Welcome to OhMyWord!

Press F2 or select File, New Game to begin playing.


Your aim in this game is to guess a secret word that the computer has
selected.  The word will be 5 letters long.

Each time you make a guess, the computer will tell you how many letters
in your word are in the secret word.  With a little logic and a
well-stocked vocabulary, you should be able to figure out the letters in
the secret word and then guess the word itself.

There are a lot of boxes on the screen.  Let's take a look at how each
of them works.

You'll spend most of your time in the 'Guess' box, entering the words
you want to guess.  Simply type a 5-letter word and press Enter. 

If you want to stop the game or if you give up, Click on the Exit
button.  If you'd like to try another secret word Click on 'New Word'.

If you want to move to another box, press the TAB key.

You will also use the 'Known Letters' box fairly often.  Whenever you
think you know a letter in the secret word, move here and type in the
letter.  The letters here will be shown in a special color in other
boxes on the screen.

The computer keeps track of your score in the 'Score' box.  You
can't move to this box nor directly change the information in it.

When you are in the 'Known Letter' box, you can press ENTER to go back
to the 'Guess' box.  If you press TAB, you will move to a new box
or command button.

You will use the 'Possible Letters' box to cross off letters that you
are sure are NOT in the secret word.  Once you move to this box, simply
type the letters that you want to cross off.  If you make a mistake,
type the letter again, and it will turn back to a possible letter.
When you are ready to leave the 'Possible Letters' box, press RETURN or
ENTER to go back to the 'Your Guess' box, or TAB to move on to the next
box.

If you guess a word which has no letters in common with the secret word,
OhMyWord will cross off all the letters in the word you guessed.  These
are good clues, don't ignore them.

Use the 'Untried Letters' box to see which letters you haven't yet
used in a word. The computer keeps this box up to date for you.  It
will always show you what letters you haven't yet tried.

The large box on the side is used to record your guesses.
It will show you what words you have guessed, how many letters
in each word are also in the secret word, which letters have
been crossed off in each word, and which letters you know for
sure are included in each word.

The information in this box is your key to figuring out the secret word.
Study it carefully while you are playing!  The numbers in the box
show you how many points you will earn when you guess the secret word.


If you want want to make notes to yourself, or try spelling a word
different ways, move to the 'Scratch" box.  You can cut and paste your guesses
using Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins 

The computer has a large list of 5-letter words that it can choose from.
Every time you make a guess, it looks to see if your word is in its
list.  If you use a word the computer doesn't know, it will stop the
game and ask you if it can add the word to its list.  If you say yes, it
will accept your guess.  If you say no, it will assume you made a typing
error and erase your guess for you.  Remember, the words you add to the
list may show up as secret words some day, so don't add words like
VWXYZ.

One warning.  The computer does not know very many plurals (words
that end with an 's').  If you want you use plurals as guesses,
the computer will probably ask you if each one is a genuine word.

You can select the 'Edit Words' button to see a list of the words
the computer knows and to edit or delete words from the list.

I developed OhMyWord as a means of learning the Visual Basic development
environment.  It was tough and I wouldn't win any programming awards,
but what you see is what you get. This software is provided "as is".  I
cannot warrant its use on your machine. If you like it, I'd appreciate a
$15 dollar gift (I've spent well over 100 hours developing this game).
If I update the game (and I do have ideas), I'll send you the new
version. If you'd like the Visual Basic source code, send along $25.

Greg Martin
7014 Grove Rd
Alexandria, VA 22306

Martin@hq.af.mil
March 1993