Creating a new WordFind puzzle is easy, just follow these simple steps...
Step 1: Plan your puzzle
Think about how much space you have on your site for the puzzle. Choose or create a graphic background, to either stretch or tile. Plan what other text and images you want to use.Step 2: Choose a topic and make a list of words
Choose a topic or theme for the puzzle, and then choose the words. Between 5 and 20 is a good number depending how hard you want ot to be.
Be careful of words that contain other words, e.g. "Jellyfish" and "Fish". Be careful of very short words - they are hard to find. Be careful of very long words - they are hard to fit. You can include spaces in the clues, but these are ignored in the puzzle, so "King Henry" would appear as "KINGHENRY".
Step 3: Create the puzzle file
Start with an existing puzzle file, such as one of the samples, and replace the list with your list. Give it a new id, and save the file with a different name. You may want to change the title, the number of columns and rows, the background image, and other features.
For a more detailed description read the WordFind Puzzles: Basic Editing article.
Step 4: Test!
It's important to test your puzzle. The program is pretty good at fitting words into the grid (but probably not as good as a person), but if you have a lot of words and/or a small grid the program might not be able to fit them all in.
If you get messages saying that the words do not fit try making the grid larger, or using shorter or fewer words.
More Information
Other articles...
- WordFind Puzzles: Basic Editing - A simple tutorial on how to create and edit a new puzzle.
- WordFind: Puzzles and Templates - An introduction to Puzzles and Templates.
- WordFind: Parts of the Template - A more detailed look at Template files.
- WordFind: Parts of the Puzzle - A more detailed look at Puzzle files.
- WordFind: Creating a High Score table.
- Using XML - The basics of XML, and how it is used in our puzzles.
There's a lot more you can do in terms of configuring, and changing the appearance of the puzzles. We'll try to cover these advanced topics soon, but in the meantime if you have any questions, please contact us.
