Word Maze Example Todd Neller

The goal of the word maze is to find your way through a maze of hidden words to reach every letter in the grid below, starting from the upper-left corner. Hidden words are 5-or-more-letter words that can be spelled with a sequence of letters adjacent horizontally, vertically or diagonally.  For example, STRAP can be spelled by a sequence of letters starting at the upper-left S and ending at either P.  NOTE:  Unlike the game Boggle®, letters may be reused in the spelling of a single word.  For example, one can spell PARADE starting from either P and using the same A twice.

The letter is in the upper-left corner is reached to begin with.  To reach another letter, find a word starting at a reached letter and ending at that letter.

For example, the upper left S is reached to begin with.  In finding STRAP, we reach both P's.  In finding PARADE, we then reach the two rightmost E's.  These E's are reached because we can form a chain of words from the upper-left S to these E's.  In other words, you are seeking chains of 5-or-more-letter words to reach each letter starting from the letter in the upper-left corner.  Acceptable 5-or-more-letter words are those that can be found in the Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon (ENABLE) online (http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/enable2k.zip). (This 471K zipped file contains a large text file word.lst which contains all legal words.)

Enjoy!

Applet instructions:  Enter words by clicking on letters or typing in the text field above.  Check whether the word is acceptable or not by clicking the "Check Word" button.  If the word is correct, it will appear in the list of found words.  Reached letters have a green background.  Letters which appear at the end of found words but are not yet reached have a yellow background.  All other letters have a gray background.  The puzzle is solved when all letters are reached.  At this point, the puzzler smiles, stands up, stretches, and gives him- or herself a hearty pat on the back for a job well done.