Comment follow-up: WHATSTHISW?RD helps you solve crossword puzzles

When I wrote about Word Domination, several Download Squad readers commented and proposed WHATSTHISW?RD as a possible alternative.

It's as plain as can be: you write an English word with question marks in place of the letters you don't know, and it comes up with a number of alternatives. It does not support multi-letter wildcards (like d*squad); it only supports single characters. That makes sense when it comes to crossword puzzles, because you always know the length of the word that you need.

Much like Word Domination, each word has a link to a dictionary definition. Here, the link leads to Google Dictionary, and it's quite effective (here's the Google Dictionary entry for grain, for example). For some reason, a tiny question mark next to the word is linked instead of the word itself. It's not very convenient, but it works.

Another nice feature for WHATSTHISW?RD is the URL interface. For example, try http://www.whatsthisword.com/whatis/gr–n.aspx. Again, this is almost perfect – if only I did not have to tack on that ".aspx" at the end ... !

Bottom line: I think I prefer Word Domination. Still, competition is always healthy!

Tags: crossword, puzzles, whatsthisword