Word Search Applet

Instructions
To play, click on New Game, then drag your mouse over the grid to select a word. Once found, words will remain circled. If you get stuck, click on Solve Game. The word list can be scrolled if necessary by clicking on the buttons provided.

When you're done with one puzzle, click on New Game again to load the next.

Parameters
Name Format Description Default
screencolors
(optional)
color,color,color Sets the text, background and border colors for the main display. "black,white,black"
buttoncolors
(optional)
color,color Set the button foreground and background colors. "black,lightgray"
gridcolors
(optional)
color,color,color,color The first color pair sets letter grid text and background colors, the third color is used in shading found words and the last color is used in highlighting the current user selection. "black,white,lightgray,yellow"
listcolors
(optional)
color,color,color The first color pair sets the text and background colors of the word list. The third color is used for the text of words that have been found. "black,white,lightgray"
Note: For color parameters, color may be one of the following: black, blue, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, lightgray, magenta, orange, pink, red, white or yellow. Or you can specify a hex string in HTML format, e.g. #ffcc99.
screenfont
(optional)
name,style,size Sets the message text font. "helvetica,bold,12"
buttonfont
(optional)
name,style,size Sets the button text font. "dialog,plain,10"
gridfont
(optional)
name,style,size Sets the letter grid font. "courier,plain,14"
listfont
(optional)
name,style,size Sets the word list font. "helvetica,bold,12"
Note: For font parameters, name may be one of: courier, dialog, helvetica, symbol or timesroman and style may be one of: bold, bolditalic, italic or plain.
gridsize
(optional)
n, m, d Sets the number of rows and columns used in the letter grid and the size, in pixels, of each cell (this should be slightly bigger than the size of the grid font). "15,15,20"
files url_1,url_2,...,url_n A list of URLs. Each should point to a text file containing a list of words to use for each puzzle. n/a
Usage Notes
The width and height attributes of the APPLET tag should be adjusted as necessary to accomodate the display.

The applet reads data from one or more plain text files located on the server. Given a list of file URLs, it will load a new set of words for each new game, looping back to the first file after the last.

Each line of the input file should contain a single word or phrase. These are stripped of whitespace or non-alpha characters and converted to upper-case before being added to the letter grid. For example, "New Mexico" shows on the grid as "N E W M E X I C O". Words are listed in the order read.

If a line begins with a '#' character, the text following it is used as the puzzle title and not included on the list. See the download files for examples.

Words that are too big for the grid or that can't be placed because no space is left are dropped from the list for that particular game instance. If this happens often, try using a larger grid, fewer words or shorter words.

Source and Download
Source: WordSearch.java
All files: WordSearch.zip