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WHAT Features |
WHAT,
Wolfberg's
Helpful
Anagramming
Tool, is really a toolbox of powerful tools,
with many facilities. This is a list of the major features
of this program:
- After offering this program for sale for about 10 years, it is now
free as of Version 2.0 produced in late January, 2015.
It is usable only on MS Windows computers,
but it may be ported to hand-held devices. It is available via
downloading.
- Control is via a command language, with the help of a GUI to
formulate the commands and to provide an indication of the meaning
of commands.
- Support unlimited command history, including the getting of a
previous command from the history. History can be exported and
imported.
- You can specify a primary lexicon to use as the word source. A
secondary lexicon may optionally be used as the basis of marking words either
also in or missing from that secondary source. You can also use another
lexicon as the basis for challenge adjudication.
- There are English, French, and Spanish lexicons, and there is support for
the tiles of a Spanish SCRABBLE® set, including the digram tiles.
- The operations of performing queries (yielding output to a virtual
slate) and the presentation of items on the slate are separately
controlled.
- Provide for short-term (per-command) and long-term settings.
- Queries can include individual letters, individual blanks, and individual
set specs. Each of these may have a repetition count, where zero means
any number (zero or more).
- Repetition counts, such as
4A3?
to mean find all words with four
A's and three other
letters - the one answer is
ATALAYA.
- Asterisk to mean any number of any characters.
- As a generalization of the asterisk, a repetition count or zero to
mean any number of a specific character or set -
B0R (with the digit zero
in the middle) finds
BRR and
BRRR
- Although typically the word source for queries is a particular lexicon,
it may be a particular wordlist.
- Queries may include references to words or their subwords, perhaps
in reverse order, which are typically on the slate as a result of
performing an earlier query. The source for these word references
can be any particular wordlist.
- These are the 11 basic kinds of queries:
- anagramming - find the 10 5-letter words using
AELST
- pattern matching - find the words beginning and ending with
V,
namely VAV,
or what words have the pattern
.I.A.I., such as
TITANIC;
a rack may be supplied for such queries
- circulate a blank for each given letter and anagram - for
QUIXOTE,
find EQUINOX,
QUIXOTE,
and QUOITED
- circulate a blank for each given letter through a pattern - for
BABOON, find
BABOOL,
BABOON,
BABOOS, and
GABOON
- circulate an added blank through a pattern - for
TALER, find
STALER,
TAILER,
TALERS,
TALKER,
TALLER,
THALER
- circulate an inserted blank through a pattern - for
TALER, find
TAILER,
TALKER,
TALLER,
THALER
- find all imbedded words - for
THEATER, find
AT,
ATE,
EAT,
EATER,
ER,
HE,
HEAT,
HEATER,
THE,
THEATER
- Find anagram steals, namely shortest words including the given
letters plus others - for
WOLFBERG, find
BEFLOWERING,
FURBELOWING, and
GLOBEFLOWER
- Find rearrangement anagram steals - for
MAQUI, find
UMIAQS
- Find all words formable in a 5 x 5 grid of cubes
- Find all two-word anagrams - for
WOLFBERG, find
BERG-FLOW,
BERG-FOWL,
BERG-WOLF,
BLEW-FROG,
BREW-FLOG,
BREW-GOLF
- Find all two-word patterns - for
MANSLAUGHTER, find
MAN-SLAUGHTER and
MANS-LAUGHTER
- Support letter sets of various kinds:
- Built-in sets, such as vowels, consonants, letters with
certain scores, letters with certain counts;
- There is a set which represents the bag of 98 letters, and
this is user-modifiable.
- There is a set which represents the super bag of 196 letters, and
this is user-modifiable.
- There is a set which represents scores for the 26 individual
letters, and this is user-modifiable.
- Word-based sets - the set of middle letters for a 3-letter word
beginning with T
and ending in N,
or the set of letters which can anagram with
ZOA to form a 4-letter word;
- Specified sets - explicit list of letters, perhaps with ranges,
or a list of letters which are not in the set;
- User-defined sets - you define your own, either explicitly or by
computation;
- Query-based sets, such as a repeated letter, a first-time letter,
etc.
- Query Filtering, based upon:
- word score, flat or based on board placement (on either a 15x15 board
or a 21x21 board), optional bingo bonus
- word length,
- word probability (number of ways to draw from 98 letters),
- number of anagrams,
- specific to word reference queries, the number of answers for
each referenced word,
- specific to word reference queries in which there is also one blank,
the set of letters the blank can be
- the set of front hooks
- the set of back hooks
- text included in definitions
- Control of Query Results - replace or augment the slate
(where results go) with either words from the lexicon or strings,
perhaps canonically-ordered based on your choice for ordering.
