Words Differing by 1 Letter

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Problem Description

This program implements a word search for word which differ from a given word by a single letter.

Background & Techniques

Here is is the Mensa Calendar puzzle which prompted today's program. My language-oriented, crossword-addicted, wife solved it in less than 10 minutes. I got two of the three words in the line 2 puzzle in 10 minutes; then decided it was programming time!

The program will load our "Full" dictionary when the program  starts, then, when a word is entered and the Search button clicked, all dictionary words which differ from the input word by one letter will be displayed. One must still find the three synonym words from each line, but I could handle that.

The program and the dictionary are included in the executable zip file download available below.
 

Programmer's Notes:

This simple program required less than 30 lines of programmer written lines of code to implement the solution..  A KeyPress event exit makes sure that the user entered word is in capital letters.  The Search button sequentially retrieves all of the dictionary words of the same length as the input word.  Each word retrieved is converted to all capitals, compared letter by letter with the input word and differences are counted.  If the difference count = 1 after all letters have been compared, the word is added to the display list in Memo2. 

Running/Exploring the Program 

bulletDownload  executable
bulletDownload source  (Note: the UDict dictionary unit and the Full.dict dictionary reside in our library zip file of commonly used units.  Library file DFFVLIB13 or later will be required to recompile this program )
bulletDownload current library file (DFFLibV15) .

 

Suggestions for Further Explorations

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Original:  March 12, 2014

Modified:  May 15, 2018

 
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