On Crosswords by T. Campbell

Author:T. Campbell [Campbell, T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938467806
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2013-04-30T21:00:00+00:00

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275 Dan Schmiedeier, The New York Times, January 5, 2012.

276 Derek Donovan, “Correcting the Correction,” The Kansas City Star, February 10, 2012.

277 Correspondence between Derek Donovan and “Johnny,” published to the Cruciverb-L mailing list, February 10-11, 2012.

278 Harvey Estes, “Friends in Low Places,” The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010.

279 T Campbell, “YouLittle Scamp!” Crossworlds, 2011.

Advanced Calculations

Software has helped such puzzles’ development. I ran a contest calling for programmers to develop a program that could take a list of acceptable “words,” substitute a given string for another given string—including the string that was no letters long—and see how many members of the list before the substitution would remain members afterward.

Adam Rosenfield’s Python program Algxword was more than up to the task.280 When I made “Aliens Go Home,” this was the command I used:

python algxword.py usr/share/dict/words ET“”

...with /usr/share/dict/words the name of my “dictionary” file, ET the “before” string, and nothing, signified by closed quotes, as the “after” string. This found me pairs like PLAN and PLANET, HERO and HERETO, COSMIC and COSMETIC. To do a substitutional puzzle like Lampkin’s, all I’d need is ...

python algxword.py /usr/share/dict/words AP IP

But what if I wanted to emulate this Merl Reagle piece, here?

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