Exercise 4

In this exercise you will write code to solve the familiar WordSearch puzzle. We saw one of these in the supplement to Module 2:

     n o h t y p s
     m i a r y c c
     l l e k s a h
     r u b y v m e
     e h h a l l m
     p c j n i c e
     r e e k b i p

Here, you see the words "ruby" and "java" appear in the puzzle. Whereas the code shown in the Module-2 supplement only looks for words (like "ruby" above) that read left to right horizontally, the general WordSearch puzzle also allows:

words that read backwards horizontally,
words that read upwards or downwards vertically,
words that read up or down a diagonal (like "java" above) in any of the four diagonal directions.

Thus, you will write code to search for a given set of words in a general puzzle and print out their positions.

To get started:

Download WordSearchPuzzle.java.
Write all your code in this file.

Things to note:

You are free to use additional methods. For example, it might help to have a method that can move along in any direction in small steps, that you can then use for each direction.

For the example in WordSearchPuzzle.java, you should print out something like:

"class" found at [6,0] going diagonally right and up
"else" found at [4,3] going diagonally right and down
"int" found at [7,7] going diagonally right and up
"return" found at [8,6] going upwards
"static" found at [3,3] going diagonally right and down
"void" found at [9,7] going upwards
"while" found at [7,2] going left to right

Submission:

As usual, submit your file WordSearchPuzzle.java using these submission instructions.

What else is due:

Read through the supplemental material for Module 3 and try to do the exercises therein. Do NOT submit these exercises.