St David's in the Fields download page

Download Crossword Puzzle

You may download our crossword puzzle for stand alone operation. By downloading it you agree to:

You will not use the crossword puzzle for commercial purposes, or resell it.
You will only use the crossword puzzle for either personal, educational or church related purposes.
You will not alter the program code.
You may alter the clue file if you so wish.
You will acknowledge St David's in the Fields as the source if you pass the program on to other people.

The puzzle is written in Java and should work on many different computers and operating systems. Here are download and set up instructions for 2 popular home computer systems:

Linux / Unix	MicroSoft
Create a directory on your machine to store the files:
`mkdir /crossword`	Either use "Windows Explorer" to do this, or get a MS-DOS prompt and type: `mkdir c:\crossword`
Download the CrossWord.jar and clues.txt files into this directory.
The command to start the program looks as follows, you may append a number to change the grid size. This number will be the number of blocks in either direction that the crossword contains. The minimum number is 8. If you specify the grid size, you may also specify an alternative clue file. eg: `java -jar CrossWord.jar java -jar CrossWord.jar 15 java -jar CrossWord.jar 12 myclues.txt` MicroSoft users might find the "javaw" command produces neater results than "java" - both commands work.
The above command lines are cumbersome, so you may want to make a script for quick and easy starting:
Use vi to create a file containing the command, called for example "crossword", then `chmod 555 crossword`	Right click on your Windows desktop, and select "new" and "shortcut", add the command line as shown above including any parameters to the "command line" entry. Press "next" and name your shortcut. Press "finish" right click on the new icon and select "properties" and change your start directory to be the one holding the files you've downloaded. You might also like to change your icon

Here are the files you need. Right click on the link and use the "save target as" option.

CrossWord.jar - The crossword program.
clues.txt - A file containing over 700 clues.
crossword.ico - An alternative icon for MicroSoft computers.

Altering the clue file

The clue file is a text file which may be edited using vi or notepad. Each clue occupies exactly one line. A clue may not share a line with another clue or be split over more than one line. The first line of the file contains a number, which is the count of clue lines. We'll refer to this number as "n". The next "n" lines will all be clues. Any line after the "n"th line will be ignored - it is effectively just a comment.

The clues should refer to single word answers. The answer is the first word on each line and it has no spaces on either side of it. The answer is followed by a tilde character "~". The tilde is followed by the clue. Do not include the length of the answer in your clue, as the program will calculate this for each clue displayed. Try to keep your longest words first in your clue file and shortest words last. This will prevent 2 word crosswords appearing on a large grid, eg 1 "man" down and 2 "law" across would give no opportunity to expand.