Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with something I hadn’t tried before – making a crossword puzzle, but without any fancy software. Just pure code, you know? I’ve always been into puzzles, and I figured, why not try building one myself? It’s called “crossword pluck” and I’m going to share my whole messy process with you.
First off, I started with a simple grid. Nothing major, just a 15×15 square I drew up. I decided to use a Python list of lists to represent this in my code. You know, pretty basic stuff.
Step one: get the grid going.
- Created a 15×15 grid, each cell initialized with, say, an empty space or a placeholder.
Next, I needed a bunch of words. I just grabbed a list I found online – nothing too fancy, just wanted to test this out. I wasn’t aiming for a New York Times level crossword here, just something to prove I could do it.
Step two: word list.
- Found a random word list online.
- Made sure it had words of various lengths to make it interesting.
Now, here comes the fun part – fitting the words into the grid. I thought, let’s start with the longest word and go from there. Seemed like a good strategy, right?
Step three: placing words.
- Started with the longest word.
- Tried to fit it in horizontally, then vertically.
- If it fits, great! Move on to the next word.
Then I got stuck, like, really stuck. How do you make sure words intersect properly? It was way harder than I thought. I wrote some code to check for intersections, but it was messy, and honestly, it didn’t work half the time.
The Messy Intersection Logic
- Wrote a function to check if two words could intersect.
- Spent hours debugging it, and it still felt clunky.
After a lot of trial and error, I managed to get a few words in, but it was nowhere near a complete crossword. It looked more like a jumbled mess of letters.
Giving Up (Temporarily)
- Realized this was harder than I thought.
- Decided to take a break and rethink my strategy.
So, yeah, that’s where I’m at. It’s not a success story yet, but hey, it’s a learning process. I think I need to read up more on algorithms for this kind of thing. Maybe there’s a smarter way to approach it. Anyway, that’s my crossword adventure for now. If anyone’s got tips or wants to laugh at my failed attempt, feel free to chime in!
