README file for Crossword Anagram Project Author: Seth Cattanach Fall 2017
This project is a C++ implementation of an anagram crossword puzzle generator.
By running the provided "crossword" executable (or creating the executable with the given repository files and Makefile), the user can input a list of words (up to 20) and the program will attempt to place each word on the board. When end-of-input has been specified (CRTL-d or '.' character), the program will output three items: the "solution" board with all words placed appropriately, the "puzzle" board with blank spaces indicated by the '_' character, and a list of clues to solve the puzzle.
Each clue in the puzzle is an anagram of the target word. For example, a given clue might give a coordinate and read "GOCIND" - solving this anagram would yield the word "CODING" which would be placed at the given coordinate.
The user can also run the executable with a list of words already specified in a text file as a command line argument. Example:
./crossword samplewords.txt
This will bypass the "manual word entry" and the program will immediately generate and display a crossword.
To save the program's output to a textfile, simply specify a file as another command line argument, and the program will save the solution board, puzzle board, and anagram clues to the specified file. Example:
./crossword samplewords.txt output.txt
This will run the "crossword" executable with input words from "samplewords.txt" and save the generated crossword to "output.txt"
The provided Makefile allows the user to easily compile the project's source code. To do so, simply run "make" in the project directory. Run "make clean" to remove all intermediate object files created during the compiling/linking processes as well as the executable.
