Theme Crossword Compilers Corner.
Theme compilers faced with the prospect of compiling a series of Crosswords in a short period of time to meet a publishers deadline will often appreciate the benefits of having a comprehensive Theme Word List on hand to ensure reliable Auto Fills.
Once an answer grid has been created the compiler will be able to concentrate their time on clue creation. Large word lists really prove their worth for those of you faced with the production of a tightly themed puzzle for a weekly magazine or newsletter. It's worth remembering that for a typical 13x13 Themed Puzzle in order to avoid repetition in subsequent puzzles you will lose around 22 words per puzzle.
Over 16 weeks this adds up to around 350 words lost to the Grid Filler, and you could find yourself struggling to create answer grids relatively quickly. I accept that from time to it's quite reasonable to duplicate the odd word to help fill or balance a particular grid as long as the associated clue is different of course, but in my view large word lists are Compiler Heaven.
It's in the nature of crossword compiling that we all have our individual style and working practices. Additionally the content of the puzzles will often be crafted to a commissioning editors briefing, but large word lists are a useful addition to any Theme Compilers Toolbox.
I'm fortunate in my chosen themes of Aviation and Computing in that there is no shortage of theme words for my (many) lists, but typically I find that 5000 generic words is ideal for my master list, and a number of more tightly bracketed 1000 word 'sub lists' where I wish to create a puzzle with a different bias. E.g. Military, Civil or Transport in the case of Aviation.
Whatever method you choose to build your lists will involve spending some quality time on the task, but in my experience it's time very well spent.
Trawling For Words.
In my manual I use a fishing analogy to compare the process of "catching
words" to that of catching fish. Not very imaginative perhaps, but a
trawler will catch more fish (words) per session than someone with a
fishing rod.
I use two principal
sources for my 'word trawling' process.
a) The Internet.
b) Books and other printed matter.
As you can imagine it's one thing having a ready source of suitable theme words, it's quite another to laboriously copy type these to the list one word at a time.
The
first step is to find and learn to love a versatile plain text word
cruncher.
( I use and highly recommend
TextPad) but there are any number to choose from.
Whichever you choose it must have.
* A versatile Find & Replace function.
* A facility to sort your list (alphabetically at the very least)
* A facility to change word case (E.g. Lower to Upper)
* A facility to mark or remove duplicate lines.
* The ability to handle large blocks of text.
Creating or Augmenting Your Word List From
Web Content.
Locate a theme word rich Web page or series of Web pages. (Glossaries
and definitions are always the first thing I look for...)
1. Open a new blank page in
your Text Editor and immediately Save As E.g. templist.txt
2. Return to your theme word rich Webpage and from the Browser Edit
Menu > Select All > Copy
3. The entire contents of the Webpage are now captured on your PC
Clipboard
4. Maximise your Text Editor and from the Edit Menu Select > Paste
5. You'll see a lot of text (but no images or formatting) - Don`t
Panic!
6. If the text has pasted as a series of very long lines Selecting
> Word wrap will restore things.
7. Using the Find Replace function remove common and other unwanted
words in bulk. E.g. the, and, etc.
* Take care to insert blank spaces before and after words to be replaced
to avoid removing constituent letters from required words - for example
replacing the word "to" without spaces would leave the name Plato
reading Pla ! or cartographer as car ographer.
8. It will take time, but you will gradually see a great word list
emerging. Don't worry at this stage about removing duplicate words that
you want to keep. It's your judgement as to which words you keep and
which you delete, but my general rule is "if in doubt keep it."
9. Once you've removed all the unwanted words manually or using the
tools from your text editor arrange each theme word such that it
occupies it's own line. (You might find yourself doing a lot of
backspacing and hitting the Return (new paragraph) key.
10. You will now have a list of useful theme words. Now remove
all blank spaces and punctuation such as hyphens, commas, full stops
etc.
11. Use the Change Case function to convert the entire list to
Upper Case then Select Sort (alphabetically) and Select Remove
Duplicates.
12. Save your list!
13. Now it's time to take a look at your words and using your
judgement manually make changes where you think you can improve the
list. For example in my Computing List I may have the words;
ADOBE
ACROBAT
READER
I would retain these as individual words but also manually create some
additional words or phrases for my list.
ADOBEACROBAT
ACROBATREADER
With practice and imagination you will come up with many, many more
variations along these lines...what about
USEACROBAT
GETACROBAT
Also you can find word like DOWNLOAD for example and think how modifying
tense might be handy additions
DOWNLOADED
DOWNLOADS
FREEDOWNLOAD
14. The final step is to copy and paste your list to your master
list, or sub lists as required.
Then of course you'll need to find more sources of reference and do all this again! But trust me, with practice it's quite fun, and doesn't take s long as you'd imagine.
And before you say anything I know that some people use Excel and other software to create and manage Word Lists. It's just a question of what suits you, but this is how I go about things. It's a breeze to import these lists into Crossword Compiler and use the Word List Manager to manipulate them.
Using OCR To Extract Theme Words Form
Printed Matter
All being well you'll have discovered by now just how useful a
versatile text editor can be, and what a rich source of Theme Words is
easily accessible on the Internet.
There is of course another rich source of Theme Words sitting in books, magazines and leaflets just waiting to be trawled. Once again you could always copy type the ones you like the look of into your lists, but it will take you a long time.
If you're not already familiar with it I recommend you learn to use a good OCR software package. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. Quite simply OCR "reads" and recognises words from scanned images of printed pages. Using OCR couldn't be simpler, but using it effectively does require a bit of practice, but you'll soon get the hang of it and wonder how you ever did without it!
There are many OCR software packages to choose from. In fact if you've bought a scanner there's a good chance that an OCR package came free with it and is either sitting on your PC or the installation CD in the Extras folder. If you don`t have OCR on your machine Google 'OCR' and take your pick! I happen to use OmniPage from ScanSoft, but there are many others to try before you buy.
To "OCR" words from printed matter to
add to your list.
1. Scan page of words and save as image file. JPG is often OK.
2. Use OCR to recognise and capture the words on the page.
3. Save recognised words as plain text (.txt)
4. Copy and Paste these words into your plain text editor
5. Process in the same way as we discussed above before adding to your
master list.
I hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have any comments, would like to see your own tutorials or techniques posted here please get in touch. There's a handy form on the contact page.
Themed Crossword Basics.
A theme or themed crossword grid should be symmetrical, and all the clues and words in the grid should relate to the theme.
Recommended Authoring Software.
Crossword Compiler is a complete suite of tools for creating high-quality crossword puzzles. Fill grids automatically from word lists, find words, manage words and clues, and much more.
There are several different puzzle styles to choose from, and many tools to help you create great grids and clues in a snap. You can print out and export your puzzles in many ways, including interactive online crosswords for your web page.
The program combines ease of use for the casual user with many advanced features for the serious constructor.
Follow The Link For The Free Demo.
Recommended Reading
How To Compile Themed Crosswords
For Publication
"How To Compile Themed Crosswords For Publication." is a manual aimed squarely at compilers who would like to see their work published, and get paid for it! - More Info