WordPat

WordPat is a handy little app designed to generate word codes that show patterns of repeating letters in words. It's super useful for cracking simple substitution ciphers, like those mono-alphabets you might come across.

How to Use WordPat

Using the program is pretty straightforward! You just type 'wordpat' and then enter your word when it prompts you. Oh, and don’t worry about non-alphabetic characters; they’re ignored!

Finding Patterns

If you want to do the reverse—finding words that fit a specific pattern—that's a bit trickier. The program creates a massive list of word patterns along with the words that match them. But to do this, you'll need a word list. You can easily find these on the Internet or they're often included in Unix installations.

Creating Your Word List

Your word list should be separated by spaces or new lines. Just make sure no line goes over 255 characters long (including new lines). Also, remember that all non-alphabetic characters will be ignored, and case doesn't matter here. If there are duplicate words in your list, only one will show up in the output.

Generating Word Patterns

To create your list of word patterns, you’ll type 'wordpat wordlist1 wordlist2 ...', where each 'wordlistX' is the name of your file containing the words. Keep in mind this might take some time based on how long your lists are and how fast your computer runs. Also, make sure the SORT program is available in your path while doing this.

What Happens Next?

Once WordPat finishes its work, it will create several .WL files named after the length of the words they contain—like 3.WL for all three-letter words. Each file organizes patterns in sorted order, followed by all matching words beneath each pattern in their own sorted order too. If there’s no matching word for a certain pattern, it won’t appear in the .WL file at all.

Finding Matching Words

If you have a pattern and want to see which words match it, just open up the right .WL file and look for your pattern! If it's there, you'll find all matching words right underneath it. If not, well...that means there weren't any matches in that word list.

Download WordPat now!