Codeword Solving Tool
However, sometimes if you get completely stuck on a puzzle, then you might want some outside help.
There are various tools that can help you do this online - one of the most useful is a word look-up tool where you can enter the numbers you see for a word in the grid and the tool will tell you how many words fit that pattern. For those learning to solve codewords, this can be surprisingly instructive and show you which sort of letter patterns tend to have more or less words that fit them.
For instance, there are some letter patterns that are actually unique and there is only one word that fits them - which is not immediately apparent. And oftentimes there are very few - surprisingly few - words that fit a certain pattern. At some point it is instructive for every codeword solver to use one of these tools and enter each run one-by-one from the start grid, just to get a feel for how many words fit each position from the starting grid.
There are also some codeword tools online that will solve the entire puzzle - as long as the puzzle uses words that are in the solver's dictionary of course - and one of these is available at the following location: http://www.clarity-media.co.uk/codeword-solver.php
If you do use a full solver like the one mentioned above, then try to only use it very sparingly, and also learn as much as possible from the result it gives, if it solves the puzzle. Note that most online codeword solvers only contain dictionary words, so puzzles that use things like proper nouns such as place names, brands and more besides, or use words with spaces or hyphenation in, will not be solved by these tools.
In summary, using codeword solving tools can be instructive, particularly if use a single word solver - try to use a whole puzzle solver as a last resort only!
Date written: 18 Mar 2015
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