Most Populated WordSearch

Question

Write a program to generate a rectangular word-search of size 6x9. Words may go downwards, rightwards and diagonally (downwards and to the right), they may also overlap on the board.

The challenge is to include as many different English words as possible from https://www.ef.co.uk/english-resources/english-vocabulary/top-3000-words Your program may select desirable words itself to include. You score 1 point per word included.

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For example:

For clarity I've used "." symbols below instead of random letters.

dolphin..
o.....o..
g.....u..
.....ono.
.........
.........

The above word-search contains {'do', 'dog', 'dolphin', 'hi', 'i', 'in', 'no', 'noun', 'on', and 'phi'} so from what is filled in so far scores 10 points.

In the unlikely event of a tie the shortest code size will be used to choose a winner.

Answer 1

Jelly, 20 bytes, score  53  57

“¦/œḌ⁼ƥ~ẹµḲ5&Ċd@ṡ»ḲY

Try it online!

Wordsearch:

a d m i s s i o n
h o u s e h o l d
s o m e t h i n g
g e n e r a l l y
p o t e n t i a l
t h e r e f o r e

Words:

admission generally household potential something therefore
general mission
house stair there thing
ally gene here hill hold miss some tent thin
air all due era for hat her ill oil old one pot see set son ten the use
ad ah at do go he hi ie in me ms oh on or so to us
i

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Previous
...the dictionary referenced in the question has changed since this was posted so this would drop to a score of 33.

Jelly, 23 bytes, score  150 154 158  160

“RʂȥḄ0ḣq⁾÷yḊzIḥẊḥYx »ḲY

Try it online!

Used Python to search for boards; there are, no doubt, higher scores possible though.

The board:

donations
beverages
placement
performed
metallica
thousands

The words:

['a', 'ac', 'ace', 'ae', 'ag', 'age', 'ages', 'al', 'all', 'am', 'an', 'and', 'ar', 'art', 'as', 'at', 'ati', 'au', 'b', 'be', 'beverage', 'beverages', 'bp', 'c', 'ca', 'cd', 'ce', 'cement', 'cf', 'd', 'da', 'das', 'db', 'do', 'don', 'donation', 'donations', 'ds', 'e', 'ec', 'ed', 'ee', 'eh', 'el', 'em', 'en', 'ent', 'er', 'era', 'es', 'et', 'ev', 'eve', 'ever', 'f', 'fa', 'fo', 'for', 'form', 'formed', 'g', 'ge', 'gem', 'h', 'ho', 'i', 'ia', 'ic', 'in', 'io', 'ion', 'l', 'la', 'lace', 'le', 'lee', 'li', 'll', 'ls', 'm', 'me', 'med', 'men', 'ment', 'met', 'meta', 'metal', 'metallic', 'metallica', 'mi', 'min', 'mr', 'mt', 'n', 'na','nat', 'nation', 'nations', 'nd', 'ne', 'nec', 'ns', 'nt', 'nv', 'o', 'oe', 'og', 'ol', 'on', 'ons', 'or', 'ou', 'p', 'pe', 'per', 'perform', 'performed', 'pl', 'place', 'placement', 'pm', 'pp', 'ppm', 'r', 'ra', 'rage', 're', 'rf', 'rl', 'rm', 'rt', 's', 'sa', 'san', 'sand', 'ss', 'st', 'std', 't', 'ta', 'tall', 'td', 'th', 'thou', 'thousand', 'thousands', 'ti', 'tion', 'tions', 'to', 'tr', 'treo', 'u', 'us', 'usa', 'v', 'va', 'var', 've', 'ver']

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The search

Note LIMIT_TO_N_BEST_NINES limits the search - lower numbers try fewer boards by never using the lower scoring rows (nine letter words) which will find "good" scores quicker, while higher numbers (up to 909 - the number of 9 letter words in the dictionary) will search more boards (and likely never complete!).

f = open(filePath, 'r')
ws = set(w.replace('\n', '').lower() for w in f.readlines())

def iterSubWords(w, ws):
    for l in range(1,len(w)+1):
        for s in range(len(w)-l+1):
            if w[s:s+l] in ws: yield w[s:s+l]

nines = sorted([w for w in ws if len(w) == 9], key=lambda w:len(tuple(iterSubWords(w, ws))), reverse=1)

def diags(rows):
    for rs in range(len(rows)):
        yield ''.join(rows[rs + x][x] for x in range(min(len(rows) - rs, len(rows[0]))))
    for cs in range(1, len(rows[0])):
        yield ''.join(rows[x][cs + x] for x in range(min(len(rows[0]) - cs, len(rows))))

def diagWords(rows, validWords):
    for d in diags(rows):
        for sw in iterSubWords(d, validWords): yield sw

def allWordsOnBoard(rows, validWords):
    r = set()
    for row in list(rows) + [''.join(col) for col in zip(*rows)]:
        for validWord in iterSubWords(row, validWords): r.add(validWord)
    for validWord in diagWords(rows, validWords): r.add(validWord)
    return r

from itertools import combinations, permutations

LIMIT_TO_N_BEST_NINES = 107

m = 0
for wl in combinations(nines[:LIMIT_TO_N_BEST_NINES], 6):
    fws = allWordsOnBoard(wl, ws)
    if len(fws) > m:
        for p in permutations(wl):
            fws = allWordsOnBoard(p, ws)
            if len(fws) > m:
                m = len(fws)
                print(m, p)

Answer 2

Lua, 73 bytes - 49 66 74 75 words

print("abraiders\nscrapings\nsheathers\ncarabiner\nbrahmanis\nrelapsers")

Try it online!

I got the words from another StackExchange question on the Puzzles site. Prints:

abraiders
scrapings
sheathers
carabiner
brahmanis
relapsers

So it's a minimum of eight words each row for 48 words, plus the indefinite article 'a' for 49 words horizontally. Edit: It seems there was an edit to the challenge and there now may be a limit to a list of very specific words and, unlike all of the words forming my list, not all of those words are actually even English. sigh Might just leave this here for posterity.

Edit Words formed horizontally:

i (pronoun 'I')
id
aid
aide
raid
aider
braid
aiders
raider
raiders
braiders
abraiders

la
lap
laps
lapse
elapse
relapse
relapser
relapsers

in
pin
rap
ping
crap
pings
aping
scrap
raping
craping
scraping
scrapings

at
he
eat 
her 
she 
the 
eath
heat
hers
heath
sheath
sheathe
sheather
sheathers

a
ab
rab
bin
car
arab
arabi
arabin
arabine
carabine
carabiner

is
ra
rah
man
bra
rahm
brahm
brahma
brahman
brahmani
brahmanis

Words formed vertically:

as
aha
are
ass
era
char
hare