Create a console application for a crossword puzzle generator that can be fed with a custom list of word+explanation pairs. It may be used by people to quickly familiarize with a specific topic (e.g. a knowledge area, new hires to the company ...) to at least understand the terminology and the abbreviations that are used. Or to just have some distraction and fun :-)

I think it consists of three components:

1. source data. It needs to be populated with an as much as possible comprehensive list for the desired topic area. There could be a dummy list of pairs for the time being to not block the coding parts.

2. the algorithm that reads the data and distributes the words to match these into a rectangle of configurable size (x/y). The goal is "Swedish style", where explanation takes one field of the grid (not the same as the first letter!) and the word gets a consecutive list of fields, no fields should be blank or grayed out. The word may follow the explanation to the right or downwards.

3. the printing part that creates the crossword puzzle with explanations only as well as completely populated as reference/solution. It needs to print the grid, use different font sizes, handle line wrapping for the explanations to make them fit into one field. There should be an arrow to indicate if the word follows the explanation field to the right or downwards. It should finally create an easily printable format, e.g. PS or PDF or (scalable) graphics.

I'd like to use Python and overall keep it simple, a script that allows options and a plain text file as data source, no (new) libs or database magic.