Word Judge
Word Judge
There are two word judge options. 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 Lookup
The Word Lookup is a quick, uncontrolled query of the lexicon for the words entered. It executes the same search as Word Judge, but it doesn't have the locking and timing features, doesn't require two people to okay, and doesn't require clearing the search box before the next search. Simply type or edit the words and click Lookup. It will indicate whether the play is acceptable or not.
This search also allows you to lookup the definitions for the words searched. Scroll to see definitions of all words in the list. When the search box regains focus or definitions are shown the acceptability comment is erased.
You can also mark and drag a list of words from another application into this search box. In this case, Hoot will look up all words, even if there are spaces separating them. Words with punctuation are not valid.
Word Judge Log
When using Word Judge 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.