Zyzzyva: The Last Word in Word Study

Zyzzyva News

Zyzzyva 2.1.0 has been released. This is a medium-sized update with a few new features. The main feature is the addition of John O'Laughlin's playability values for North American and British word lists. You can now search for words by playability, and order quiz questions by playability too. Zyzzyva 2.1.0 also allows you to specify how many blanks to use when calculating probability, whereas previously it always used two blanks.

Because of these new features, Zyzzyva's internal database format has changed. You will need to allow Zyzzyva to rebuild its databases after installing Zyzzyva 2.1.0.

Here is the full list of changes in this version:

• Search and quiz ordering by Playability (CSW, OWL2, and OSPD4 only)
• Specify 0, 1, or 2 blanks when calculating Probability
• Negation of Anagram, Pattern, and Subanagram search conditions
• Many word definition fixes - and thanks to Michael McKenna for CSW long definitions
• Italian and Dutch lexicons - thanks to Hervé Bohbot, Diego de Landro, and Bertrand De Bouvere
• BOOBIES is now acceptable in OSPD4 lexicon
• Restore Defaults button on Preferences dialog
• Subanagram search results are now sorted with longest words first
• Many various bug fixes

The Zyzzyva web site has been completely redesigned to make it easier to navigate and more visually appealing. I hope you like it!

Michael was recently interviewed about Zyzzyva on Word-Buff.com. Find out more details behind the program and its creator! And don't forget to browse the rest of the Word-Buff.com site for lots of other great word information.

Zyzzyva 2.0.5 has been released. This is a minor update with one main new feature. The Word Judge now prompts the challenger for the number of words to be challenged before displaying the input screen, and will not adjudicate the challenge until the correct number of words are entered. This feature is intended to eliminate accidental adjudications triggered by hitting the Tab key prematurely. This should particularly help players in North America, where the penalty for premature adjudication is severe!

Here is the full list of changes in this version:

• Word Judge now prompts for number of challenged words.
• Allow input, sorting, etc. for some characters other than A-Z.
• Fix reading of DAWG files so they are loadable on 64-bit machines.
• Fix some word definitions.

If you find Zyzzyva useful, I would be very happy to receive a donation via PayPal, which you can do by clicking the button below. Thank you for your support!

This web site was designed and written by Michael W. Thelen. All markup code, text, and graphics on this web site are Copyright © 2004-2010 Michael W. Thelen. All rights reserved.