Optimal Parameters

The parameters I use in generating the WordWalk puzzles are the following:

1)  The length of the rootword (i.e., the number of letters in the rootword)

2)  The number of subwords to use

3)  The minimum length of each   

The goal for setting these parameters is to ensure that the resulting puzzle is not too hard and not too easy.

If there are too many subwords, the chances are good that all the letters and all the arrows will already be present in the subwords, thus making the puzzle too hard, because there will be no unused arrows to hint at those used in the rootword.  

If the number of subwords is too low, most of the arrows will be used up only by the rootword, making it almost a pure guessing game;  then the game is too hard and not too interesting.  

The game is most interesting, I think, when you have to do some logical reasoning by looking at the unused arrows and eliminating some of the possibilities.  The unused arrows provide hints as to digramms and trigramms used in the root word.

Here's an example:

All the subwords have been traced out; only the rootword remains to be found.  It has 8 letters, but only six distinct letters are used;  so two letters are reused, perhaps consecutively, perhaps not.

If you examine the used arrows starting with R, you'll that O-A-D follow immediately, leading you to believe that the rootword begins with the subword "ROAD".  But this turns out to be misleading, for R may -- and indeed does -- occur twice in the rootword.  

Another hint is that the digramm L-R must be in the rootword.  Thus, possibly, the sequence L-R-O-A-D is in the root word. 

So what word begins with R and possibly ends with L-R-O-A-D?  

I'm sure you've guessed it by now:  It's RAILROAD!