• Reworked all the buttons to be opaque so they are more legible under MacOS 26. • Separated the vague app menu item "Reset to Defaults" into TWO new different items: "Reset Document Settings to Saved Defaults" and "Reset Document Settings to Factory Defaults", and more clearly described their differences in the user guide. • More thoroughly described how to access and disable the "User Tips" in the user guide, under section 3.6. (Thanks JamesR!) • BugFix: The Word List "number of columns:" popup menu now correctly starts up displaying your saved setting.

* Now you can adjust the spacing between the puzzle and word list underneath. (Thanks Tori!) * The ability to show/hide the word list has been enhanced. Now you can show the word list on the puzzle page, the answer page, both, or neither. The control for this has been centralized, and is no longer under the Printing tab, but at the bottom of the "Layout:Word List" tab, which seemed a more intuitive place to find it. * I don't like the hollow-button look in MacOS 26/Tahoe, so I have FILLED all the buttons to be white (or black in dark mode) so they look like buttons again.

BugFix: Updated the Title and Subtitle text fields so they are once again legible in Dark Mode (Thanks JamesR!)

* Added a "speed-up" option to turn OFF naughty-word removal (under the Words:Word List tab), which could let certain kinds of word search puzzles to be built without errors (e.g. large puzzles with dozens of identical words.) (Thanks DeanF!) * Changed the User Tip window title to correctly say WEEKLY, and also added text at the bottom to say how to get more tips immediately, as well as adding a note in the user guide (Thanks JamesR!) * BugFix: Corrected app icon support for MacOS 26 and older, and updated some text fields to look best on both older and newer MacOS.

* Some minor aesthetic user-interface cleanup to look more readable under MacOS 26/Tahoe (removing button shadows, etc.) * BugFix: Removed the "un-clickable dead space" in the center of the "Build" button.

* User Interface and App Icons updated for MacOS 26/Tahoe.

What's New in 5.3.1: Fixed typos in AppStore description, and minor bug fixed. What's New in 5.3.0: * Added new language support... Icelandic! Halló Björk! * You can now turn off/on tooltips on the main window and menu bar, with a new button under the App Settings window's "Appearance" tab. * Added command-keys to cover all the Edit:Copy-As commands, for better disabilities-support. * Added the option to add little indicator arrows with each word in your printed word list as an extra hint of where to look, see the Layout:Word List:What to Display... area. (Thanks Thomas!) * Added a way to copy an image of the word-directions used as a graphic arrow-image for pasting into your word processor. Also see the explanation in the user guide on page 95, "Word Direction Arrows as Image" (Thanks Thomas!) * Finished rolling the optional woodgrain background into the export window. * Big User Guide clarification/updates to the Bulk Builder section 4.30, and to the Title section 5.3, to better explain how to add an automatic puzzle counter to the title of the exported or bulk-built puzzles (Thanks JamesR!) * BugFix: The broken SEARCH capability in the User Guide and Bulk Builder Guide windows (under the Help menu) is now fixed!

* Added new language support... Icelandic! Halló Björk! * You can now turn off/on tooltips on the main window and menu bar, with a new button under the App Settings window's "Appearance" tab. * Added command-keys to cover all the Edit:Copy-As commands, for better disabilities-support. * Added the option to add little indicator arrows with each word in your printed word list as an extra hint of where to look, see the Layout:Word List:What to Display... area. (Thanks Thomas!) * Added a way to copy an image of the word-directions used as a graphic arrow-image for pasting into your word processor. Also see the explanation in the user guide on page 95, "Word Direction Arrows as Image" (Thanks Thomas!) * Finished rolling the optional woodgrain background into the export window. * Big User Guide clarification/updates to the Bulk Builder section 4.30, and to the Title section 5.3, to better explain how to add an automatic puzzle counter to the title of the exported or bulk-built puzzles (Thanks JamesR!) * BugFix: The broken SEARCH capability in the User Guide and Bulk Builder Guide windows (under the Help menu) is now fixed!

