Quack

Free crossword game artificial intelligence and analysis tool that rivals the best players in the world! Download now

22 July 2019 — Quackle Version 1.0.4 Released

Quackle 1.0 screenshot new settings interfaces

Downloading Quackle 1.0.4

New Features in Quackle 1.0.4

  1. Add NWL19, NWSL19, CSW19 dictionaries
  2. Updates to Polish dictionary. Thanks @alkamid!
  3. Windows build is 64-bit now.
  4. Added ability to add a logo graphic to the copyrights.txt file. For an example of the logo graphic, see the NASPA logo when you select the NWL or NSWL dictionaries.
  5. Made the simulation engine multi-threaded (at present, this defaults to two threads, in addition to the GUI thread). The load balancing is chunky right now, so it's not quite a two times speedup, but it's definitely a lot faster.
  6. Strengthen the random number generator used for drawing tiles.
  7. Upgrade to interface toolkit from Qt4 to Qt5.
  8. Add support for UTF-8 GCG files, which fixes GCG issues with player names and some language tile sets. Thanks @alkamid!
  9. Support fallback paths for strategy files. Eliminate all duplicate strategy files stored for different lexica, some of which were quite large.
  10. Bug fixes and code improvements, see detailed list on Github.

Contact Quacklers

Quackle is brought to you by Jason Katz-Brown (jasonkatzbrown at gmail.com), John O'Laughlin (olaughlin at gmail.com), John Fultz (jfultz at wolfram.com), Matt Liberty (matt.liberty at gmail.com), and Anand Buddhdev (arhbkb at gmail.com).

If you want to be alerted of future Quackle announcements or join in Quackle's development, please join the Quackle Yahoo! group.

5 August 2016 — Quackle Version 1.0.3 Released

Quackle 1.0 screenshot new settings interfaces

Downloading Quackle 1.0.3

New Features in Quackle 1.0.3

  1. Add hash to recognize new OCTWL 2016.
  2. Updates to Polish dictionary. Thanks @alkamid!
  3. Quackle now works with Windows XP again.
  4. Lots of fixes to GCGs. Fixes encoding issues, corruptions, and times when Quackle could rewrite the endgame of a GCG.
  5. Shift+Enter now supports committing passes and exchanges as well as plays from the input field
  6. Fix various bugs around adding a play that exchanges "n" tiles rather than specific tiles.
  7. Add filename to the window's title bar
  8. When you load a gcg and change a play, it can throw up a dialog box saying that the rack doesn't match your play. Now that dialog allows you to convert the player to a player with unknown racks.
  9. Add SWIG bindings. Thanks @gokceneraslan!

Contact Quacklers

Quackle is brought to you by Jason Katz-Brown (jasonkatzbrown at gmail.com), John O'Laughlin (olaughlin at gmail.com), John Fultz (jfultz at wolfram.com), Matt Liberty (matt.liberty at gmail.com), and Anand Buddhdev (arhbkb at gmail.com).

If you want to be alerted of future Quackle announcements or join in Quackle's development, please join the Quackle Yahoo! group.

7 November 2015 — Quackle Version 1.0 Released

Quackle 1.0 screenshot new settings interfaces

Downloading Quackle 1.0.1

(Updated to 1.0.1 to catch bug fixes)

New Features in Quackle 1.0

  1. CSW2015 dictionary
  2. Ability to create brand new dictionaries. In the lexicon chooser, scroll to the bottom choice, "Add new lexicon..." and open up a raw word list (.raw, .txt) or a .dawg file
  3. Ability to edit existing dictionaries. Next to the lexicon chooser, press the Edit button
  4. Ability to generate GADDAGs from within the interface. Click "Build lexicon database..." in the Settings pane to do this.
  5. All lexicons and configuration files can now be customized and loaded from outside of the layout. User-created lexica are automatically saved in a preferences directory designated by Qt for Quackle
  6. New DAWG format. The new format supports MD5 hashes on the dictionary so that you can tell with certainty if you have the dictionary you think you have.
  7. New GADDAG format. Uses MD5 hashes to insure that a GADDAG is properly matched to a DAWG.
  8. GADDAGs and DAWGs are now a versioned format. So it will be easy to change and upgrade them going forward.
  9. The lexicon field picked up a copyrights.txt file which detects appropriate dictionaries by their hashes and automatically decorates them with copyrights.
  10. Fix up strategy fallbacks. All English dictionaries will fall back to using TWL06 strategies if they don't have any strategies of their own. All other dictionaries will fall back to using default strategies (which have rather thin coverage right now).
  11. Bugs with alphabet lengths were fixed. Alphabets of >32 letters are now supported. Which means creating a Slovak version is now possible.

29 November 2014 — Quackle Version 0.98 Released

Quackle 0.98 screenshot with new OSPS words

Downloading Quackle 0.98

New Features in Quackle 0.98

Wow, great job John Fultz, bringing you so many new things!

