WHAT, Wolfberg's Helpful Anagramming Tool, is really a toolbox of powerful tools, with many facilities. You can make effective use of WHAT right away by using just a few of its features, and the tutorial, http://wolfberg.net/what/doc/whats_first.html introduces these features. It is easy to get started using WHAT to help you answer simple-to-state queries. Other similar documents cover more advanced features.
If you prefer to read the minimum to get started, look at "WHAT Common Queries Reference Sheet", which is available in both HTML as what_common_queries.html or as an MS Word document what_common_queries.doc. The latter does fit on one page, whereas the HTML version may not, according to you browser's font settings.
WHAT was developed by a speaker/writer of English for use with Scrabble® played using English language lexicons. The program was then extended to support the FISE lexicon for International Spanish Scrabble®. As of 5-Jan-19, FISE09 and FISE17 are supported by WHAT. At present, the user interface for this is entirely in English - the only Spanish words are in the lexicon. We intend to further modify the program to present a Spanish user interface.
The support for Spanish in WHAT required considerable modifications, mainly due to the difference between English and Spanish Scrabble® tiles. In the Spanish sets, both K and W are missing, and there are 4 tiles unique to Spanish: Ñ, CH, LL, and RR.
WHAT presents words using the Roman alphabet, so that when a word has the letters C and H, they are both shown as separately-typed letters in a word. WHAT nevertheless considers the word to have the Spanish CH tile and that contributes one tile to the length of the word. So for example, if you ask to see all the two-letter words in the FISE17 lexicon, all 91 words are shown, including four which have double-letter tiles.
In case your keyboard does not include a key for Ñ, you may specify that character by holding down the Ctrl key and typing N.
When typing queries, consecutively typed letters of CH or ch, LL or ll, or RR or rr signify a double-letter tile. If you want to instead be sure you are not specifying such a double-letter tile, either change the case of one of the consecutive letters or use a space as a separator, etc.
When a query includes a blank using either a question mark or period, this single "tile" can be matched by any Spanish tile, including one of the double-letter tiles.
When you ask to see the front or back hooks for a word, the hook letters are shown in lowercase adjacent (before and after) to the word which is presented in uppercase. When CH is a hook tile, it is shown in this context enclosed in square brackets so as not to be ambiguous. If you see ch as consecutive letters not enclosed in square brackets they are individually hook letters, and letters d through g are not hook letters. Front hooks for OVE serves as an example.
WHAT adopts its rules for working with Spanish when the primary lexicon is a Spanish one. When you shift from using an English lexicon to or from using a Spanish lexicon, several items in the program are reset, including:
It has been reported there is not a file of definitions for the words in the FISE lexicon. If such definitions can be provided, WHAT can then be made to present these when asked, as it does for the North American English lexicons, OWL2, OWL3, and OWL4.
The adjudicator dialog for looking up challenges uses the North American challenge rules even when the FISE lexicon is used as the basis for challenges. Therefore, more than one word may be challenged as part of one challenge ruling. If at least one of the challenged words is unacceptable, the play is ruled as unacceptable.
Support for BOGGLE has been disabled when the lexicon is a Spanish one. If there is interest in supporting this, please let Mike Wolfberg know.