BugFix_25062401: Whirlwind no longer avoids placing words along top and bottom few rows... now words are more evenly distributed again and can stab into secret messages at the top or bottom of the puzzle. (Thanks KevinI & JenO).

* Completely re-designed the "Tip of the Day" window to be much prettier, now with helpful graphics. Take a look by pressing (command)(option)-T. * User Tips window now has a checkbox at the bottom to let you directly turn ON or OFF the auto-show-tips (which you can also do in the Application Settings window, but that is harder for people to find. (Thanks JamesR.) * Added a slider (Under Printing:Answer tabs) to fine-adjust the width of the answer oval (thanks IanM and JenO) * Added more clarification in the Intro Screen window top text to describe where to find the user guide. (Thanks JamesR) * BugFix: Building a puzzle with shorter words would sometimes create a random duplicate of that word that it would not find and eliminate (Thanks DeanF) * BugFix: Made the preview window more squishable, so that the Full-screen view mode works properly and does not hide the bottom buttons off the screen. * BugFix: Fixed the top-bottom-avoidance-detection logic so small puzzles (less than 8 high) don't avoid top/bottom * BugFix: After export# is set to some # and saved as default, future launches of Whirlwind will correctly pre-set the export counter to that number.

Even more accessibility fixes for groups of controls.

• Made the progress window slightly transparent so we can see the preview underneath. • BugFix: The "Layout:WordList:Left Indent Adjustment" slider is now working correctly again.

• New Feature: Now allows turning on shape-outline or inner gridlines, was a Full-Only feature. • New Feature: Added helpful "user tips" to the software, which will automatically pop up once a week. You can turn off the user tips from the Settings dialog, and/or step through them manually under the "Next User Tip" menu item under the Help menu. Let me know if you have suggestions for these! • Puzzles will now try really hard to AVOID laying horizontal words along the very top or bottom row(s) of a puzzle. After the 70% mark, this rule is relaxed and words are allowed to wind up on the very top or bottom row of the puzzle. (Thanks GeorgeP) • Added an EXTRAS tab in the Settings dialog to allow fine-tuning of the puzzle grid's width, in case you want it not quite 1:1 square. (thanks StephenK) • Added a SEARCH field at the top of the user guide window for simple searching of words or phrases (Thanks JamesR.) • Added a "View" menu to allow for full-screen toggling of the window. • User Guide: Improved the section "Export" to better explain copy/paste of text into spreadsheets or into Canva. • Added a new (short) User Guide section 4.16, describing how to use Apple Intelligence to auto-add word lists for you. • BugFix: Copying text from Photoshop and pasting it into your word list now works without giving an error about bad (invisible) characters in your word list. Why does Photoshop sprinkle ETX characters into the text? (Thanks SandraR!) • BugFix: Number puzzles no longer have any "naughty words" that it will check against and give strange errors about when building puzzles (Thanks JenO) • BugFix_25012701: If you have a large number of words, all marked optional, Whirlwind will now work harder to keep as many optional words as possible to fill the puzzle, instead of just removing most of the optional words. (Thanks GeorgeP.) • BugFix: Word lists can now also be pasted in as tab-delimited lists, and words will be separated correctly. (Thanks MarkO)

• Added option to Center the word list words. This works for both word columns or comma separated words.

