ALPHAMETIC PUZZLE GENERATOR

This generator makes alphametic puzzles using lists of up to 200 words.

To generate alphametics, simply paste a text into the input box above and press the button "GENERATE". Within seconds the program will start listing the alphametics it founds after testing all possible combinations of the words given. The following is a practical example of generation of alphametics by using song lyrics.

PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

At LyricsEra website we access the lyrics of the Beatles’s song “Hey Jude”, selecting and copying the entire text (205 words), then pasting it in the input box. Now just press the "GENERATE" button and ... bingo! ... the program starts listing the 3-word alphametics found after testing all possible word combinations.

We used a text taken from a song’s lyrics, however any thematic text can be used such as children's stories, poems, essays, articles, hymns, etc. Another way of entering the list of words is just by typing them, one by one, right into the input box.

When you paste a block of text in the input box, don’t bother to count the exact number of words for fear of exceeding the limit of 200 because the program is smart and automatically ignores words that exceed this limit.

QUALITY CONTROL

At this point, you've probably noticed that it is very easy to generate new alphametics. But unfortunately almost all these alphametics so easily generated are of poor quality: aesthetically unacceptable (illogical, nonsensical) or impossible to be solved by hand, not suited for recreational purposes.

In the practical example given above, the program delivered 114 three-word alphametics. Selecting the best ones that are logical and read well, we take only these seven:

WERE + LITTLE = AFRAID rearranged from (LITTLE + WERE = AFRAID)
PLAYS + WELL = BETTER
TAKE + THAT = CARRY
YOU + WERE = FOUND from (WERE + YOU = FOUND)
YOU + YOUR = HEART
TO + GO = OUT from (GO + TO = OUT)
BETTER + BETTER = PERFORM

For publishing purposes, we should do a further screening to select the puzzles solvable by hand. I tested them and solved all by hand except WERE + LITTLE = AFRAID.

COMMENTS

1) The accent marks or diacriticals such as acute, cedilla, circumflex, grave, tilde, and umlaut are normally accepted then automatically deleted by the program. However, in rare cases some digits or unusual characters are rejected by the program that stops and orders their removal to be able to continue.

2) The maximum number of words acceptable in a text is 200. The words that exceed this limit are ignored for not degrading the speed of the program.

3) The time it takes the program to display all the results varies from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on the number, size and content of the text words submitted, as well as the speed of the user's computer.

4) The CLEAR button you find in the panel cleans the two text boxes available.

5) Using the radio buttons, the program can be set up to generate alfphametic puzzles containing 3, 4, 5 or 6 words each. The default set up is 3 words.

6) The program uses these Java classes:
© Java class Cryptarithmetic by JJ Shie / Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering (DCSI) / National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan.
© Java class Combination by Nobuhiko Ido / Faculty of Business Administration / Gifu Keizai University, Gifu, Japan

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