- Facilities for creation, labelling, copying,
modification, deletion, import, export, and
processing of lists of words (or strings in general), including
logical operations of union, intersection, difference, and
cross-product.
- The placing of results onto the slate as a result of perfoming a query
is often then followed by the presentation of the slate, but these
are distinct operations, which you can control separately. You may
place results onto the slate and then perform various presentations,
without changing the slate contents.
- WHAT can work with a file of definitions of a particular
format. Although it does not come with such a file, you can find such
files on the web. If you choose to get such a file, you can have
definitions included as part of slate presentation. You can also
ask for the definitions of specific words to be shown in a
window dedicated to this purpose.
- Slate presentation controls include:
- A choice of how much of the slate is shown:
- nothing (especially useful when flashcarding),
- merely whether there are any words,
- whether there is a given number of words,
- just the count of the number of words,
- when the previous query had one or two blanks, you can see the
letters or letter pairs that those blanks matched,
- when the previous query had one or two blanks, you can see the
number of letters or letter pairs that those blanks matched,
- you can be shown one particular letter of one particular word,
- you can be shown one particular letter of all words (within reason),
- you can be shown one particular word,
- a certain limited number of words,
- all words, which is the typical, default choice.
- Each word can be presented with your choice of:
- ordered as it appears on the slate,
- ordered in your choice of canonical order,
- hidden, presented merely as empty square brackets.
- Layout format choices:
- one word per line,
- packed rows, with your choice of spacing and an optional comma,
- columnated rows,
- columns.
The last two choices allow for control of column spacing:
- mimimal, with your choice of the minimum,
- fixed-width, with your choice of that width,
- expandable, with your choice of a minimum.
- You can control the presentation width in one of three ways:
- It can depend upon the workspace window width,
- It can be a specific number of characters,
- It can be a specific number number of columns of words.
- You can control the number of rows per page, which applies only
to presentations in columns.
- You can present words according to up to seven sort keys, ordered
according to your choice. The order can be increasing or decreasing.
These are the criteria:
- alphabetical order,
- canonical alphabetical order,
- blank alphabetical order,
- word score,
- word length,
- word probability,
- anagram count.
- Print the workspace, with controls for number of copies, order of printed
pages, page orientation, page layout (margins, title,
and line spacing), printer font. You can inhibit the showing of
any command in the printed output by prefixing the command with
at least one space.
- Create personal study lists.
- Create hand-tailored flashcards, and support flashcarding in two
different modes: sequential and randomized.
- Generate random racks to quiz yourself, with control over the probability
of there being words in a rack. Rack ordering can be random or a
canonical order of your choosing.
- Generate random throws and support the hand-inputting of throws
(25 cube arrangements) for the 5 x 5 grid game, and present them in
large letters as a quiz. Save these throws, and support their export and
import. The somewhat new 6-digram cube is supported.
- Especially for the 5 x 5 Grid Game and for results on the slate in
general, you can make probes of words and find out immediately or later
which of these are acceptable.
- Generate random grids and support the hand-inputting of grids
(96 tile arrangements) for the Word-Building Game. Support the playing
of this game. Support the saving of games and grids in history, and
provide importing and exporting of solutions and grids. You can make
a computer-solve for a good answer, with different levels of solving.
You can also ask for a best-scoring word at any stage during solving.
- There a timer, especially for use when playing the 5 x 5 grid game.
It has an early warning alarm and a times-up alarm.
You can set durations and sounds.
- You can set up a 15 x 15 board or a 21 x 21 board
with tiles, and you can find out all
possible plays from a rack of seven tiles. Games on this board can be
recoded and played back. This is especially helpful to postmortem already
played games.
- Adjudicate challenges based on one or more words to be checked as
as a group. Record challenged words in a file. Recording periods
can be set up based on days of the week and times.
- There is an optional mode for adjudicating challenges at a time when
there is a transition of lexicons. WHAT can report that a challenge has
no penalty when a new or old word is among the challenged words.
- You can have WHAT revert to the challenge adjudication dialog
after a certain amount of time has passed since any WHAT commands
have been entered. This is of use mainly in a club setting.
- You can hand-tailor the initialization file which is read when
the program starts which sets various options.
- You can define character sequences to be inserted into a
command when various function keys are pressed. You also
have the option of whether the command is then performed.
- When too many words are to be presented, you are warned and then
given control to see partial answers.
- A query which proves to be taking too much time
can be stopped before it is complete.
- A presentation which is too large
can be stopped before it is complete.
- Commands can be executed from an imported command file.
- As a stopgap measure, when you request on-line help, you are led
to browsing the "WHAT User Guide", either on your
computer or from the WHAT web site.
- When your computer is attached to the web, the program can be used to
check whether there are new updates available for downloading.