Abstract
The crossword puzzle is a classic pastime that is well-known all over the world. We consider the crossword manufacturing process in more detail, investigating a two-step approach, first generating a mask, which is an empty crossword puzzle skeleton, and then filling the mask with words from a given dictionary to obtain a valid crossword. We show that the whole manufacturing process is NP-complete, and in particular also the second step of the two-step manufacturing, thus reproving in part a result of Lewis and Papadimitriou mentioned in Garey and Johnson’s monograph [M. R. Garey and D. S. Johnson. Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1979.] but now under real world crossword puzzle conditions. Moreover, we show how to generate high-quality masks via a memetic algorithm, which is used and tested in an industrial manufacturing environment, leading to very good results.
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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Engel, J., Holzer, M., Ruepp, O., Sehnke, F. (2012). On Computer Integrated Rationalized Crossword Puzzle Manufacturing. In: Kranakis, E., Krizanc, D., Luccio, F. (eds) Fun with Algorithms. FUN 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7288. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30347-0_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30347-0_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-30346-3
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