blossom - Merriam-Webster Blossom Word Game Solver & Multiplier Engine

Word puzzles like Merriam-Webster's daily Blossom Word Game test vocabulary, pattern recognition, and strategic foresight. Unlike standard anagram solvers or word grids where every valid word counts identically, Blossom introduces geometric and round-based scoring constraints:

Center Requirement: Every played word must include the central golden letter.
Surrounding Petals: Words can only use the surrounding 6 petal letters (and repeat letters if allowed).
Length Scaling: Longer words scale steeply from 2 points (4-letter words) up to 12 points (7-letter words) plus +3 points for each additional letter beyond 7.
The Pangram Surge: Using all 7 distinct letters in a single valid word awards an automatic +7 point bonus.
Bonus Petal Multipliers: Each round gives one petal a special bonus status. Every single occurrence of that bonus letter in your played word adds +5 bonus points.

When you're trying to achieve Genius or Master tier, calculating which candidate words yield maximum point density across specific bonus petals can turn into a serious combinatorial challenge.

Enter blossom—a fast, POSIX-compliant terminal tool and interactive solver built to parse system wordlists, evaluate regex candidate filters, and score permutations in milliseconds.

What is blossom?

blossom is a lightweight command-line utility (accompanied by an interactive browser solver at joshuacox.github.io/blossom) that takes the center letter and petal letters, filters candidate words from your system dictionary, and prints a sorted breakdown of points:

# Basic syntax: ./blossom CENTER_LETTER PETAL_LETTERS [BONUS_LETTER]
./blossom e sombody m

Output:

18	size_score( 5)  4 + bonus_score( 2) 10 + pangram_score  0	embosom
21	size_score( 6)  6 + bonus_score( 3) 15 + pangram_score  0	mommies
24	size_score( 7) 12 + bonus_score( 2) 10 + pangram_score  0	embodied
32	size_score( 8) 15 + bonus_score( 2) 10 + pangram_score  7	somebody_PANGRAM

Check out the project homepage and live web calculator at joshuacox.github.io/blossom or visit the GitHub repository.

Key Capabilities

Zero-Dependency Unix Simplicity: Built on standard POSIX shell tools (grep, sed, sort, awk), running effortlessly on Linux, macOS, and WSL.
Official Scoring Model: Faithfully implements Merriam-Webster's tiered length brackets, +7 pangram awards, and +5 bonus letter multipliers.
Smart Disk Caching: Stores parsed dictionary matches for a letter set in /tmp/blossom_cache/${ALL_LETTERS}.txt. When cycling through different bonus petals throughout the game, lookups return in sub-milliseconds without re-scanning system wordlists.
Custom Dictionaries: Point blossom to any dictionary file (DICTIONARY=/usr/share/dict/words ./blossom ...) or Merriam-Webster wordlists.
Exhaustive Evaluation (uber_blossom): Run uber_blossom to automatically iterate through all surrounding petals, producing a comprehensive matrix of best possible words across every stage of the game.
Interactive Companion Web App: Explore candidate words and calculate points directly in your browser with real-time reactive filters.

Quickstart & Installation

You can bootstrap blossom instantly with the one-line installer:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joshuacox/blossom/refs/heads/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Alternatively, clone the repository directly:

git clone https://github.com/joshuacox/blossom.git
cd blossom
chmod +x blossom uber_blossom

1. Basic Solver Query

Supply the center letter first, followed by the surrounding petal letters:

./blossom e sombody

If no bonus letter is provided, blossom cycles through all petal letters automatically, printing scored matches sorted from lowest to highest point yield.

2. Target a Specific Bonus Petal

When playing a round with a designated bonus petal (e.g. m), append it as the 3rd argument:

./blossom e sombody m

Words with multiple instances of m (like mommies or embosom) will see their score surge with the +5 bonus multiplier per letter.

3. Full Game Permutation with `uber_blossom`

To compare point ceilings across the entire puzzle:

./uber_blossom e sombody

Under the Hood: Pipeline Architecture

The core of blossom is a clean demonstration of how fast standard Unix streams are for text manipulation:

Negative Regex Class Construction:

grep1="[$PETAL_LETTERS]"
grep2="[^$ALL_LETTERS]"

Filtering Dictionary Stream: The script pipes the dictionary through grep, ensuring the word contains the center letter, matches petal letters, and contains no invalid characters:
```
grep "$CENTER_LETTER" "$DICTIONARY" \
  | grep -P "$grep1" \
  | grep -v -P "$grep2" \
  | grep -v -P '^\S{1,3}$' \
  | sort > "$TMP/sorted"
```
Pangram Detection via sed: The script verifies character uniqueness against the full set ($ALL_LETTERS) by stripping extraneous characters and testing coverage.
Multiplier Aggregation: Scores are calculated on the fly and piped to sort -n to surface the highest scoring plays at the bottom of your terminal.

Try It Out

Whether you want an algorithmic companion while playing your daily puzzle, need a dictionary testing tool, or want to explore the interactive web interface, check out:

Documentation & Web Solver: https://joshuacox.github.io/blossom/
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/joshuacox/blossom
Official Game: Merriam-Webster Blossom Word Game

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