Yes. Well, I like crosswords. Good time wasting distractions that they are.

And so today, I thought I would add a Polish crossword to Surface Languages.

In theory, this should have been very simple. I’d written some ‘generic’ crossword generating code, which is already used to create Italian crosswords. I thought that all I would need to do was add use a Polish dictionary in place of the Italian,  and bobs your uncle.

Of course, nothing in life is simple. I should know that by now.

Part of the charm of the Polish language is the numerous diacritics and accents that it uses. For example the Polish word cześć  (‘hello’) has diacritics on both s and c. I’m sure that memorizing these is good for the brain.

I have added options to the crossword code which allow diacritics to be (gasp) ignored. So, for example, czesc  would be considered correct if the “don’t check accents” option was ticked.

Neat? It can be slow entering accents in Polish and other languages on an English language keyboard.  And maybe you don’t want to? Give the user options:)

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

I had a hunch this would be the case. There are as they say ‘issues’ which I will try and fix tomorrow assuming I have time and can figure out the cause.

The word maker and word search do because there is no need to enter letters. (The dictionary is currently very small, as I was using it as a test but it proves there are no coding issues).

Rain = wet paws and damp fur. Sigh.

Peace,

MF