X-word v0.07 November 2000 ^^^^^^^^ The original zipped archive of !X-Word is free to distribute, i.e. with *no* modifications from how it is found on my website http://www.alant.demon.co.uk/ and at: http://www.xword.riscos.org.uk Note !X-word is *careware*. If you like using it send a fiver to 'Shelter' or go and give a pint of blood! It would be nice to get an e-mail from you too. mailto:alant@alant.demon.co.uk How to play ^^^^^^^^^^^ Place the tiles from your rack on the board to make words. Each letter has its own score. Make the best use of the bonus squares on the board. X-word looks and plays a bit like Scrabble, but in its supplied state, the letter scores, the numbers of each letter available, the board size and layout are all very different. All these things just happen to be configurable by the user. Playing X-word ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Click 'New Game' or select 'New Game' from the board's menu. Each player gets a turn to place tiles from their rack onto the board. By clicking the 'toggle size' icon on the rack's title bar you can see previous moves and what they scored. Drag with select to move a row of tiles, or with adjust to move just one. A row of tiles starts with the tile you are pointing at when you drag and includes tiles to the right or directly below. The rack menu lets you swap round the behaviour of select and adjust dragging. The same menu lets you change the dragged row's orientation, or you can use: * Horizontal - Up, Down, A, H * Vertical - Left, Right, D, V Double-click a blank space in the rack to randomly juggle your rack tiles. (Key: SPACE) Double-click the board to return all tiles to the rack. (Key: HOME or ESC) Click the 'End Turn' (or press RETURN) to finish your go. Click the picture of the letter bag to see what's left. Dragging tiles to the picture of the bag or the list of remaining letters to throw letters away. You can't play on the board and throw letters away. Only one or the other is allowed per turn. You can still return all your tiles back to the rack in the usual way. Options ^^^^^^^ * Tiles Select the typeface used by select-clicking the menu icon at the top of the screen. Toggle upper/lowercase with the 'Aa' icon. Alter the letter size and position on the tile using the arrow buttons. Click a letter's image with select to increase its frequency. Use adjust to decrease its frequency. Click menu to select the score from the score menu. Click 'Cancel' to forget all changes and return to the board. Click OK (press RETURN) to finish. * Board Change the board's size using the arrows in the lower window, or double-click in the main window to define the corner square. Change the bonus squares by dragging a square from the lower window on to the board. The board is horizontally and vertically symmetric (2m to the crystallographers out there) and fills in accordingly. Click 'Save' to save these setting permanently. Click OK (press RETURN) to finish. * Game PLAYERS Change the player's names as needed. Leave player's names blank to reduce the number of active players, though there must be at least two players. If a name ends in a digit, the player is a computer opponent and the background will turn gold. The player's ability is indicated by the final digit, from 0 (worst) to 9 (best). LEXICONS Click the button/icon to open the folder of lexicons. Either double-click a lexicon in the filer window or drag it to the X-Word window. You can get a text dump of a lexicon by dragging the button/icon to a filer window, this produces a textfile called 'Lexicon'. The house lexicon is a 'custom' lexicon, but this feature does not yet work. OPTIONS All-tile bonus Awarded to players that play all 7 tiles in one turn. Score unused tiles When the game ends, the points on the tiles in your rack are subtracted from your score. The player that clears their rack gets all those points added to his or her score. Flash Acorn's moves Helps to see where the computer opponent has placed its tiles. Hide Acorn's racks So that you can't see the computer's tiles when it's considering it's move. Hide opponent racks So that you can only see the score, and not the tiles, of player's who are not taking their turn. See in bag Allows you to click on the bag icon to sneak a peek at the remaining tiles. Click 'Save' to save these setting permanently. Click OK (press RETURN) to finish. Lexicons ^^^^^^^^ If you want to compile your own lexicons, look in the 'Xtras' folder and read how to use Hans Van Gink's extremely fast lexicon compiler. My thanks to him for writing this. Alternatively, send me either a pound coin taped into a cardboard sandwich, or a postcard with a foreign postmark and I'll e-mail you any one of: 220,000 words The so-called ENABLE word list 170,000 words From an out-of-print version of the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary (OSPD) 168,000 words From the TWL98 list (Tournament Word List) My current address is: Ground Floor Flat 15 Macroom Road Maida Vale London W9 3HY