README for verbum (jumble, xword) If you have the skill to play word games then do so, but if not, cheat! Jumble is about unscrambling words that have their letters shuffled out of order. There has been a comic strip called Jumble in various Australian newspapers over the years, most recently MX in Melbourne, recently defunct. The strip originated in USA and so uses Webster dictionary spelling. On the other hand the available cross word puzzles in the Australian press are based on Oxford/Maquarie dictionary spelling. xword is intended to assist with solving said crosswords. Example `xword .b....ly` yields: abjectly abruptly absently absurdly obtusely Supporting both jumble and xword is a dictionary called wordlist. This list is actually a merge of American and British English, all in lowercase only. Thus we have: color colour colorado but NOT colourado. Such dictionary is installed at /usr/local/share/jumble/wordlist following `sudo make install` and then subsequently at $HOME/.config/jumble/wordlist on first run of `jumble ...` NB `xword` requires wordlist to be in that location but has no firstrun capability. You must run `jumble something` before using xword. NB wordlist is sorted strictly L-R bitwise and jumble will fail if you sort this file in any of the usual default locales which normally generate output in some kind of library order. xword is not so fussy. If you want to add 'phthalate' to the dictionary you could: `echo phthalate >> $HOME/.config/jumble/wordlist` but before you sort: LC_ALL=C # sort is now bitwise L-R `sort -u $HOME/.config/jumble/wordlist > tmpfil` # word already there? `mv tmpfil $HOME/.config/jumble/wordlist` LC_ALL= # restore default locale And no, 'phthalate' is not in wordlist as installed. I will add a program `addword word` to save all of this effort. NB I have imposed no arbitrary limit on the size of the word you input to `jumble` but on my machine a 12 letter dictionary word took just over 4 minutes to return so I'd consider that a practical limit. When I first wrote jumble the limit was iirc 9 letters, maybe 10. The program, apart from adding firstrun capability and tweaking to stop GCC fretting is as it was when first written.