Okay, so today I was working on this crossword feature. I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I finally got around to it. I started by thinking about how I wanted it to work. I figured the user should be able to input a bunch of words, and then the program should spit out a crossword puzzle. Easy enough, right?
Well, I started by writing some code to handle the user input. I got that working pretty quickly. The user could type in a bunch of words, and the program would store them in a list. No problem.
Then came the hard part – actually generating the crossword puzzle. I started by trying to place the first word in the middle of the grid. Then, I tried to place the second word so that it intersected with the first word. I wrote some code to check for valid intersections and to place the words on the grid. This took a while to get right, but I eventually got it working, at least for two words.
Getting it to work
But then, things got complicated. I tried adding more words, and the code started to break. Words were overlapping in weird ways, and it was just a mess. I realized I needed a better way to keep track of which cells were occupied and which were free.
So I did some serious thinking and decided to use a 2D array to represent the grid. Each cell in the array would either be empty or contain a letter. This made it much easier to check for valid intersections and to place words on the grid. I rewrote a bunch of my code to use this new data structure.
Some more problems
But I still had problems. I was trying to place words randomly, and sometimes it just wouldn’t work. There would be no valid intersections, or the words would be placed in a way that made it impossible to add more words later. It was super frustrating. I spent hours trying to debug this mess, stepping through the code line by line, trying to figure out what was going wrong. I even drew diagrams on paper, trying to visualize the grid and the word placements.
After a ton of trial and error, I realized that I needed a more systematic way to place the words. So I came up with this idea to sort the words by length, and then place them in order, starting with the longest word. I figured this would give the longer words more space, and make it easier to fit in the shorter words later. This made a huge difference. But I still had to deal with cases where there were no valid intersections, so I added some backtracking logic. If a word couldn’t be placed, the code would go back and try to place the previous word differently. I rewrote a ton of my code, adding in this new logic.
Finally a result
And, it worked! I was so happy. The program could now generate crossword puzzles with a bunch of words. It wasn’t perfect, and sometimes it would get stuck and I have to restart it, but it was working most of the time. I was just happy to see it spitting out these grids filled with words.
Here’s what I learned from this whole experience:
- Start simple: I should have started with a simpler version of the problem, like generating a crossword puzzle with just two words.
- Plan ahead: I should have spent more time thinking about the data structures and algorithms before I started coding.
- Don’t give up: Even when things got really tough, I kept at it. And I eventually got it working.
So, yeah, that’s my story about building a crossword feature. It was a wild ride, but I learned a lot, and I’m pretty proud of the result, even though it’s not perfect. It’s definitely something I want to revisit and improve in the future. Maybe add a UI, and make it more user-friendly. We’ll see.
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