Advanced word search, is there anything quite like this?
I've been playing this Alexa skill called Word Play. You try to find five letter words given clues. Here's an example:
The first letter is S. I try SHAVE. I'm told that S is the first letter, E is the last letter, and HAV aren't anywhere in the word. Next I try SINCE. I'm told the exact same thing. Now I know the word starts with S, ends with E, and HAVINC are nowhere in the word. So now I try SLOPE. The only new piece of information I receive is that L is in the wrong place. Now I know the first letter is S, the last letter is E, there's an L but it's not the second letter, and HAVINCOP aren't in the word at all. My next guess is STYLE, which is correct.
I used an online tool to help me, but it wasn't as streamlined as I'd like. What I'm imagining is something like the following. You type in a word pattern, where you can use the following to tell the program exactly what you're looking for:
An upper case letter is in the word you want, and it's in the correct place. A lower case letter is in the word you want, but not in the place you wrote it. A question mark indicates a place where you don't know the letter. At the end, an exclamation followed by any number of letters means those letters aren't in the word. Let's take my word from earlier and use this imaginary tool.
First I only know the word starts with the letter S, so I could try S???? and get a ton of five-letter words starting with S. I'm better off just guessing a word at random in order to get more information.
First guess: SHAVE. E is at the end, and HAV aren't in the word at all, so I could enter S???E!HAV to narrow it down.
Second guess: SINCE. I find out that INC aren't in the word either. Now I can enter S???E!HAVINC to narrow it down further.
Third guess: SLOPE. I find out that L is in the word, but is not the second letter. I can enter Sl??E!HAVINCOP and very quickly come up with a plausible next guess which I will try next. Notice the lower case l, meaning I know there's an l in the word, but it's not the second letter.
Fourth guess: STYLE. This guess is correct.
Does anyone know of anything like this?
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