Re: [Eliot-general] Help for a newbie

[Olivier Teuliere]

Hello,

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 18:35, Jean-Denis Muys <address@hidden> wrote:
> I just found out about Eliot. Does this list have archives, so that I
> won't ask FAQs?

The archives are available here (but they are not very practical to
use, in my opinion):
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/eliot-general/

> In the meantime, my question is about the search feature. The Eliot
> home page says "Search for the best move on a given board and rack".
> However I could not find in the program how to use this feature. I use
> Eliot 1.12 on Mac OS X. I tried to use the Dictionary Tools window,
> but non of its four tabs (Check, Plus 1, Regular Expressions, Dic
> info) seems to do that.

Indeed, the dictionary tools do not depend on a given board position;
they only deal with the dictionary.

> I also tried to find some "Play now" option in the main window, but
> when it's a human's turn, the Eliot tab is disabled, and so is the
> play button until a valid move is entered. The green VCR-like buttons
> at the top of the window don't seem to work either.
>
> What did I miss?

You need to start a game in Training mode. This mode lets you choose the
letters in the rack and play the words you want (either by choosing the
desired word in the search results, or by entering the word and its
coordinates directly).
Once you have reached the wanted board position, set the rack you want
and perform a normal search: all the possibilities for the current
dictionary will be displayed, the best one(s) being in red.

Do not hesitate if you have further questions, or if you have
suggestions to make this feature more user-friendly.

Regards,
-- 
Olivier