The Search Stage

The Search Stage is where the anagrams are actually generated!

The window consists of three sections. An animation area (if configured), a list of raw anagrams and a search information/statistics area.

The animation area is a continuous animated display of the top anagrams found so far. It can be switched on or off using the Animation tab of the Options dialog.

The raw anagram list is the window containing the current list of anagrams that the software has found. After each anagram is a percentage score. This percentage is the software's rating on how good the anagram is in terms of its relevance, grammatical correctness and its appropriateness to the other settings that you specified (Emphasis, Type of English etc.). Anagrams in the 90's are the top end of the range. Anagrams below 10% are usually extremely poor quality. Anagram Genius lists the anagrams it has discovered in score order (best first).

The anagrams displayed in the raw anagram list are coloured into categories. Anagrams which are in the Anagram Genius Archive are coloured dark blue. Anagrams which are already in your weeded list are coloured red and anagrams which are in neither category are coloured black.

The search statistics area is in two sections. The left section shows the percentage of the search that has been completed and the current search snapshot:

The search snapshot is something approximating the sequence of words that Anagram Genius is currently analysing. If the search has completed the last snapshot taken is shown.

The percentage of the search complete is shown in two ways. A percentage is displayed as well as a progress bar. Sometimes Anagram Genius goes back and repeats the early part of the search in order to be sure of giving you the number of anagrams you requested. When this happens, the percentage displayed will restart at 0% but the progress bar will stay in the old position until the search has caught up. As a result the two displays show slightly different information. The progress bar can be thought of as the percentage of the search space that has ever been searched and the numerical percentage is the current point in the search.

The right section shows various statistics about the search:

Best is the percentage score of the best anagram found so far.

Worst is the percentage score of the worst anagram saved so far. Once the target number of anagrams has been stored, this figure will rise as more anagrams are discovered and the lower scoring anagrams are thrown away.

Average is the mean percentage score of the anagrams stored.

Time is the amount of computer time that the search has taken so far. If you have other programs running, this will be a lower number than the real elapsed time since the search began as the computer will have used some of that time on other things.

End is a (very approximate) prediction as to what the elapsed time will be when the search completes. It is especially unreliable when the number of anagrams stored has not yet reached the target number.

Search is a coded sequence of characters that give other miscellaneous information about the search:

The first character of the Search field is either an "A" or "B". "A" stands for "Ahead" and "B" "Behind". It refers to the schedule. If no schedule is set or the predicted time is less than the schedule you have set for the search, "A" will be displayed here. If the search is behind schedule, "B" will be displayed here. For information on setting a search schedule, see the topic The Input Stage.

After the first character, the current search pressure is included ("4" in the above example). Normally this will be precisely the figure you set at the Input Stage but if you have set a schedule and the search is running behind schedule, Anagram Genius may raise this number in order to make the search complete more quickly. 

Occasionally, an "R" will appear next. This signifies that Anagram Genius is redoing an early part of the search in order to be sure of generating the requested number of anagrams. When Anagram Genius re-reaches the point where it decided to restart the search, the "R" will disappear.

Sometimes one or more asterisks ("*") may follow this sequence. These asterisks mean that the anagrams that have been stored so far are less good than the collection which would have been displayed had no search pressure figure been set. It is quite normal for asterisks to appear part way through the search - this is part of its strategy to improve the search time - but if one or more remain at the end this is a sign that the search is imperfect. A single asterisk means that the effect is very small, two asterisks imply a bigger effect and three asterisks imply a bigger effect still and are possibly a sign that a very large amount of damage has been done either by a very over-ambitious search schedule or too aggressive a setting of the search pressure. If you set the search pressure to 0, asterisks should never appear but the search will take significantly longer to complete.

Found is the number of anagrams that have been discovered by Anagram Genius during this run. Due to the highly sophisticated search methods that Anagram Genius employs, the vast majority of anagrams that are too poor to be displayed are not generated at all and so are not counted here.

Stored is the number of anagrams that are currently stored (and displayed in the raw anagram list). Once this figure reaches the target you set at the Input Stage it will not rise any further and Anagram Genius will replace the worse anagrams with the better ones as it finds them. Before the number of anagrams to store figure has been reached, the figure here should be very close or identical to the figure displayed after Found. In rare situations this figure will vary slightly from the Found figure, e.g. when an anagram is found but not stored because it uses the same words as another previously generated anagram. This occurrence is rare but does occasionally happen especially when multi-word phrases appear in the subwords giving multiple means of generating the same anagram.

The final figure is Target. This is the figure you provided at the Input Stage against Anagrams to store.