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At last, you can explore the dictionary through one shiny unified interface, with the Apterous Lexplorer! It's pretty cool! It's pretty fast! It's pretty untested and probably has bugs so please report them here! Also other feedback is appreciated.

Very nice.

Perhaps some way of noting when the word was a max (when found by a player) or a darren max (when found by a player or noted by DC) would be interesting.

I see that non-words (e.g. WANKIEST^) are displayed in the word search in the same way as real words. Should this be the case?
As an aside, I wonder what the top 5 most disallowed non-words are.

A final thought - should the identity prefixes/suffixes be suppressed? What I mean by that is if you search for, say, NOTARISE, you get NOTARISE as both a prefix and suffix. While this is technically true, it's not very useful or interesting. I'd argue that it should still appear in the anagrams section, just to leave no doubt as to whether a word is actually in the dictionary (cf WANKIEST^ example above).

Simon Myers wrote:Perhaps some way of noting when the word was a max (when found by a player) or a darren max (when found by a player or noted by DC) would be interesting.

Nice idea.

I see that non-words (e.g. WANKIEST^) are displayed in the word search in the same way as real words. Should this be the case?

Probably not.

As an aside, I wonder what the top 5 most disallowed non-words are.

Here's a top 10. This would make a good page for the site.

• OUTLAID [37]
• LEGATED [35]
• PATTIE [34]
• GAUZES [26]
• AUDIOS [25]
• GAITED [25]
• COMPENSE [23]
• MOANIEST [22]
• OUTLIES [22]
• WASPIER [22]

A final thought - should the identity prefixes/suffixes be suppressed? What I mean by that is if you search for, say, NOTARISE, you get NOTARISE as both a prefix and suffix. While this is technically true, it's not very useful or interesting. I'd argue that it should still appear in the anagrams section, just to leave no doubt as to whether a word is actually in the dictionary (cf WANKIEST^ example above).

I wondered about that. The thing is, you might easily have only the prefix or suffix tabs open, and then you wouldn't know whether it was actually a word. Maybe there should just be something at the top of the page saying "X is a word" or "X is not a word", which would solve the problem.

Very neat. It's a testament to my immaturity (or suppressed urges, if you want to be mean) that my virgin Lexploring was "penis".

My first was 'sorry' and my second was 'Kai'.

But on another note, my third was KAIKAWAKA^- an absolute bitch of a goatundrum I had once during a csw game (and nearly got too, only transposing two letters)- could a csw version be added or is it too much effort for not enough demand, especially given I'm the only csw player and I haven't done a csw game in ages?

Charlie Reams wrote:The thing is, you might easily have only the prefix or suffix tabs open, and then you wouldn't know whether it was actually a word. Maybe there should just be something at the top of the page saying "X is a word" or "X is not a word", which would solve the problem.

The universal green tick / red cross would work a treat. Great stuff Charlie.

I just played a game in which I inadvisedly offered the non-word BUMHOLE (I didn't really think it would be in, but I'd never have forgiven myself if I'd stuck with a safe 6). Naturally, my first thought was "I wonder if anyone else has offered BUMHOLE before?" and now thanks to the power of Lexplorer, I am happy to know that I was the first.

What I'm saying, I suppose, is that Lexplorer is a really awesome thing. Thanks Charlie!

It's also (fairly) painless for me to add new sections, so if there's other stuff will people think might be interesting then I'm happy to add that.

I think it would be handy if you had links to all of these on the homepage (eg. Podcasts, Lexplorer).

Kai Laddiman wrote:I think it would be handy if you had links to all of these on the homepage (eg. Podcasts, Lexplorer).

The podcasts aren't really anything to do with apterous but I host them there because it's convenient. The Lexplorer will obviously get a link, but not til it's been tested properly.

Looks very good. An excellent addition.

Conor wrote:Very neat. It's a testament to my immaturity (or suppressed urges, if you want to be mean) that my virgin Lexploring was "penis".

And as a testament to my senility (or ... er, what were those urges I've completely forgotten about?), my first attempt was a word which was far more inappropriate that Conor's

I wonder if Charlie's got a log of all use made of the facility.

Howard Somerset wrote:I wonder if Charlie's got a log of all use made of the facility.

I thought about it, for some kind of "other people are searching for..." thing, but I'll warn you in advance if I start logging things like that.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Howard Somerset wrote:I wonder if Charlie's got a log of all use made of the facility.

I thought about it, for some kind of "other people are searching for..." thing, but I'll warn you in advance if I start logging things like that.

I hope not, or my search for PISSFLAPS will be quite early in my list.

Sweet.

Erm one possible problem I have found is that it comes up with words from Daily Duels... I'm not sure if it would come up with that day's duels, and I know that it's unlikely that you'll search a word that happens to be from today, but I think it may jeopardise the use of Lexplorer ever so slightly!