• Now allows fine-tuning the vertical letter adjustment inside puzzle grid. • The User Interface has been heavily re-arranged to be better organized, with fewer things on each tabbed pane, but more and deeper tabs. • Renamed the "Alphabet" tab to "Alphabets/Numbers" to make it easier to find where to set up a NUMBERS word-search puzzle (Thanks Eliza!) • Added Japanese/Chinese numbers to list of "alphabet" styles. • Added the subtitle and word list display to the Preview area. • All Font-chooser popup-menus now display the list of fonts *in* the font itself for WYSIWYG choosing. • The "Create" button has been renamed "Build", and an ACTION menu has been added to hold the main Build/Stop/Bulk-Build/Shape-Designer actions. • Word directions are now more evenly distributed, so if you have 10 words, and 2 allowed directions, it will try very hard to add 5 words in EACH of those 2 directions. You can see the distribution by looking at the Stats table to see how many words were laid down in each direction. (Thanks Jen!) • Building "tight" puzzles (small puzzles with very few remaining empty spaces) will now succeed more often, where they would always fail before. • Added "Filename Layout" popup menu to the EXPORT window, allowing you to re-arrange the order of the exported filename components. • Added the "Reset Settings to Defaults" menu function to the software. Bugs Fixed: • The tabs in the App Settings dialog that are only supported in the Full version are now removed in the Lite version, leaving only the "Appearance" tab. • Grid line size and Answer Highlight loop drawing is changed slightly, now adjusts RELATIVE to puzzle size (making it export-resolution-independent.) • FINALLY found and fixed Edit:Undo/Redo menu functions for text fields, so you can properly undo/redo typing in your word lists! • Now more often succeeds building smaller tight puzzles with almost no free space, by trying harder (taking longer) if it needs to. • Turning ON or OFF the "show the word list" checkboxes on the Printing Puzzle or Answer pages now correctly turns them on/off. • Word List text now uses the Puzzle Letter font color, not the Title Text font color! It has been (incorrect) that way for years! • Turning OFF "Printing:Print Word List on Answer Page" also hides it from Answer Preview window. (Thanks JamesR) • When a large number of words are optional and omitted from the word list, the # of columns of words under the puzzle is now re-calculated to correctly balance (and re-center) the word list.

-BugFix: PNG exported files are now transparent outside the puzzle again.

-This update will run on any Macintosh (Intel or Apple Silicon) running 10.14 or newer. -LITE version now can EXPORT PNG files directly. -LITE version now has square, circle, up-triangle and down-triangle shapes. -You can now choose to print the Answer key with the non-answer letters as a dim gray color (See PageDetails: Print Puzzle Letters: Dimmed) (Thanks Eliza!) -Changed 1" margins to 1/2" margins for printed pages. (Thanks Diana) -Copying the word list via "Edit:Copy Formatted Word List as text" now will format the word list as you have requested in the Page Details tab, as numbered, alphabetized, etc. -Changed the wording of the Help menu item "Report a problem" to "Contact Author". -The Start/Stop menu items have moved to a new separate Actions menu. -MOVED all the Export settings from the Preferences/Settings window tab to the Export window itself. The export settings are still persistently remembered there as you change them, but are in a more accessible spot. (Thanks Diana & Thomas.) -The "Preferences" menu item is now permanently renamed to "Settings" to match Apple's changing it in MacOS 13 (Ventura). Updated the user guide and Intro screen shots to refer to this new name. (Thanks Diana!) -BugFix: Changing language now correctly marks the puzzle as un-built, so that print/export menus are dimmed until you re-build the puzzle. -BugFix: Whenever you use the Edit:Copy... menu items to copy puzzle, image, text, or word list, you will now always see the little temporary "Copied" image flash on the window to let you know it did something.

-Added "Report a Problem" item to the Help menu, to easily send e-mail with software information attached.

-New Language supported, Norwegian! (thanks Anna!) -Sorted the list of alphabets in the Word List Alphabet popup menu, so they are easier to find... "English" is always first, and "Numbers" is always last though. -Some clarifying and distilling of the Intro screens, both user interface and the content (thanks Kat!) -Moved the checkboxes "Print Separator Lines" and "Print SchwanSongs logo" from Answer Page to Puzzle Page area. -The direction arrows that are displayed under the DIFFICULTY tab are now more readable in Dark Mode. (Thanks Anna!) -BugFix: If you paste title and/or subtitle text that is multiple lines tall (with newlines in them) they no longer squish down the checkboxes at the bottom of the preview window, the text will truncate instead. (Thanks Chris!) -BugFix: Copying the image of the current Answer from the Edit menu now properly reflects your printed solution settings, including whether to highlight the Secret message and hidden words, and also reflects your cell background color choice. (Thank you Clare!)

