subanagram

subanagram, a Fortran90 code which creates a list of subanagrams of a master word; the user can require that the subanagrams be at least a given number of letters in length.

If a letter occurs more than once in the master word, it may appear up to that number of times in the subanagram.

For instance, given the minimum length requirement of 4 letters, and the master word sprite, there are as many as 85 subanagrams, alphabetically listed as:

        ires
        pert
        pest
        pets
        pier
        piers
        pies
        ...(more)...
        tires
        tries
        trip
        tripe
        trips
      

The program opens a large "dictionary file" containing a list of words, and checks whether any word in the file matches the length requirement, and is a subanagram of the master word.

Every word list has peculiarities, that is, it includes words that a user may reject, and it omits words that a user might have accepted. Hence the output of this program is only a reasonable estimate of the subanagrams of a given word; a user must examine the list carefully and may find many words that need to be deleted, and may think of others that could be added.

Textropolis is an iPhone application which presents you with the name of a city and asks for as many words as you can form, using only the letters in the city name. It also wants the words to be at least 4 letters long. This program can be used to generate a list of candidate words for Textropolis's puzzles. However, Textropolis's dictionary file is quite different from the one used by this program, so many words found by this program are rejected, and Textropolis allows some words unknown to the dictionary file used by this program.

Dedication:

This program is dedicated to Vivian Benton.

Usage:

subanagram min_length master_word

• min_length is the minimum length (number of letters) allowed in any subanagram of the master word; 3, 4 or 5 are typical values;
• master_word is the master word, which doesn't actually have to be a word, but which should contain no blanks.

Licensing:

The information on this web page is distributed under the MIT license.

Languages:

subanagram is available in a Fortran90 version.

Related Data and Programs:

subanagram_test

anagram, a C++ code which computes anagrams of a word or phrase.

ladders, a C code which seeks to transform one five letter word into another, by changing one letter at a time, using only legitimate English words. This puzzle was invented by Lewis Carroll, who called it "Doublets", but it is also known as "Word Ladders" or "Word Gold". The program is by Donald Knuth.

puzzles, a Fortran90 code which solves several puzzles.

words, a dataset directory which contains lists of words.

wordsnake, a Fortran90 code which rearranges a list of words so that they have maximum overlap;

Source Code:

• subanagram.f90, the source code.
• subanagram.sh, compiles the source code.