On a recent flight my wife picked up a puzzle book, containing a wide variety of puzzles from crosswords and cryptograms, to sudoku and kakuro, to some of the other puzzles listed below.

I decided it would be more fun to write programs to solve the puzzles than solve them myself, so here we are. For word-based puzzles, I'm using the SOWPODS scrabble word list, included in lib, which so far results in much better scores than the book's solutions.

Puzzle Instructions

Building Blocks

Using only the letters in the word RED, complete the words in the Building Blocks. Words read across only. Every word contains each letter of RED at least once.

Lucky Score

Fill in the diagram with words reading across to earn the highest possible score. The basic value of each letter is shown in the LETTER VALUE CHART. However, the value of a letter is doubled if it is used in a square with a circle, and tripled in used in a square with a diamond. Add up your score across for each word, then add up your grand total. You may not repeat a word.