My "Guesser" class will guess the letter and the position based on the words that are "x" characters in length. It will suggest a particular letter in a particular position that has the highest frequency. It will filter out words based on characters known in a particular position and characters known not to be in a particular position.
It can find almost all words within 20 guesses and many is less than 10; I've found that words of 6 characters in length are typically the toughest to discover with the position and character guessing method. Once it filters down to one word it will return the word in a string. If it doesn't have a word that matches, it will begin guessing based on random character guesses from the first unknown position.
Note: I did use Unix command "egrep" to quickly parse the word database.
You can fix that in the "load_database" method.
Example Usage based on the term "writhe"
guesser.rb (2.53 KB)
···
#
# @known = string of characters; "-" is the wildcard
# @unknown = array of array of letters that letters
# that have been ruled out
# @file = Dictionary File - one word per line
#
require 'guesser'
guess = Guesser.new(:known => "------",
:unknown => [[], [], [], [], [], []]
:file => "words.txt")
guess.list.length # Total Words search from with six characters
guess.guess # Returns a guess of [letter, position]
[:s, 5] # position is based on an index of 0
# I've found the best guess to be "s"
# for the last character because it rules out
# all plurals
guess.list.length # The method "guess" created a list of words from the
11153 # database.
# All the words are 6 characters in length.
# Not necessary, just showing you how it filters down
# the words
guess.create_regex # Returns the Regexp used to find the word
/^.{5}$/ # Not necessary, just for example purposes
guess.unknown = [[], [], [], [], [], ["s"]] # Insert an "s" to signify
# that it is not
# in that position of the
# word.
guess.guess # Filters the words and guesses again
[:e, 4] #
guess.list.length # Filtered by the method "guess" to have fewer words.
7045 # Notice 4108 words did not have the last letter "s"
guess.create_regex # Returns the Regexp used to find the list
/^.{4}[^s]$/ #
guess.unknown = [[], [], [], [], ["e"], ["s"]]
guess.guess
[:e, 5]
guess.list.length # Guess filters out 2400 more words based on the
# Regexp
4568 # Note that the "list" is a filtering list and cannot
# be recreated in full
# once it has been filtered. That was a conscious
# decision to preserve resources.
guess.create_regex # Not necessary, just shows for example purposes.
/^.{4}[^e][^s]$/
guess.known = "-----e".split(//) # Must be submitted as an array.
# Converts the string "-----e" into an
# array
# Probably need to fix this in the
# class
guess.guess
[:l, 4]
Eventually (16 guesses down the road), once the word is filtered down it would look something list this:
guess.unknown = [["s", "t"], ["l", "o"], [], ["i", "a", "u", "o", "e", "n", "r"], ["e", "l", "i", "u"], ["s"]]
guess.known = "---the".split(//)
guess.create_regex
/^[^st][^lo].{1}[t][h][e]$/
guess.guess
"writhe"