware programs to produce puzzles, I figure I'll enjoy it more if I learn how to create my own. A pretty basic (read naive) approach for placing words seems like it will be quite easy to implement, though I imagine there are semi-sophisticated algorithms for doing it fast and for producing the highest quality arrangements. I'll need to do some research in this area.

Here are three different TeX packages that simplify the typesetting of crosswords:

• The plain-TeX crossword.tex (from Utopia Power TeX)
• The LaTeX cwpuzzle.sty (by Gerd Neugebauer)
• The LaTeX crosswrd.sty (by Brian Hamilton Kelly)

—Michael A. Cleverly
Monday, January 17, 2005 at 13:35

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