Select Fill Grid... from the Words menu to bring up the Fill Grid dialog box with options for filling in the word slots in a grid. If you just want to fill the grid using the default options use the AutoFill command.
An example
If you had a crossword that looked like this:
you could place the cursor next to the 'E' in 'STICKER', and invoke AutoFill or Fill Grid, to get a complete crossword. For example
You can also fill in a totally blank grid, but you must finish designing the pattern of blocks before using Fill Grid (see the edit topic for help with this, or use a Grid Library). If you want to let the program design the grid and use just a short list of words then use the Create vocabulary puzzle feature instead.
See The Professional Grid Filler topic for details of advanced options and manual word selection.
During the fill
Once you have set the options press the Fill button, and the fill will begin. You can cancel at any time by pressing the Cancel button, or stop the fill, keeping the filled letters, by pressing Stop.
If a fill seems to get stuck in one part of the grid, or you don’t like a letter that has been used, you can click the Refill button (or Refill from beginning on the drop-down menu) to start the fill again from the beginning with a different random start word.
The Refill button drop-down menu also has other options. Select Refill with new options to cancel the fill and change the options for the fill.
When the fill is completed
Once the fill is complete you can either press the Accept button to accept the fill, Cancel to abandon the fill, or click on the Refillbutton (or one of the drop-down options) to refill. Click the Words used button to show the words used window with a list of all the words in the grid and give you an option to restart the fill from/without a specific word. Select the Check similar words menu item on the drop-down menu to analyse the words in the grid for repeated sequences of letters. This is useful if you want to avoid using two words that are similar but not identical.
Use the Previous and Next arrow buttons to move between successive fills. Pressing the Next button will find the next possible fill. With many grids this will mean just changing the last few words used. However, if you are filling a tight corner this can be useful to quickly view all the possibilities. If you have created several fills, either by pressing the Next button or by refilling parts of the grid you can view previous fills by pressing the previous arrow button. Select Delete fill from the drop-down menu if you don’t like the current fill and want to delete it. The fill is deleted and the next fill that has already been found will be shown.
The Pro Grid filler also has advanced options for non-stop filling: finding the best-scoring set of possible fills. Select these options from the non-stop filling menu option, and then navigate the possible fills using the arrow buttons as above.
You can use the left and right cursor keys to quickly move between fills. If you hold down the Ctrl key at the same time the current fill will be deleted and the next or previous fill will be shown.
Change the following options in the Fill Grid window to customize the filling process and set the default settings for AutoFill.
Base word list
Select the word list that you want to use in the Word List to use list box. The words in this list that will be used for filling the grid (but see 'using theme words' below).
Optimization
Each of the words in a word list has an associated score. By using the optimization options you can vary the number of 'good' and 'bad' words filled into the crossword. Weak optimization is quite fast, and will give you a significantly higher average score than using no optimization. Strong optimization will give you a significantly higher average score than weak optimization if your word list contains only a few highly scored words. Set optimization to Theme Words if you want to create a thematic crossword. Select Fill reliability if you have a particularly hard grid to fill. This makes the fill progress more slowly, but with difficult grids the fill may finish sooner that with the other optimization options.
Change the Minimum word score setting to avoid words with scores less than this score. This allows you to avoid obscure words altogether if you want to. (see the topic on word scores for more information).
Using theme words
The grid filler can try to maximize the number of theme words that are filled into a grid. Set the Optimization option to Theme Words and select a Theme List or main word list to use as a theme.
The filling program will use as many of the theme words as it can, but when it can't use a theme word it uses a word from the Word List to use. This is a good way of creating a themed crossword when the theme word list contains too few words to fill the grid directly. Also see the fit theme words feature if instead you want to select and use a grid pattern that will fit all of a short list of theme words.
Select Weak theme only to use fewer of the theme words if you want only a few theme words.
Pangrammatic fill
Select this option to ensure that the filled grid contains every letter of the alphabet. The alphabet used is set in the Clue Properties dialog box. The filler will only use words containing letters of the alphabet, and each letter will appear at least once in the completed grid.
Save as settings for AutoFill
Select this option to save your options as those used for AutoFill and as the default settings for the next time you use Fill Grid. Fill settings are stored with each puzzle. You can then save the puzzle as a template if you want to use your settings for crosswords you create in the future.
For maximum control over which words are used in the grid you may prefer to use AutoFind repeatedly, and choose exactly which word you want in each word slot yourself, or you if you have the Professional Grid Filling module you can select Manual word selection to have complete control over which words are used.