BugFix: Copy/Pasting a text word list from Adobe InDesign into Whirlwind's word list would run all the words together, now fixed (thanks Brad!) BTW, why is Adobe still using carriage-return line endings on Macs? Apple changed that over a DECADE ago... perhaps it is a difficult bug for Adobe to fix. ;-)

-Modest re-arranging of the main window tabs, breaking the controls for the page titles out into a separate "Titles" tab now. This leaves some room for a BIG feature coming soon. -Updated final screen of Intro Window with new "full product software list" -Newly revised User Guide, increased font size a bit for easier reading. -Your word list is automatically "cleaned up" and updated in-place when you click "Create"... commas are turned into newlines and any empty lines between words are removed. -INCREASED font size a bit for easier reading of Word List text and of Secret Message text. -Added a "PRIOR" button to the intro screen -When you "lock in" your own SPIN (which forces the puzzle to be built with the same word layout each time you hit CREATE), there is now a warning text that displays just above the tabs that lets you know that you have turned this option on. -BugFix: Pasting a text word list from Microsoft Word was adding extra invisible (CR) characters and causing Whirlwind to issue a "Selected letter not allowed" error, now fixed (thanks Jen!)

-Removed the distracting tool-tip on the Preview area. -When words in your word list are too short or too long and you get an error message, they will now also be selected in the word list so you can find them more easily. (Thanks Richard!) -After you have entered your words and created a puzzle, the total # of words found is displayed under your word list, so you can insure they all got entered. (Thanks Richard!)

Builds puzzles much faster and better than before. Title/Subtitle text is now displayed in the Preview Area and auto-updates as you change it. [Thanks Debbie] New menu item to quickly set puzzle to black-and-white color scheme for printing. [Thanks Duncan] Optional "Allow Duplicates" checkbox allows you to make a word search puzzle that contains the same word multiple times. [Thanks Matt] Preview can now toggle between PUZZLE view and ANSWER view. Better error message explanations when the puzzle cannot be built. Non-English puzzles made in the "easier" difficulty modes no longer fill the puzzles with letters containing diacriticals. The "Too Many Words" error message now displays about how many extra letters there are, so you know how many to remove. Better Italian support [Thanks Riccardo] New feature to strip all diacriticals from puzzle letters, for supporting non-English language puzzle styles. [Thanks Riccardo] SPIN text field handles non-digit text entry more nicely. The Preview puzzle now floats in the center of the Preview area. The Preview "extras" (Naughty Words, Dupe Words, Decoys) now display their lines on the Preview display slightly offset from each other, so they are easier to see when they overlap.

-Two new shapes added, Trapezoid and Oval (an egg just in time for Easter!) -Minor additions to naughty word lists. -Changed PUZZLE WIDTH/HEIGHT sliders to have discrete tick-marks. -Added key equivalents to the Export Puzzle (cmd-option-1) and Export Answer (cmd-option-2) menu items. -Better error message text explanations for letters that don't match the chosen language. -On MacOS 10.14 and newer, when you choose "Help:Rate/Review", it will go directly to Apple's easy little rating popup thingie, instead of opening the AppStore page for Whirlwind. -Minor user interface cleanup on aisle "Page Details". -Increased Preview background whiteness so it looks better in Dark Mode. -Changed the Intro screen shadows on example images to be the user's "Accent Color", so it looks better in Dark Mode.

-Added Italian language support -Moved the "Show removed 'Optional' words" button over to the Puzzle Preview area so it is easier to notice and access. Updated the user guide to explain this change (Section 3.9.) -Whirlwind now remembers the last tab you selected, and will pop back to it when you run the app next time. -Added a new tab on the Intro screen, reminding people that there is a giant helpful user guide built-in. -Music no longer plays when you simply click the App or Swan icons on main window (Thanks Jennifer!)