heuristic:
(1) from the Greek, eureka! supposedly exclaimed by Archimedes; enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.
"A ‘hands-on’ or interactive heuristic approach to learning". (That's what this
exercise is about!) See the start of the Computing dictionary for more information and definitions when you start
a new game...
Instructions to play the human computer-aided game
- Adapt your algorithm to take advantage of the 'Scanner' button, which helps with
pattern matching and the 'Reduce Dictionary' button which reduces the size of
the dictionary by including only relevant words, initially of the right length...
- Press 'Scanner' after you have started the game and have guessed a few letters correctly.
The scanner will transform the dictionary words into a format that makes it easier to match your
template against words in the dictionary. You do this by using the scroll bar to scroll down the page
through the reformatted Computing dictionary.
- Press 'Reduce Dictionary' when you want to enlist the help of the computer to remove from the Computing dictionary all
the words which do not have the required number of letters in the random word. You are then operating on a smaller
'current dictionary' of words of the right length.
- There will be other opportunities to reduce the size of the 'current dictionary' by including only those words
that match the template. (To be implemented)