Comments on: Thoughts on a game of Boggle http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:21:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: liliana http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle/comment-page-1/#comment-5162 liliana Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:59:16 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle#comment-5162 <p>boggle sucks!!</p> boggle sucks!!

]]> By: Looking Out To Sea » Solving the problem of Boggle http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle/comment-page-1/#comment-222 Looking Out To Sea » Solving the problem of Boggle Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:17:02 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle#comment-222 <p>[...] few days I looked at the game of Boggle with a view to writing a program to solve the same problem that the user has: find as many (long) [...]</p> […] few days I looked at the game of Boggle with a view to writing a program to solve the same problem that the user has: find as many (long) […]

]]> By: Dougal http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle/comment-page-1/#comment-184 Dougal Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:30:10 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle#comment-184 <p>Very true! That approach had not occurred to me --- at least, not in so many words. The U is really a modifier rather than a real letter (when following Q, obviously; not elsewhere). But Q doesn't appear <em>without</em> the modifier so it's effectively not there.</p> <p>So we strip the redundant modifier from the dictionary words (and filter those words that contain unmodified Q). This is (more or less) the safe strings problem if we consider the "qu" string as an unsafe entity that needs to be escaped.</p> Very true! That approach had not occurred to me — at least, not in so many words. The U is really a modifier rather than a real letter (when following Q, obviously; not elsewhere). But Q doesn’t appear without the modifier so it’s effectively not there.

So we strip the redundant modifier from the dictionary words (and filter those words that contain unmodified Q). This is (more or less) the safe strings problem if we consider the “qu” string as an unsafe entity that needs to be escaped.

]]> By: Lawrence http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle/comment-page-1/#comment-183 Lawrence Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:49:32 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-a-game-of-boggle#comment-183 <p>So the Qu problem is easy to solve, because there is no side of any of the dice that has just a Q on it. Hence, you can't spell any words in your dictionary that have a Q followed by a letter other than U, so when reading the dictionary remove them. Now replace all QU sequences with just Q. Now you can treat Qu as a single letter and continue blithely on your way.</p> So the Qu problem is easy to solve, because there is no side of any of the dice that has just a Q on it. Hence, you can’t spell any words in your dictionary that have a Q followed by a letter other than U, so when reading the dictionary remove them. Now replace all QU sequences with just Q. Now you can treat Qu as a single letter and continue blithely on your way.

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