My friend Andy introduced me to an iphone game called letterpress. The concept is pretty simple and the game is easy to learn - you have a board full of letters and you can create words out of any number of them. You get points for ever letter used, subject to some nuances about how they are defended and such.
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
board = sorted(sys.argv[1].lower())
d = open('/usr/share/dict/words')
for w in d:
s = sorted(w.strip().lower())
if len(s) < 9: continue
i = 0; j = 0
while i < len(s) and j < len(board):
if s[i] == board[j]:
i = i+1
j = j+1
elif s[i] > board[j]:
j = j+1
else:
j = len(board)
if i == len(s):
print len(s), " ", w.strip()
And the expected results:
letterpress > ./letterpress.py evkrvtzahfcyxvgatiwigoezy | sort -nr
12 vociferative
12 overactivity
12 excogitative
11 viaggiatory
11 theatricize
11 rhyotaxitic
11 overagitate
11 heterotaxic
11 heterotaxia
11 gravitative
11 fevertwitch
11 exhortative
10 whitterick
10 vociferize
10 vociferate
10 victoriate
10 verificate
10 twitchfire
10 thieftaker
Needless to say Andy caught on quite quick that something was amiss :) I resigned.
(The picture is from the appstore link above)
Andy beat me a couple of times quite handily. Which got me thinking about how this was a rather simple string search problem that I was failing at. Enter python.
import sys
board = sorted(sys.argv[1].lower())
d = open('/usr/share/dict/words')
for w in d:
s = sorted(w.strip().lower())
if len(s) < 9: continue
i = 0; j = 0
while i < len(s) and j < len(board):
if s[i] == board[j]:
i = i+1
j = j+1
elif s[i] > board[j]:
j = j+1
else:
j = len(board)
if i == len(s):
print len(s), " ", w.strip()
And the expected results:
letterpress > ./letterpress.py evkrvtzahfcyxvgatiwigoezy | sort -nr
12 vociferative
12 overactivity
12 excogitative
11 viaggiatory
11 theatricize
11 rhyotaxitic
11 overagitate
11 heterotaxic
11 heterotaxia
11 gravitative
11 fevertwitch
11 exhortative
10 whitterick
10 vociferize
10 vociferate
10 victoriate
10 verificate
10 twitchfire
10 thieftaker
Needless to say Andy caught on quite quick that something was amiss :) I resigned.
