Years and years ago I used a Compton's Encyclopaedia on CD-ROM which
had a wildcard search facility. This was great for compiling
crosswords and generally messing about with words. (Are there any
recent Compton's-related products which do this?)

Now we have the Exalead search engine which has the same facility. 

I would like to know which other major general reference works on
CD_ROM (current, or likely to be available second-hand), or search
facilities on the WWW, allow this.

They should be wide-ranging in scope, such as general dictionaries,
encyclopaedias, atlases, chronologies, and so on. At a pinch they
might be restricted to very large subject areas (art, science, music,
etc.).

To count as an answer, long explanations aren't needed. I just want to
know a few places to look. Recommendations from personal experience
would be fine.

Works not in the English language might be interesting if found by
chance, but there's no need to go looking for them.

Bare word-lists are not useful as I need to know what the resulting
words or names mean. I have or know about most of these (I think!).

Specialist academic search databases with restricted access or with
fees are not helpful.

In case it matters for any reason, I am living in the UK.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 13 Oct 2005 05:30 PDT

Can you explain a bit more about what you have in mind?  What sort of
"wildcard" is of interest?  Substituting a single letter in a word? 
Several letters in a word?  A word in a phrase?

A few examples would help us to narrow the focus.

Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

If you want to search c*t to find cat or cut and the meaning of these
words, you can go to ONELOOK [http://www.onelook.com/]

# Enter a word to search for dictionary web sites that include that word.
# Enter a wildcard pattern to search for words. Valid wildcards
are * (matches any sequence of letters) and ? (matches one letter).
# Examples:   bluebird,   blue*,   *bird,   bl????rd,   bl*:snow 

6,257,269 words in 993 dictionaries indexed

You will find for every word quick definitions and lot of links to
generic or specific dictionary.

Example: 
c?tter, will find cotter and cutter
c*tter, will match 93 results (most multi-words)

Hope it helps.
Bye