Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #14956

Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word.

Show all headers | View raw

Daniel Pitts wrote:
> I've been playing a bit of Zynga's "Hanging with friends". I was 
> thinking about how to go about creating an "aid" for this. I don't 
> cheat, but I like solving these kinds of problems, just to prove I can.
> 
> There are two phases in Hanging with Friends. One phase is to guess the 
> word that your opponent has constructed, and the other phase is to 
> construct a word yourself.
> 
> In the construction phase, you are given a "bag" of 12 letters. I'm not 
> sure if its a completely random distribution. I suspect its weighted in 
> some way. Anyway, that's not relevant for this question.
> 
> So, It is relatively easy to write a program that uses a word list (such 
> the "official scrabble dictionary" word lists in the Moby collection), 
> to find all words in that list that can be constructed from the bag.
> 
> The problem is determining the strength of the word, how hard it is to 
> guess.
> 
> There is probably a psychological component to this, since the "average" 
> player isn't likely to use logic and will more likely just "guess" 
> letters that seem likely.  A program (or expert) has the advantage 
> (somewhat) in that it can figure out statistically which letters are 
> most likely based on the remaining possible words, and it would then 
> "guess" that letter. Although I'm not certain that is actually the most 
> effective strategy either.
> 
> The algorithm for the "guess-ability" of a word is made more complicated 
> by the fact that the word itself effects how many failed guesses 
> opponent can have before losing the round.  I'm not sure what the 
> algorithm is for that, though I suspect it has to do with the number of 
> distinct letters and word-length.
> 
> Any thoughts on algorithms or data structures you might use to solve 
> this kind of problem?
> 
> I've solved parts of this already. I've created "LetterBag", "Word", 
> "LetterSet", and "WordIndex" classes.
> 
> The WordIndex makes it easy to find "All words that match a pattern, but 
> don't contain letters in a specific LetterSet" and "All words that can 
> be made from a specific LetterBag".
> 
> Oh, and to tie this into a previous thread, the whole thing fits in 
> memory with room to spare ;-)

You could run a neural net over words opponents have constructed 
in historical games and run it as a predictor for new games.

www.syncleus.com
has an open-source NN (and more) implementation.

-- 
Lew

Back to comp.lang.java.programmer | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-05-31 09:26 -0700
  Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-05-31 09:44 -0700
  Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-31 10:43 -0700
    Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-05-31 11:34 -0700
      Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-06-01 02:55 -0700
        Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-06-01 09:34 -0700
          Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-06-01 11:58 -0700
            Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-06-01 12:46 -0700
          Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-06-01 12:45 -0700
            Re: Slightly off-topic: Determining the strength of "Hangman" word. Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-06-01 13:46 -0700

csiph-web