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OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

onelook.com

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Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#3
post #2

This, along with https://nutrimatic.org , gets used a lot during puzzlehunts. Very neat tool.

And Nutrimatic's own instructions link to http://www.oneacross.com/ which is crossword-specific. I've been using OneLook when I get really stuck on a crossword, but of course there are more options!

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#7

I use the OneLook reverse dictionary all the time to try to find the right word (not for crosswords), but I do wish it were smarter. If only someone would make a deep-learning-based reverse dictionary.

Me too! I've carved out some time this summer to look into some approaches to the problem based on the BERT architecture. A few years ago I tried some (pre-BERT) deep-learning based approaches, but nothing panned out. The "dumb" information-retrieval based approach that my service currently uses is certainly bad, but stubbornly not as bad as all the alternatives I've tried in the 15 years since creating it!

Re: OneLook – Dictionary Search with Wildcards

#10
post #6

I'm the developer of OneLook and happy to answer any questions about it! It's been running continuously since 1996 and I've been (very slowly) adding features to it over the past couple of decades.

Do you see spikes in usage during large puzzlehunt events?
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