(I'm absolutely new on this forum. I did do a quick scan, but I apologize if the answer to this question is already posted.)
I am looking for a word list, and it may be that the CRUCIVERB word list is what I need, in which case I'm happy to pay the membership fee to get it. But I just wanted to make sure it would work for my purpose.
I'm a programmer and I'm trying to make puzzles for a new game. They are actually not traditional crossword puzzles, but they do use crossword-style clues and answers. The puzzles are meant to be solvable by a "casual player", like maybe the level of an airplane magazine puzzle. The way the game works is that the player sees a quotation, and from that quotation I draw strings of letters that combine to form answers. So if part of the quotation were "FOR A MAN WHO MAKES", I might take the "FOR" and the "AKES" and throw in an "s" (which is allowed in this particular game) and make the answer "FORsAKES", and then write a clue like "Abandons". I've been doing that process by hand, and I want to use a word list to automate it, or at least to make a combined manual/automated process. To be clear, I don't want to automate the clue generation, just this piecemeal composition of answers from strings within the quote such that a reasonably easy clue can be written for them.
I have a lower-case word list (i.e., Scrabble-allowed words) that is appropriately thinned to match the vocabulary level I'm going for. I'm looking for a list to throw in lots of capitalized words: place names, people names, names of movies and books, etc., etc.
What I want to understand is whether, with the CRUCIVERB list, I'll have the option to automatically select only the "highly recognizable" place names, people names, names of movies and books, etc.
I guess what I'm asking is whether the entries in the CRUCIVERB list are somehow rated to indicate their level of obscurity, so that, roughly speaking, I could distinguish a proper noun that is recognizable by, say, 99% of the 30-year-olds on the street, given the proper clue (e.g., the name Jackson), from a proper noun that is recognizable by a much smaller percentage, regardless of the clue (e.g., the name Reyes, or any number of even moderately obscure names, terms, acronyms, or other words where no matter what the clue it's not going to be recognized by a very "casual" player).
Really it's like I just want a list of the 10,000 (? -- I don't know if that's the appropriate number but it sounds reasonable) most recognized celebrity names, movie titles, book titles, historical figures, fictional characters, geographical names, and so on. I can piece together a list from lots of different sites around the internet, but I was hoping to just find or purchase something.
Thanks for any help.
