Word Judge
The Word Judge is a simple, but controlled screen to judge the validity of a word. Words are entered into the text box and each player presses their own button, and a check box appears next to it. After each player has pressed their button, the search begins. The result is displayed directly below the word being judged. Also, Red means the play in not acceptable, and Green means the play is acceptable. In complying with tournament rules, there is no indication which word is invalid.
After one person has checked their box, the text box is disabled to prevent any changes. To re-enable the text box, the button must be pressed again. After the word has been judged, all options are disabled. This is to prevent subsequent users from being confused by the messages for the previous judge. In order to check other words, press the clear button. This explanation is also available by clicking on the Tip at the bottom left.
The box where the words are entered can be scrolled if there is more than one word. Also, the entire window can be resized and the search box will expand with it. The Word Judge screen can also be locked with a password. By pressing the Lock button, you can enter a password to disable the ability to close the screen from the control box. This is low security, as Windows allows other ways to close a program, but it prevents users from instinctively closing the window when they finish using it.
There is also an optional timer to erase the screen after the designated number of seconds. To enable the timer, select lock, check the box and select the number of seconds to wait. A password is not required to enable the timer.
The Word Judge screen can be run independently of the main program by adding "/judge" on the command line. For example, enter Hoot /judge to open only the Word Judge screen. Like the rest of the options, word judge uses the current lexicon.
Word Judge Log
Hoot creates a word judge log for each day word judge is used and shows the words that were challenged. The filename is YYMMDD.wds in the Challenges folder inside the main Hoot folder (i.e. "C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Hoot\Challenges\160915.wds") based on the date six hours earlier (following WHAT's standard). That way the log includes challenges made after midnight of the tournament day. If using a custom user folder, it is in the Challenges folder within that custom folder.