Guess a word

[Mouche]

Another program. This one has you guess 5 letters and then gives you the word you're trying to guess as masked by -'s and has the letters you've guessed filled in.

Ex:
Say the word is "computer." If you guess "r," "s," "e," "a," and "m." It would say:

--m--er
Guess the word:

# import module for random functions
import random

# List of words for the computer to pick from
words = ("basketball", "football", "hockey", "lacrosse", "baseball")

# Word to be guessed; picked at random 
word = random.choice(words)
letters_guessed = []

print "Guess the sport!"
print "You get to give five letters."
print "There are %s letters in the word." % (len(word))
guesses = 5
while guesses != 0:
    letter = raw_input("Enter a letter: ")
    if letter in letters_guessed:
        print "You already guessed that letter."
    else:
        guesses = guesses - 1
        print "You have %d guesses left." % (guesses)
        letters_guessed.append(letter)


print "The word:"

masked_word = ""
for letter in word:
    if letter in letters_guessed:
        masked_word += letter
    else: masked_word += "-"
print masked_word
guess = raw_input("Guess the word: ")
if guess ==  word:
    print "Congratulations, %s is the word!" % (guess)
else:
    print "Nope. The word is %s." % (word)

Once again, could you good python programmers check out my program and see how it could be more efficient, more user-friendly, or changed. All of my programs are for learning purposes. Thanks for your help.

[vegaseat]

Wonderful game, could be the start of a hangman game. I have 2 suggestions. Make all the input lower case with lower() and let the user know if the letter guess was acceptable by updating the masked_word each time, easily done with a function ...

# word guess game by LaMouche
# import module for random functions
import random

def word_update(word, letters_guessed):
    masked_word = ""
    for letter in word:
        if letter in letters_guessed:
            masked_word += letter
        else: masked_word += "-"
    print "The word:", masked_word

# List of words for the computer to pick from
words = ("basketball", "football", "hockey", "lacrosse", "baseball")

# Word to be guessed; picked at random
word = random.choice(words)

print "="*32
print "      Guess the sport!"
print "You get to guess five letters."
print "There are %s letters in the word." % (len(word))
print "="*32
guesses = 5
letters_guessed = []
while guesses != 0:
    # make the letter lower case with .lower()
    letter = raw_input("Enter a letter: ").lower()
    if letter in letters_guessed:
        print "You already guessed that letter."
    else:
        guesses = guesses - 1
        print "You have %d guesses left." % (guesses)
        letters_guessed.append(letter)
    word_update(word, letters_guessed)


# again, make input lower case
guess = raw_input("Guess the word: ").lower()
if guess ==  word:
    print "Congratulations, %s is the word!" % (guess)
else:
    print "Nope. The word is %s." % (word)

Do me a favor and put the idea into the "Projects for the Beginner" thread.
The finished product could be a contribution to the Python code snippets.

[Mouche]

Thanks for the advice.

I'll put the idea into the projects for the beginner.

For a snippet, what else should I do? Add some comments?

[DarkFlash]

very nice! excellent little python project

[vegaseat]

Thanks for the advice.

I'll put the idea into the projects for the beginner.

For a snippet, what else should I do? Add some comments?

Yes, just add a sentence or two explaining the purpose and features of your code.
If you do it from within the Python Code Snippets, then it will surely go to the Python language.

[Mouche]

*post deleted*

Err... I started working on one thing, got distracted, and worked on another part. Well... I never finished the first thing and got an EOL error! Stuuuuuuupid.

EDIT:

Okay... finished copy. Worthy of becoming a code snippet?

# Word Guess Game by LaMouche
# 
# This game takes a random word from a list,
# gives you five prompts to guess letters in the word,
# and then it shows you a "masked word," filling
# in the letters you've guessed.
#
# Say the word is "hockey" and the user guesses:
# 'h,' 'e,' 't,' 'r,' and 's.' The masked word
# shown would be h---e- . Then the user gets one
# try to guess that word.
#
# More words can be added to the game by adding an
# element into the "words" variable.
#
# import module for random functions
import random

def word_update(word, letters_guessed): # update the masked word
    masked_word = ""
    for letter in word:
        if letter in letters_guessed:
            masked_word += letter
        else: masked_word += "-"
    print "The word:", masked_word

# List of words for the computer to pick from
words = ("basketball", "football", "hockey", "lacrosse", "baseball")

# Word to be guessed; picked at random from "words"
word = random.choice(words)

guesses = 5 # You can change this; it's how many letter guesses the user gets
letters_guessed = []

print "="*32
print "      Guess the sport!"
print "You get to guess %d letters." % (guesses)
print "There are %s letters in the word." % (len(word))
print "="*32

while guesses != 0:
    letter = raw_input("Enter a letter: ").lower()
    # Doesn't use up a guess if the user has already guessed that letter
    if letter in letters_guessed: 
        print "You already guessed that letter."
    else:
        guesses = guesses - 1
        print "You have %d guesses left." % (guesses)
        letters_guessed.append(letter)
    word_update(word, letters_guessed)
word_guesses = 1 # number of guesses to guess the word
word_guess = 0 # current guess number
if word_guesses == 1:
    print "You get 1 guess to guess the word."
else:
    print "You get %d guesses to guess the word." % (word_guesses)
while word_guess != word_guesses:
    guess = raw_input("Guess the word: ").lower()
    if guess ==  word:
        print "Congratulations, %s is the word!" % (guess)
        break
    else:
        print "Nope."
    word_guess += 1
    if  word_guess == word_guesses:
        print "You ran out of tries!\nThe word was %s." % (word)

print "\nThanks for playing LaMouche's Word Guess Game."

[vegaseat]

Works nicely! You should stick it into the Python Code Snippets.

For learning purposes I would add one more thing, loop the program so the player can play several words before finishing the game. That will add a little complexity, you don't want to repeat a word that has already been played.

[Zonr_0]

Another possible challenge, have it able to access a text file from the computer containing a bunch of possible words, so the user can add their own if they wish.

[vegaseat]

Another possible challenge, have it able to access a text file from the computer containing a bunch of possible words, so the user can add their own if they wish.

That would be a good addition. You could get the words from a file, or from a builtin list if the file is missing.

[Mouche]

Hmmm. True. I could even add in a dictionary of common 5-8 letter words or something.

[sneekula]

LaMouche, nice game!

What would a dictionary do to improve it?

Would it be hard to dress the game up in a GUI like Tkinter?

[Mouche]

Umm.. the dictionary would just add a bunch more words for the computer to pick from. Meaning...if you played it a bunch of times and I added an option to play the game agaion, then once you got through the sports, you'd have more words to guess.

It'd be very difficult since I only know how to make a label and a useless button in Tkinter. ;)

[bumsfeld]

For your information, a few nice folks are working on a 'Python Tkinter GUI Builder' (ptkgb), that allows you to drag and drop Tkinter widgets on one form similar to the Delphi RAD or MS Visual stuff. Take a look at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ptkgb/

[Mouche]

I couldn't get it to work and then realizeed that you need python 2.4; 2.5 doesn't work. oh well...

[vegaseat]

I think basic Tkinter GUI coding is easy to learn. You don't need a builder, just get some sample code and a good tutorial and play with it.

I like the Tkinter tutorial at:
http://bembry.org/technology/python/index.php