hangman.html

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  52
  53 # Hangman ![Open University logo](oulogo_hor.png)
  54
  55 1. Set a puzzle
  56 2. Guess a word
  57 3. Automatic player
  58 4. Better strategies
  59
  60 ---
  61
  62 layout: true
  63
  64 .indexlink[![Open University logo](oulogo_hor.png) [Index](index.html)]
  65
  66 ---
  67 # Hangman setter
  68
  69 A fairly traditional hangman game. The computer chooses a word, the (human) player has to guess it without making too many wrong guesses. You'll need to find a list of words to chose from and develop a simple UI for the game (e.g. text only: display the target word with underscores and letters, lives left, and maybe incorrect guesses).
  70
  71 ## Data structures
  72
  73 * What do we need to track?
  74 * What operations do we need to perform on it?
  75 * How to store it?
  76
  77 ---
  78 # Data for Hangman
  79
  80 ## Creating a game
  81 * 'List' of words to choose from
  82     * Pick one at random
  83
  84 ## Game state
  85
  86 <table>
  87 <tr valign="top">
  88 <th>Data</th>
  89 <th>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</th>
  90 <th>Operations</th>
  91 </tr>
  92 <tr valign="top">
  93 <td>
  94
  95 * Target word
  96 * Discovered letters
  97     * In order in the word
  98 * Lives left
  99 * Wrong letters?
 100
 101 </td>
 102 <td></td>
 103 <td>
 104
 105 * Get a guess
 106 * Update discovered letters
 107 * Update lives
 108 * Show discovered word
 109 * Detect game end, report
 110 * Detect game win or loss, report
 111
 112 </td>
 113 </tr>
 114 </table>
 115
 116 ---
 117 # Hangman guesser
 118
 119 The other side of the game. The human choses a word, the computer has to guess it. Again, go for a very simple UI. Perhaps the human just responds with a list of letter positions for a correct guess, or zero for an incorrect guess.
 120
 121 ## Data structures
 122
 123 * What do we need to track?
 124 * What operations do we need to perform on it?
 125 * How to store it?
 126
 127 ## Need to think about the algorithm first
 128
 129 How will we solve the game?
 130
 131 ---
 132
 133 # Guessing strategies
 134
 135 Guess words in order of frequency in English
 136
 137 What is the frequency of letters in English?
 138
 139 Pick a novel, count the letters, list them in frequency order
 140
 141 Hint: four lines of code, two of them are
 142 ```python
 143 import collections
 144 import string```
 145
 146 ---
 147
 148 # Building a guesser
 149
 150 Given:
 151
 152 * the discovered word
 153 * the wrong guesses so far
 154 * the order of letters to guess
 155
 156 Find:
 157
 158 * The most common unguessed letter
 159
 160 Build one
 161
 162 ---
 163 # Autoplayer
 164
 165 Put step 1 and step 2 together so the computer can play both sides of hangman on its own. You'll need to fix the interface between the two sides: perhaps define a fixed format for the "state" of a hangman game. Get them to play several thousand games together and log the results (how many games can they play overnight?). Do a bit of data analysis: how many games were won, how does the word length affect the win rate and the number of guesses needed to get the word, is the number of guesses per target letter constant, and so on.
 166
 167 ---
 168 # Autoplayer
 169
 170 Tidy things up: encapsulate in objects
 171
 172 Define a class for a game, a class for a player
 173
 174 Run a game by instantiating a game object, passing in a player object
 175
 176 Interface: the `player` must respond to a `guess` method
 177
 178 Make the `game` generate output only if it's not passed a `player`
 179
 180 ---
 181 # Different player strategies
 182
 183 Develop different strategies for playing hangman and see which is best. Can you order guesses by letter occurrence frequency (in either normal English or the dictionary)? Does a stochastic or deterministic approach work better?
 184 What counts as a "better" strategy?
 185
 186 * Think of some better players
 187 * Implement them
 188 * Test their performance
 189 * Write records of game to CSV files (look at the standard `csv` library)
 190
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