Welcome to Hoot
New! Two Android apps of Hoot are now under development. Each app includes a database with the installed lexicon, and the ability to use external databases. Update: The first release of the Hoot app is now available on Google Play. The search screen is a modification of the Combination search in the PC version and has sort options. Please provide feedback with problems, suggestions.
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North American lexicon
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Collins lexicon
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Hoot is a Scrabble™ and word game study tool for the PC. Download here. Like similar tools, it is used to study words for play in Scrabble™, Words with Friends™, and other word scoring games. It is designed to be easy to use. Word searches in Hoot are based on the currently selected lexicon, which stays resident in memory, so it is quite fast doing searches. With the Query mode, you can specify up to 8 criteria for a search, choosing from about 20 search options. Within search results you can also execute a context sensitive search on a selected word. Hoot also has partial support for French menus and a French lexicon can be downloaded here.
Extending the primary word searches, Hoot includes a slide show mode that is similar to Lexpert. The slide show will display each result individually and allow you to rotate slides manually or using a timer. While in slide show mode you can also flag words as known and hide known words so you can focus on learning new words. The slide show also has the option of displaying subsearches of the active/selected word. While studying 4 letter words containing a J, for example, you can view the extensions for each word in the list.
There are also three quiz options including a cardbox system for systematic study. In addition to the traditional cardbox options, Hoot also includes List cardboxes. Another quiz option uses a slide show interface and subsearches.
Hoot comes with a help file that elaborates on the useful features of the program and the pages are also available on-line. View Help here or get the help file in the downloads section. See the Change log for changes not updated in the help file. I also have a short list of sites and links to other word game tools elsewhere. The standard release includes the Word Judge 2 lexicon (similar to OTCWL2016), and you can import and export other lexicons, or create your own from a word list.
Hoot runs under Windows and uses the .NET framework, which is usually installed with Windows. For older versions of Windows you may need to update to the .NET 4.6 framework. See downloads for a link to the Microsoft download. Developed using Visual Studio 2015, it is likely to run on most versions of Windows with 1GB of memory. If you have a problem installing or running Hoot, please contact me. Please mention any error messages you encounter. I test the operations in Hoot continuously, but as an individual developer I can't test new installations very easy or every action with every update.