News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 28, 2008

tips

“Crossword puzzle helper” in 11 letters

Posted Feb. 28, ’08, 9:38 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Tips

Dict appI’m all for a little cruciverbalism in my spare time—it’s why I’m such a fan of Red Sweater Software’s Black Ink crossword puzzle app. Sometimes, however, there’s just a clue that you can’t crack. In my case, it’s usually because my brain is just in need of a reboot, but it can still be frustrating to stare a mishmash of letters and see only gibberish.

An anonymous tipster at our sister site, Mac OS X Hints, has one suggestion for combatting that sort of brain fatigue. With a couple of simple lines of Terminal code, you can easily create a command-line program that’ll let you enter a pattern of letters and find all the words that match that pattern. The full code for the app can be found in the hint above; all you need to do is paste it into the text editor of your choice, save it to disk, and then pop into terminal and type chmod +x plus the file name (thus telling your Mac that it’s an executable application).

Some may view the use of this sort of thing as cheating; me, I call it a memory aid. Besides, the only person I’m cheating is myself, and I have it on good authority that I’m totally down with that.


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