On Aug 10, 2007, at 1:04 PM, Lloyd Linklater wrote:

> Aric Campbell wrote:
>
>> I had thought of using the code below to get every possible  
>> combination
>> and, even though it contains duplicate letters in the combinations it
>> generates, I was going to prune those out. The problem is that it  
>> would
>> take a very considerable number of years before the program finishes.
>> Anyone know of an algorithm that I could use to generate the
>> possibilities in a more timely manner?
>
>
> Well, you could try more than just the most common letters strategy.
> What you really want to do is reduce the number of possibilities.   
> There
> are a limited number of legitimate one and two character words.  You
> could start with them and see if things add up elsewhere with those
> letters assigned.
>
> Check the recent Ruby puzzle for finding crosswords.
> http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz132.html

We had an older quiz that was even closer to this problem:

http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz13.html

James Edward Gray II