Recommendation For Object Container

I need a recommendation for a data container. I am loading a sequence of letters (Latin characters) into a text string.I then want to pass the individual characters into a 2-D matrix-like container (i.e. populate left to right based on # column assumption).I then want to search for patterns within this matrix using rules similar to that of a crossword puzzle (Left to Right, Top to Down, Left to Right Diagonal).What is the best container to do the anlysis in?I am assuming the decision to this will be based on the search flexibility of the container.My initial goal is to use crossword puzzle rules as noted above.But I may want to expand this to search backward as well (ie. Right to Left).