Question 1

How do I filter out certain words in a word search puzzle

Accepted Answer

Welcome to the tutorial on filtering out words in Puzzle Maker Pro - Word Search. The techniques used in this tutorial apply to all versions of Puzzle Maker Pro Word Search.

Because Puzzle Maker Pro - Word Search uses random filler letters, sometimes it's possible that some unwanted words show up in a tutorial. Words that are inappropriate, or that you don't want in here for any other reason.

Because of this, there is a special button under the advanced tab where you can input a Filtered Words List. You can simply prepare a list of words in your text editor of choice, save these as a .txt file, and select the file.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/29NcqY5E5c/Word%20Search%20Filtered%20Words%20List.jpg (Word Search Filtered Words List)

Select the "Use Filtered Words List" checkbox, and put in your .txt file.

The algorithm will take extra care that these words will not appear in your puzzle.

Variation 1 Step 1 - Specify which letters to remove

On the 'Advanced' tab for Word Search Puzzle Settings, you can find an option 'Remove Other'. Although originally intended to remove certain symbols in other languages, such as ', `, and - in French words and word combinations, you can also use this setting to create Missing Vowel puzzles.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/7fxuVbZOfJ/Word%20Search%20-%20Hidden%20Vowels%201.png (Word Search - Hidden Vowels 1.png)

In the screenshot you can see that we chose to remove A, E, I, O, U and Y. Y isn't considered a vowel in all languages, but for this example it is.

By its nature, missing vowel word search puzzles will be very compact, since all the words will be a lot shorter and easier to connect to other words.

Warning: There are quite a few words that will result in just a single letter if you remove the vowels, such as 'age', 'ago', 'aid', 'aide', 'no', 'any', or two letters , like 'all', 'ally'. Especially the single letter results will make the puzzle hard or impossible to solve, since a single 'g' or 'n' could also be randomly chosen for an empty square. Please make sure that you check your word list and the resulting puzzle to verify that it's the puzzle you want to publish.

Variation 1 Step 2 - Fill the Empty Squares

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/JRFwKRSPyq/Word%20Search%20-%20Hidden%20Vowels%202.png (Word Search - Hidden Vowels 2.png)

On the 'Solution' tab you can specify which letters you want to use for the empty squares, in the 'Hidden Word' section. It makes sense to remove the vowels from this list as well.

Variation 2

In this variation, empty spaces are left over where vowels should go. For this we select the "Hide Vowels" option. As with variation 1, you can choose what you consider a vowel, as this could be different depending on your language.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/0EADBJUkkX/Puzzle%20maker%20word%20search%20no%20vowels.jpg (Puzzle maker word search no vowels)

Now, in the image above you still see the vowels, because we are looking at the solution. However, if we turn off "Preview Solution" in the bottom right of the screen, we see that all vowels have been removed, leaving only a blank space.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/FXZKRvfDy6/No%20vowels%20word%20search.jpg (No vowels word search)

How do I filter out certain words in a word search puzzle

How Can I Create Missing Vowel Puzzles with Puzzle Maker Pro - Word Search?

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