  1. Norwegian dictionary! (Choose "norwegian" alphabet and "norwegian" lexicon. Hat tip Per Steinar Moen.)
  2. Polish dictionary! (Choose "polish" alphabet and "osps" lexicon. Hat tip Adam Klimont and Polish Federation of Scrabble.)
  3. Color themes!
  4. Easier board configuration based on the mathematics of symmetry!
  5. Better behavior with international keyboards.
  6. Fixes for OS X Mavericks. (And a lot of other code cleanups by Matt Liberty.)

2 January 2012 — Quackle Version 0.97 Released

Quackle 0.97 screenshot with new Collins words

Downloading Quackle 0.97

[All packages updated on 3 January at 2pm PST to fix some spacing and crashing issues.]

New Features in Quackle 0.97

  1. Collins Scrabble Words 2012
  2. Bugfix: +5 on an outplay no longer causes a crash.
  3. Bugfix: Score for unused tiles is no longer counted twice in endgame simming.
A huge thankful shout-out to Anand Buddhdev for helping get this release out the door and packaging Quackle 0.97 for Mac OS X.

23 July 2008 — Quackle Version 0.96 Released

Quackle 0.96 screenshot in Greek
(Click image to enlarge) (Old screenshots)

Downloading Quackle 0.96

(you should only need one of the below files)

New Features in Quackle 0.96

  1. Specify partial opponent rack during simulation.
  2. Endgame solver generates a list of the top moves, instead of only the single best one.
  3. Add 5-point challenges to especially swinging moves. Boo-yah.
  4. Dapperly improved simulation details dialog that includes bingo likelihood on future turns.
  5. Forward/Backward commands to easefully traverse completed games.
  6. British words can optionally be marked with # and colored red on the gameboard. (Check out the new "Settings" menu to disable this feature.)
  7. Play Scrabble in Greek. Mad thanks to Dorian Lidell.
  8. Bethwack computer players into giving you an answer right now.
  9. Add and view positional notes that are saved in the gcg file.
  10. On Windows, click on a .gcg file to open it with Quackle.
  11. Load and save gcg files that include mis-scored plays gracefully.
  12. Updated French ODS5 dictionary.

7 February 2007 — Quackle Version 0.95 Released

Downloading Quackle 0.95

(you should only need one of the below files)

Changes in Quackle 0.95

  1. Shuffle-able rack.
  2. Much faster simulations.
  3. Quick and pretty HTML reports like this one.
  4. Official French ODS4 dictionary and alphabet.
  5. Experimental Korean dictionary and alphabet.
  6. Super Scrabble alphabet.

19 November 2006 — Quackle wins Toronto Human-Computer Showdown

Quackle defeated former World Champion David Boys 3 games to 2 in the Toronto Human-Computer Showdown. Read the Toronto Star article and play through the five exciting games here.

16 November 2006 — Quackle Version 0.94, The Graeme Thomas Quackle, Released

Changes in Quackle 0.94

  1. Fantasmic improved leave values. Even the Speedy Player can fish like nobody's business.
  2. Faster win-percentage-maximizing computer players with progress bars while they think. (And you can see your rack to plan your next move.)
  3. Simulations that automatically calculate and display estimated win percentage.
  4. Experimental preendgame solver for one- and two-in-the-bag situations.
  5. Full-game awesome textual reports using any computer player.
  6. Human With Unknown Racks player for simpler postmortems of real-life games.

12 November 2006 — Amanda Hubble Wins Quackle T-Shirt Design Contest

I want to wear this amazingness. Congratulations Amanda!

Go grab your own Quackle T-shirt for only $15 and check out the other magnific contest entries at the contest webpage.

1 November 2006 — Quackle Makes its National Debut on ESPN

Quackle is the 'amazing' and 'friendly' computer program providing the estimated win percentages and expert analysis in ESPN's coverage of the United States Scrabble Open. The hourlong show aired on November 1.

Historical Quackle Releases

Old Quackle downloads are still available.

2 March 2006 — Open-Source Quackle Crossword Game Software Released to Public

Jason Katz-Brown and John O'Laughlin are excited to announce today the public release of Quackle (www.quackle.org), a crossword game artificial intelligence and analysis tool that rivals the best players in the world. It can be configured to play and analyze crossword games with any board layout and use the newest lexicons. Quackle includes a move generator, move evaluator, simulator, and Qt-based user interface and can be used with any board layout, alphabet, lexicon, and tile distribution. It is licensed under the open-source revised BSD license.

Donations

All Paypal donations will be to the olaughlin at gmail dot com address and split evenly among the four current Quackle developers. Click the DONATE button below.

Thankyou#!

Quackle's Sourceforge project page

Copyright (C) 2005-2012 Jason Katz-Brown and John O'Laughlin.