Acrostic Assistant

HOW TO USE ACROSTIC ASSISTANT

What This Program Does

Acrostic Assistant helps you construct acrostic puzzles. In an acrostic, a set of words (the answers) use up every letter of a quotation exactly once. The first letter of each answer word spells out the acrostic (typically an author's name or a title). This program tracks your remaining letters, suggests valid words, and can automatically find the last few words when you're nearly done.

Setup

1. Load a wordlist. Click SELECT WORDLIST and choose a plain-text file with one word per line. Words shorter than 5 letters or longer than 16 letters are ignored. The wordlist name will appear next to the button once loaded.
2. Enter the quotation. Type or paste the full quotation text into the QUOTATION box. Punctuation and spaces are ignored; only letters count.
3. Enter the acrostic. Type the acrostic string (e.g. an author's name) into the ACROSTIC field. Each letter will become the required first letter of one answer word.
4. Click START / RESET. This creates one answer row per acrostic letter. If the quotation doesn't contain enough letters to cover the acrostic, an error is shown. START / RESET also clears all previous answers and results if you're starting over.

Filling In Answers

1. Click a letter button (e.g. the button labeled H) to select that slot. The POSSIBLE WORDS panel on the right will update to show every word in the wordlist that starts with that letter and fits within the remaining letter pool.
2. Click any word in the POSSIBLE WORDS list to place it in that slot automatically.
3. Or type a word directly into the answer field. The word must start with the correct acrostic letter, and its letters must be available in the remaining pool.
4. The REMAINING display always shows which letters are still unused (not counting the committed acrostic first letters). Errors are highlighted in red.
5. When all letters are exactly used up, a green SUCCESS message appears and a COPY ANSWERS TO CLIPBOARD button is shown.

Possible Words Panel

Words are grouped by length (longest first) and filtered to only those that fit the current letter pool. Two guidance lines appear above the list:

• Line 1: Total letters remaining (including acrostic first letters) and the floor of the average word length still needed.
• Line 2: The current vowel percentage of the unused pool, and an OVERLOADED list of letters that are disproportionately abundant.

Bold words are recommended choices: if chosen, they would leave the remaining pool between 33% and 50% vowels and they contain every letter on the OVERLOADED list, helping to keep the pool balanced as you go.

The OVERLOADED list shows up to 3 consonants that each make up 9% or more of the pool, plus the most frequent vowel if it outnumbers the second most frequent vowel by 3 or more.

Automatic Fill (FILL REMAINING)

When 5 or fewer answer slots are empty, a FILL REMAINING button appears. Clicking it runs a two-phase search to find complete solutions automatically.

• Phase 1 (up to 3 minutes): searches for all ways to fill the empty slots exactly. Solutions are displayed as they are found, with the acrostic letter and word for each slot shown.
• Phase 2 (up to 30 seconds per filled word): if fewer than 100 solutions were found, the solver tries removing each already-filled word one at a time and searching for N+1 words to fill those slots. Solutions found this way show which word was removed and replaced, so you can see exactly what needs to change.
• The search stops when 100 solutions have been found, or time runs out.
• Click CANCEL at any time to stop the search early. The solutions found so far remain displayed.
• A running count of candidates examined is shown while the search runs.

Tips

• Work from the rarest letters first. If the pool contains only 1 or 2 of an unusual letter (like Q, J, X, or Z), fill those slots early so those letters don't strand you at the end.
• Keep an eye on the vowel percentage. Letting it drift above 50% or below 33% makes the final words hard to find. Choosing bold words keeps the pool healthy.
• If the OVERLOADED list shows letters, prioritize words that contain those letters to prevent them from piling up.
• If FILL REMAINING finds no solutions in Phase 1, Phase 2 will automatically try relaxing one word at a time. If Phase 2 also finds nothing, consider replacing one of your earlier words manually and trying again.
• The quotation text box hint (rows = ~ 65/130/200/250 letters) indicates roughly how many letters a 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-row quotation contains, which can help you gauge puzzle size.