This is my normal set-up for working with my Solver which is shown here in the lower left corner.
Above it is a NotePad file for keeping both general notes at the top, and a scratch area below that.
Also obviously the Win10 version of Wordament showing a puzzle from an Adventure Trail.
It's not like I can make one click and the puzzle is automagically filled in and completed. That's for two reasons : The solver has to know something about the puzzle to be solved, and there is a several step procedure for reaching the gold standard solution we are striving for.
There are three stars (objectives) that must be met for a complete solution, and the first objective we need to consider is the one on the left which always asks for X number of short words to be entered.
You should realize immediately that if we can make as many of these short words also of the type required by the right star, we can get double duty from our short words and reach a solution with the fewest words. So the first thing we want to do ( in the case of this puzzle) is to find all the four letter st digram words in our dictionary file.
First we need to put the puzzle in a form easy to enter in Solver and I show that in the scratch pad.
All the letters from the tiles in a sequence with a * for any special tile. We enter this in the text field just below the menu bar and then use a menu item to enter it into the Solver.
We click on Letters to enter the tiles letters into the Solver, and the letters are replaced by the nominal tile values for these letters which we can edit if need be before entering them in the Solver by clicking on Values. We need to do this so the solver can give us the scores for each of its suggested words. The nominal value for the * tile will be zero which we need to edit to the value given in the puzzle (In this case, 8).
But we aren't done yet! After we've edited the tile values if necessary and clicked on Values under the Menu tab, we still have to tell the solver what kind of puzzle it is (if its not a Theme or Long Word puzzle in which case we can skip the next step). So the text field goes blank after we click on Values, and we then enter the letters on the * tile (in this case ST) and click on the Digram menu tab and the Solver knows everything it needs to give us some words. Notice that the tile values we entered are confirmed in the Status Bar at the bottom. This is true of everything we enter.
We need to step back for a second and consider that we might click on a "Go" button and get 30, 40, 80, or even 100 words of all lengths from 3 characters to 8 characters filling the text area. What a mess! Especially when right now we are only concerned about 4 letter words containing ST and those with the highest word value in particular. So, wouldn't it be nice if we could just ask for words of a single length sorted in value from high to low? You got it!
BUT there is a necessary quirk we need to discuss. When we enter a 4 letter word in Wordament using a digram tile, we actually enter (in some order) two letters plus the digram tile. Same is true with the solver [ Actually I just realized I should change the tabs under Main to read 3 Tiles, 4 Tiles instead of 3 Letters, 4 Letters ] if we want 4 letter words, then we can select the 3 TILE menu tab which will give us what we want. Follow that? Any way, all I need to do is now click on "3 Letters" [Think 3 tiles] to get the following output.
In much less time than a blink of the eye, we see all the words in the Common dictionary that meet our specification including the square the word starts in (in Hex i.e. A = 10) plus the word value. Also note in the Status Bar the number {3} reminds us we clicked on 3 Tiles to get here and that there were 5 words returned (which is helpful when there are like 30 words and the scroll bars appear) and also it's easy to get confused about Tile number and Word length and which did we click to get here.
So, anyways, we're in luck! We only needed three short words containing ST and we got five, so we pick the highest scoring three : stew, west, & best, and these also will count towards the five we need to complete the star requirement on the right. But we want to look for longer and higher scoring words for the remaining two words to meet that and also the middle star requirement.
The procedure is to cut and paste the words we want from the Solver Text Area to the Note Pad Scratch area so that before we enter anything into Wordament we have a complete optimized set of words to use.
You can surmise how to use the other Menu items such as Prefix, Suffix, Either/Or, and Corner. This is a Quick Tour and not a User's Manual.
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