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Webcrow: A Web-Based Crosswords Solver

  • Conference paper
Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3814))

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Abstract

Webcrow is a software system whose aim is to solve crosswords. Problems of like solving crosswords have been informally defined as AI-Complete and are extremely challenging for machines. Webcrow represents the first solver for Italian crosswords and the first system that tackles this language game using the Web as knowledge base. Currently, Webcrow is competitive against an average crossword player. Crosswords that are “easy” for expert humans (i.e. crosswords from the cover pages of La Settimana Enigmistica) are solved, in a 15 minutes time limit, with 80% of correct words and over 90% of correct letters. Webcrow well performs on crosswords that are designed for experts and, in general, it outperforms an average undergraduate student on this kind of crosswords.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via Roma 56, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Giovanni Angelini, Marco Ernandes & Marco Gori

Authors
  1. Giovanni Angelini
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  2. Marco Ernandes
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  3. Marco Gori
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The MITRE Corporation, Information Technology Center (ITC), 202 Burlington Road, 01730-1420, Bedford, MA, USA

    Mark Maybury

  2. FBK-irst, I-38050, Povo, Trento, Italy

    Oliviero Stock

  3. German Research Center for AI, DFKI GmbH, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Wolfgang Wahlster

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Angelini, G., Ernandes, M., Gori, M. (2005). Webcrow: A Web-Based Crosswords Solver. In: Maybury, M., Stock, O., Wahlster, W. (eds) Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. INTETAIN 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3814. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11590323_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11590323_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-30509-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31651-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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