[QUOTE=fivemack]
OLD
AIR
KEY
[/QUOTE]

Thanks. This was the type of crossword I was looking for.
Great that you wrote a program to get it with
You may feel free to share the best 10 or so appropriate ones with everyone else!

Once again, Thanks for your input, I may use this type of crosswords for other purposes
as well as possibly an avatar for scrabble tournament, or as well as an avatar for this forum
as well as possibly

By sharing interesting ones with everyone else as well as possibly

4x4 without repeated letters looks significantly harder.

If you allow repeats, there are lots; the perfect squares are more common

[code]
MANY LAST THAT
AREA AREA HERE
NEAR SEEN ARMS
YARD TANK TEST
[/code]

You have to go to slightly less common words to get eight different ones

[code]
HOLD COME BLOW
AREA AREA LINE
VAST MASS EVEN
ELSE ELSE WEST
[/code]

[code]
SAID SITS FULL HERE RICH
ONTO AREA ASIA IDEA IDLE
ONES MANY SENT DEER BEAR
NAME ENDS TREE ENDS SAYS
[/code]

[QUOTE=retina;367440]Wow, so many restrictions. So in fact we can only use Raman's dictionary and things like Oxford, Websters, Wiktionary are actually NOT okay?

And actually you raise an important question: What is English origin? You might be surprised by the answer if you didn't previously know the real origins.

[size=1]I find this a lot with any word game. People can never seem to agree upon what are "valid" words and what are not. House rules and other arbitrary criteria seem to always creep in.[/quote]

Starting from a corpus-derived list of common words also helps, though abbreviations and proper names are quite common in corpora so you still have to maintain a bad-word list.

SLOW PIPE ONES TENT // SPOT LINE OPEN WEST is the closest I've found to a square both readings of which are sentences

[code]
SPLIT LOCKS SHAFT BIBLE HOLDS NOBLE HARSH
PRIDE OZONE HOLLY IDEAL OPERA OCEAN ACUTE
LINEN COLON ALTAR BEARD LEGAL BEAST RURAL
IDEAS KNOWS FLAME LARGE DRAMA LASER STAMP
TENSE SENSE TYRES ELDER SALAD ENTRY HELPS
[/code]

[QUOTE=retina;367440]And actually you raise an important question: What is English origin? You might be surprised by the answer if you didn't previously know the real origins.
[/QUOTE]

Please look at my most preferred list of two letter words to play in Scrabble with family, friends, relatives, of pure English origin

AM, AN, AS, AT, BE, BY, DO, GO, HE, IF, IN, IS, IT, ME, MY, NO, OF, ON, OR, OX, SO, TO, UP, US, WE

These two letter words are not preferred by me, I will frown upon them, but reasonably I will accept it any way.

MU, NU, XI, PI (Greek Alphabets)
HI (Hello)
ID (Muslim Festival)
IO (Jupiter's Moon)
OH (Interjection)
OM (Holy word used in local Indian prayers)

[QUOTE=Raman;367438]Actually I do not like to see abbreviations such as APP, which are not valid English words
What does ROO, POO mean? Are they valid English words? Are they commonly used?[/QUOTE]

Wiktionary, which you allowed, has the definitions (not edited for the purposes of this game, which would of course be cheating):
[url]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/app#English[/url]
[url]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roo#English[/url]
[url]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poo#English[/url]

They're all pretty common, if informal and/or abbreviations. I'd agree that they're not the best sort of thing to have in a solution for this puzzle, but they do fit the originally-stated rules.

[QUOTE=retina;367440][size=1]I find this a lot with any word game. People can never seem to agree upon what are "valid" words and what are not. House rules and other arbitrary criteria seem to always creep in.

I think the Scrabble folks got it all sorted out with their word lists ... oh wait, even they couldn't agree on one list to rule them all, they use at least two, maybe more depending upon where you live.[/size][/QUOTE]

I know what you mean.

On the other hand, there IS an official scrabble dictionary (of which I own a copy) but it does not include any word with more than eight letters. I have on occasion managed to make a longer word (order --> ordered --> reordered --> etc) which might have been legal but was not in the book.

Kind of silly.


And Fivemack, none of your solutions are particularly impressive because it's the same five words each time. It's a symmetric matrix, if you're into that sort of thing.

Symmetric matrices are more common. I've got plenty of asymmetric solutions too

[code]
SCARF START APRON GLARE
POLAR THREE DRIVE ROMAN
ALONE ROOFS MOVES AVOID
ROUGE ASSET INERT DENSE
ENDED PEERS TENTS EDGED
[/code]

I like the third one best, since both its normal and transpose readings look like cryptic-crossword clues.

With the program, I found some interesting ones

[CODE]
RIM HOP GAS AND
YOU ANY OIL YOU
END SEX TRY ERG
[/CODE]

I particularly like the first one because one of its diagonals, forward diagonal also form a valid word

[CODE]
ANT RIB AIM
YOU YOU YOU
ERG END END
[/CODE]

We could get other valid interesting ones by one letter modification from above mentioned solutions

[QUOTE=TheMawn;367452]...
On the other hand, there IS an official scrabble dictionary (of which I own a copy) but it does not include any word with more than eight letters. I have on occasion managed to make a longer word (order --> ordered --> reordered --> etc) which might have been legal but was not in the book.
...
[/QUOTE]When I was playing a lot, long ago, I would also occasionally make words that took in multiple columns, resulting in >8 letters. It would seem the "official" dictionary is indeed, lacking.:smile:

[QUOTE=TheMawn;367452]On the other hand, there IS an official scrabble dictionary (of which I own a copy) but it does not include any word with more than eight letters. I have on occasion managed to make a longer word (order --> ordered --> reordered --> etc) which might have been legal but was not in the book.[/QUOTE]There is more than one "official" Scrabble word list. I think you are referring to the US version which goes to eight letters. But it does state in the beginning that nine letter words are acceptable just that they are not listed to save space. As for which dictionary to use to adjudicate nine letters and above it would likely be Websters.[QUOTE=EdH;367465]When I was playing a lot, long ago, I would also occasionally make words that took in multiple columns, resulting in >8 letters. It would seem the "official" dictionary is indeed, lacking.:smile:[/QUOTE]Get the international version. It goes to fifteen letters. It is not a dictionary, but a word list. It also uses a different set of words. So you see, even the Scrabble players can't agree on which words to use.

Additional: I just looked up the latest US Scrabble list and if seems they have a "Long Word List" available for all the 9-15 letters words as an extra to the up-to-eight dictionary, but it is only available to members of the association. So if you are not a member then you will have to get back to arguing with grandma about how to interpret your little concise abridged dictionary for those longer words.