Vlajorne - Word Building Puzzle/Game
A word-building puzzle similar to "Duplicate Ad-Lib" published by Milton Bradley. This version includes customized scoring and difficultly levels.
Game
Rules Summary
Pressing the "Easy", "Normal", or "Hard" buttons will start a new game at the selected difficultly level. The tray at the bottom will be filled with 13 randomly selected letters. Click on two squares in the grid or tray to swap the letter(s) in them.
The goal is to use as many letters as possible to form English words on the grid. Words can are formed from left-to-right or top-to-bottom. After 120 seconds, or if you click the "Done" button early, the result is scored. Only the largest connected group of letters will be scored. Tiles not connected to this group or left in the tray are deducted as a penalty. If any words formed are not valid English words, the total of all tiles is deducted as a penalty.
Tiles score once for each word they are a part of. The best scoring arrangement will usually be compact and crossword-like in order to use as many letters in both a horizontal and vertical word. Rare and hard-to-use letters are worth much more than common letters, using them twice, or at least avoiding leaving them unused is more important than other letters. The score value of each letter is in the lower right corner.
Once you have completed a game, the value under "Game Seed" can be shared with another player. Entering this and selecting "Load Game" will reproduce the same set of tiles.
Difficulty Levels
Easy difficulty picks letters based on their frequency in short English words. There will always be about twice as many consonants as vowels making compact arrangements easier. The letter 'Q' will never be picked without at least one 'U'.
Normal difficulty picks letters will less emphasis on frequency making rare letters more likely. The ratio of vowels-to-consonants can also vary more requiring more variety in words.
Hard difficulty picks letters in inverse proportion to frequency making multiple rare letters likely. Each letter picked also reduces the likelihood of picking letters that it often appears with. The letter 'Q' may also be picked without a 'U'.
Acknowledgments
This utilizes the English Open Word List which carries the following license:
Copyright (c) J Ross Beresford 1993-1999. All Rights Reserved. The following restriction is placed on the use of this publication: if the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary is used in a software package or redistributed in any form, the copyright notice must be prominently displayed and the text of this document must be included verbatim. There are no other restrictions: I would like to see the list distributed as widely as possible.
More details can be found at https://www.diginoodles.com/projects/eowl.
You can also download the javascript rendition (albeit filtered to the limitations of this game) used here /files/wordlist.js.