python letter guessing game

Question

I'm got the bulk of my first real attempt at a python program--a letter guessing game.

I've got the bulk of the work done, but I'm stuck on the last little bit

I want to make it so that the game alternates back and forth between user and AI turns, until the world has been fully revealed. I'm good so far up to here. At this point, I want to make it so the player to guess the most letters correctly wins a point. The computer moderator picks another word and starts again. The first player to five points wins the game.

I have a while loop that alternates between user/AI turns, but I can't get it to break properly once the word has been fully unveiled? After that it should be pretty simple to just compare the number of userCorrectLetters to the number of aiCorrectLetters and use that to determine who wins the point for the round.

Then I assume the entire thing should go inside a while loop that doesn't break until one of the players has reached 5 points.

The other thing I'm having problems with is how to disallow the user from re-guessing a character position that has already been solved.

import random


#set initial values
player1points= 0
ai= 0
userCorrectLetters= []
aiCorrectLetters=[]
wrongLetters=[]
wrongPlace= []
correctLetters = []
endGame = False
allLetters = set(list('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'))
alreadyGuessed = set() 
userGuessPosition = 0
availLetters = allLetters.difference(alreadyGuessed)


#import wordlist, create mask
with open('wordlist.txt') as wordList:
    secretWord = random.choice(wordList.readlines()).strip()
print (secretWord)
secretWordLength = len(secretWord)








def displayGame():
    mask = '_'  * len(secretWord)
    for i in range (len(secretWord)):
        if secretWord[i] in correctLetters:
            mask = mask[:i] + secretWord[i] + mask [i+1:]
    for letter in mask:
        print (letter, end='')
    print (' ')
    print ('letters in word but not in correct location:', wrongPlace)
    print ('letters not in word:', wrongLetters)



    ##asks the user for a guess, assigns input to variable

def getUserGuess(alreadyGuessed):


    while True:
        print ('enter your letter')
        userGuess = input ()
        userGuess= userGuess.lower()
        if len(userGuess) != 1:
            print ('please enter only one letter')
        elif userGuess in alreadyGuessed:
            print ('that letter has already been guessed. try again')
        elif userGuess not in 'abcdefjhijklmnopqrstuvwxyz':
            print ('only letters are acceptable guesses. try again.')
        else:
            return userGuess

def newGame():
    print ('yay. that was great. do you want to play again? answer yes or no.')
    return input().lower().startswith('y')

def userTurn(wrongLetters, wrongPlace, correctLetters):
    print ('\n')

    displayGame ()
    print ('which character place would you like to guess. Enter number?')
    userGuessPosition = input ()
    if userGuessPosition not in ('123456789'):
        print ('please enter a NUMBER')
        userGuessPosition = input()
    slice1 = int(userGuessPosition) - 1  


    ##player types in letter
    guess = getUserGuess(wrongLetters + correctLetters)
    if guess== (secretWord[slice1:int(userGuessPosition)]):
        print ('you got it right! ')
        correctLetters.append(guess)
        userCorrectLetters.append(guess)
        displayGame()

    elif guess in secretWord:
            wrongPlace.append(guess) 
            print ('that letter is in the word, but not in that position')
            displayGame()

    else:
            wrongLetters.append(guess)
            print ('nope. that letter is not in the word')
            displayGame()




def aiTurn(wrongLetters,wrongPlace, correctLetters):
    print ('\n')
    print ("it's the computers turn")

    aiGuessPosition = random.randint(1, secretWordLength)

    aiGuess=random.sample(availLetters, 1)
    print ('the computer has guessed', aiGuess, "in position", + aiGuessPosition)
    slice1 = aiGuessPosition - 1
    if str(aiGuess) == (secretWord[slice1:userGuessPosition]):
            correctLetters.append(aiGuess)
            aiCorrectLetters.append(aiGuess)
            print ('this letter is correct ')
            return 
    elif str(aiGuess) in secretWord:
            wrongPlace.append(aiGuess)
            print ('that letter is in the word, but not in that position')
            return

    else:
            wrongLetters.append(aiGuess)
            print ('that letter is not in the word')
            return



wordSolved = False 
while wordSolved == False:

    userTurn(wrongLetters, wrongPlace, correctLetters)
    aiTurn(wrongLetters, wrongPlace, correctLetters)
    if str(correctLetters) in secretWord:
        break 

Answer 1

The problem is here:

if str(correctLetters) in secretWord:

You might expect that str(['a', 'b', 'c']) returns 'abc' but it does not. It returns "['a', 'b', 'c']". You should replace that line with:

if "".join(correctLetters) in secretWord:

There is one more problem with your code, except for this one: Let's say the correct word is foobar. If the user guesses the first 5 letters, but in reversed order, correctLetters will be ['a', 'b', 'o', 'o', 'f'], and the line if "".join(correctLetters) in secretWord: will evaluate to False bacause 'aboof' is not in 'foobar'.

You could fix that problem by replacing if "".join(correctLetters) in secretWord: with:

if len(correctLetters) > 4:

Basically, this will end the execution of the program as soon as the user guesses 5 correct letters. There is no need to check if the the letters are in secretWord, because you already do that in userTurn function.

Answer 2

You are comparing the string representation of the list correctLetters to the string secretWord. For example:

>>> secretWord = 'ab'
>>> correctLetters = ['a','b']
>>> str(correctLetters)
"['a', 'b']"
>>> str(correctLetters) in secretWord
False

Try comparing a string made of the correct letters to the secret word:

>>> ''.join(correctLetters) == secretWord
True