To create a word search puzzle from a list of words select New from the File menu and click on the Word Search button.
Select Create word search puzzle option on the Words menu to fit words into an existing grid. For example, you may wish to design a particular shaped puzzle, or seed the grid with a few words before filling in the rest.
The tabs along the top of the Create Word Search Puzzle window give you different ways to specify the words that you want to use:
Use Words
Type in some words to use or select a Theme List and click on Build Puzzle.
Use Word List
Select one of the main Word Lists to use and click on Build Puzzle. The word list should not be too large.
An example: say you wanted to create a 11x11 puzzle using the architecture word list. In the create vocabulary puzzle window you would select the Use Words tab and select 'Architecture' under Use theme word list. The theme list will load so that you can edit or add words if you like.
Click on the Build Puzzle button and the computer will automatically generate the puzzle, for example
To accept this puzzle press the Accept button. If you don't press Accept the computer will continue to search for puzzles that contain more of the given words. Press Accept whenever you are happy with the result produced.
If you don't like the puzzle, and the computer is not finding any more fills, you can press the Next button to randomly start generating a different new grid. You can press the < button to view previous fills, and Accept to decide which one you wish to use.
You can cancel the fill at any time by pressing the Cancel button. This will let you edit your word list and re-start the fill, or cancel entirely.
If you find that not enough of your words are used then try a bigger puzzle - change the puzzle size by clicking on the Size button. If the words fit easily and there is too much blank space you may also want to try decreasing the puzzle size. When you press the Size button there are options to increase or decrease the size by two squares, or change to any size you like. [This option is only available if the starting grid is blank.]
Now for some more details on the various options:
If you select the Use Words option you can save your list of words as a theme list by clicking on Save words. You can then use your words just like any of the other theme lists. To delete the words you've typed in press the Clear button. You can also use words in any plain text file - click on the Load Clues button.
If you select a Theme List to use you can edit or add words to the list. Click the Save changes button if you want these changes to be automatically saved in the Theme List.
Click the Hidden word/phrase to specify a hidden word to use when making the puzzle. If this option is not used squares that are not part of any word are filled with random letters from the alphabet. After creating the puzzle select Hidden words (unused squares) on the Words menu to view or replace the hidden word/phrase.
Click the Options tab at the top of the Create Word Search Puzzle window.
Word placement
Words can go across or down in the grid. Check the Diagonal box to also allow them to run diagonally, and the Backwards box to allow words to be placed backwards. If you'd like all the words to intersect each other select the Must be linked, otherwise they are placed randomly anywhere in the grid. Checking Allow overlaps will allow a sequence of letters to be used by two words in the same direction, otherwise they can only share an end or start letter.
The Avoid word and sub-word option will prevent use of both a word and a phrase where the word appears in the phrase. For example, if the list containts Britain and Great Britain, with this option turned on the filler will only ever use one, not both. Use the Avoid duplicate substrings option to avoid duplicating more general classes of similar entries (for example 'Freeboarding' and 'Surfboard' have the five-letter substring 'board' in common; using this option with a length of five or fewer would ensure that only one of these two words is used).
The Avoid accidental repeats option checks that any key word only appears once in the grid. Note that if you have many short words this can significantly reduce the number of words that will fit.
Alphabet
Some squares in the grid will probably not be part of any word. These squares are filled with random letters from the alphabet. You can change the alphabet here if you are making a non-English puzzle. If you wish to use a particular set of letters (word or phase), you can use the Hidden Words option on the words menu after building the puzzle with random letters.
Number of words
Change the Maximum number of words to use to put a limit on the number of words fit in the grid.
Prevent accidental words
When placing words into the grid some additional words may accidentally be formed by adjacent letters. Avoiding all of these is very difficult, however you may wish to avoid vulgar or offensive words. Selecting the Check no accidental words from blacklist box will prevent use of any words in your words blacklist. Select the Use list as blacklist box to instead check against a given main word list with scores below the Max score to use value chosen. The default maximum of score of 10 will avoid all the vulgar and offensive words in the default word list. Increasing the maximum score will avoid more words, but doing this may make it harder to fit words into the grid.