Select Manual word selection when you fill a grid to manually choose each word to be used. (This is only available with the Professional Grid Filling module, and can also be accessed using the drop-down menu from the AutoFill button on the main toolbar). Using this feature you have complete control over which words will be used by the grid filler. This is much better than inserting words by hand (using Find Word, say) since you can take advantage of the grid filler’s powerful look-ahead to reduce the number of times you have to replace words you’ve already put in the grid. The filling engine will automatically determine a good filling sequence for you, however you can click in the grid to re-direct the fill if you want to fill a particular slot next.
For each word slot, the filler will show the various words that will fit. It will also start checking them for consistency with intersecting words, whether they lead to forced words in other slots, and whether a full fill is possible or not. Once an initial fast check is completed, the word is marked with a red check mark. If the filler has determined that a full fill is possible using the word, the check mark changes to green; this may take a bit longer, especially on hard-to-fill grids. Words that lead to impossible fills are removed from the list as soon as this is determined.
The Word Selection window
The Word Selection window has three pages. Click on the tabs at the top to change the page. You can use the buttons at the bottom to Cancel the fill, Stop the fill or make the fill Start Over from the first word slot. Click the Auto pick button if you want the filler to continue by choosing words automatically. You can press the button again to revert to manual word selection. When the fill is complete you can use any of the buttons on the main toolbar exactly as when using Fill Grid with the automatic word selection.
The Word selection page
On the Word selection page you get a list of all the words that will fit in the current word slot. Whilst you are viewing the words the filler performs a background analysis of the words and removes ones which are no good (i.e. would make it impossible to fill nearby word slots). At any time you can select a word and press the Use Word button to insert the word into the grid and move on to the next word slot. When the background check is complete the header of the word column says “all checked”
As the background analysis finds Forced Words in other word slot, it shows them in the box at the bottom. These words are also shown in the grid. Just change the selected word to view the forced words of each word. The score of the forced words is listed in brackets after each word. Not all the words listed will necessarily have the same number of forced words - in many cases there will be some choice in the nearby words. Click the >> button to show the choices for nearby words. Note that the choices listed are the most choice you will ever get. It’s quite likely that by the time you come to chose one of the words the number of possibilities will be rather less. You can delete a forced word by selecting it, right-clicking and selecting the option from the popup menu.
To view clues in the current clue database click the Show clues box. Clues available for the selected word will be shown in the bottom panel. Double-click on a clue to use it with the selected word.
If you don’t like any of the listed words and want to go back and replace the previous word press the Back button. If there is a word listed which you don’t like and want to remove from the word list then select the word and press the Delete word button (you will be prompted if you want to permanently delete the word from the word list once the fill is complete). To look up a word in a dictionary press the Lookup button (you can also select one of the forced words to look that up instead). This will pop up a menu listing all the installed dictionaries; just click on one of them. Click the More button if you want to see more words that will fit in the word slot.
Next to each possible word is listed a score and fill score in separate columns.
The Score is just the score of the word plus the score of any words that will have no remaining intersections after this word slot is filled. For example, if one of the words is HAPPY and the Y would make the last letter in the intersecting word PLAY then the score would be the sum of the word scores of HAPPY and PLAY. The possible words are listed in order of the total score.
Before the background analysis the Fill Score is just some ad hoc measure of how easy the word would make the remaining fill. After the background analysis the Fill Score is based on a combination of two measures. Most of the score is a sum of the maximum word scores available in the intersecting word slots if the word were used. The remaining part of the score is a measure of how easy the word would make the remaining fill. So generally the higher the Fill Score the better. When the background analysis is complete you can resort the words in score and then fill score order by clicking on the score column header (or select the option on the Options tab to resort automatically). Note the fill score does not account for word slots outside the immediately-intersecting region.
The Fill sequence page
Click on the Fill sequence tab to view a list of all the words that have been used so far.
If you decide half way though a fill that you need to go back and change an earlier word you can select it in the Fill sequence list and press the Refill from button. This will undo all the words back to the selected word and offer you the alternatives available for that word.
The Options page
Click on the Options tab to customize aspects of the manual filling process.
Change the Selected background color to change the color of the highlight of the word slot in the grid that is currently being filled.
Check the Resort words on completion of background check box to automatically resort the possible words once the filler has determined a more accurate Fill score for all of them. The words will be resorted firstly by score, then by Fill score, and then alphabetically.
Sometimes when you come to fill a word slot there is only one possible word that will fit. Change the Automatically insert single words option to control whether the filler will automatically insert single words without prompting.
Click the Save button to save your settings to be used every time you use Manual word selection.
The font used for displaying the words can be changed under Preferences.
Deleting words and changing scores
If you see a word that has a wrong score or should be deleted, you can right-click and select Change word score. # You can also change the score in multiple lists by selecting Change score in.. and selecting the lists that you want to change.
To delete a word, press Delete or click the Delete button as explained above. To delete a word from multiple lists, select Delete from... from the Delete button's drop-down menu.