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Show HN: Christmas themed word search generator (puzzles.lloydatkinson.net)

3 points by MortyWaves ↗ HN
I made a Christmas themed word search generator. I built it while planning some fun family games and activities for Christmas and thought that perhaps other people might enjoy it.

It currently isn’t interactive; you are given an image that gets downloaded so you can print it or do whatever you like with it.

Eventually I’ll expand it to have other themes and word lists. The UI is quite simplistic currently.

It’s written in C#/.NET. It shares some code with another project I’m working on that generates and solves mazes.

I may have time to add the ability to add your own words in a few days.

5 comments

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interloxia
Nice. An easy mode with/preferencing shorter words and a smaller grid would be appreciated. It seems to work fine at 12x12 which would suit my kid.
MortyWaves
I’ll see what I can do! Fortunately that’s already built in but just not exposed to the UI. Thanks for taking a look.
MortyWaves
I added options for short, medium, and long words. I tested at 12x12, at that size the amount of words it's required to place needs to be around ~20 from my testing, any more and it will spend a long time attempting to generate and get no where (a future enhancement to stop after a while). What do you think now?
interloxia
Thanks. I think that makes it much more suitable for my kid.

I like that the page is simple and clean without ads/garbage. Depending what your goals are you could call it done.

Here are some more thoughts if you keep tinkering.

- Always produce a puzzle. If the request is for a small grid and a large number of words and it doesn't work, decrease the number of words and output that. The total number of words is not that important.

- Instead of a download image, update the displayed puzzle with the new image and add a download button. The image is no longer a preview, just call it the puzzle. Perhaps add a transition/something to highlight the update.

- Add a download PDF button. Dumping the image into a PDF with PDFsharp/whatever should be pretty easy. PDF children's activities sheet keywords etc are presumably helpful.

- Add a bit of padding between the letters and the boarder.

- Add a link/qr code to the image/background/metadata to give yourself some credit.