SCRAB does not have any knowledge of words; it only looks for plays.
The user must verify that all the words created by his play are words.
SCRAB is very versatile at SCANNING for plays, however.
The player types just the word, and SCRAB will find all possible plays.
Exception : non-intersecting moves require the row/column/direction.
You can force a wildcard play by typing "*" (eg, "BLEN*"), or you can
let SCRAB do it all by typing "BLEND". Note that if there happen to
be any possible plays of BLEND without the wildcard, the latter entry
will find them as well !
Similiarly, if the player sees that he will be attaching BLEND to the
B of a previous play, then he may type "bLEND" to force SCRAB there,
or he may again find other possible plays by typing "BLEND".
In general, lower case letters must already be on the board, whereas
upper case letters represent board letters, rack, or rack wildcards.
In general, the tradeoff for letting SCRAB do all the checking is :
SCRAB will spend more time checking, and will turn up more cases where
the extra (cross-)words formed are not necessarily legal words.
(2) Searching Algorithm.
Any word may be entered (up to 15 letters), which contains upper case
alphabetics, lower case alphabetics, or asterisks (*).
Also, if desired, the player may enter the row/column/direction of play.
If these position parameters are entered, then SCRAB will only consider
that one play position (it may still be illegal, however).
If no position parameters are entered, then all intersecting play
positions are considered (non-intersecting plays require parameters).
An exception is the very first play of a game : if no parameters are
entered, then every possible play (covering the center) is considered.
SCRAB finds every intersecting play possible which obeys these rules :
Any "*" must correspond to a wildcard in the player's rack.
Any lower case alphabetics must match letters already on the board.
Any upper case alphabetics may match rack letters, board letters, or
(only if necessary) rack wildcards.
In general, it is easiest to simply type the whole word in upper case,
and let SCRAB do all the searching for you. You may find that your
wildcard really wasn't necessary for the play (SCRAB determines this),
or that there were other (maybe higher-score) plays for the same word.
Only non-intersecting plays make any demands on the user.
(3) Notes on program execution.
A bell will sound whenever an illegal input occurs.
Although intersecting plays are fairly easy to enter, non-intersecting
plays can only be entered by giving the row,column,direction.
SCRAB requires no SBR subroutines (try to keep it this way).
