[rec.puzzles] looking for ideas on crossword-puzzle generator program

levy@ttrdc.UUCP (05/28/87)

Has anyone out there in netland ever written, heard of, seen, or used a
crossword-puzzle generator program that you would be willing to tell me
about?  I've been thinking of playing around with creating such a program,
using random dictionary search starting points and recursion until the empty
grid (generated by hand or by another program) was successfully filled with
a set of letters which spell some kind of words in both horizontal and
vertical directions.  But it also seems to me that it would be a s-l-o-o-w
process because of all the trial-and-error even if I used techniques to make
random dictionary access and search relatively quick (like using binary search
on sorted lists of fixed-length words).  Any ideas?  Would it need a machine
on the order of a Cray to pull this off :-) ?
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