Automated Word Puzzle Generation via Topic Dictionaries

Puzzles play a central role in our everyday lives with exciting potentials. As assessments in education and psychometry, puzzles are among the most frequently used tools (Verguts & Boeck, 2000). A well-known example is the odd one out puzzle of IQ tests (Carter, 2005). There exist dedicated word puzzles to test or improve a wide array of skills including language skills, verbal aptitude, logical thinking or general intelligence, such as the multiple-choice synonym task of the TOEFL test. Puzzle creation is also a vibrant subfield of procedural content generation for games (PCG), the automated generation of game content for which there is a continuously increasing demand thanks to the thriving popularity of computer and video games.