What is this?

Python program to play a word-guessing game like Wordle, but…

• More addictive because you can play it over and over and over, not just once a day.
• Option for varying the word length (-l, --length) or number of guesses (-g, --guesses)
• Option to allow guesses that aren't known words (-n, --nonsense)
• Option to do guess-by-guess analysis, showing how many words you eliminate after each guess (-a, --analysis)
• Option to show time taken after every guess (-t, --timer)
• A bunch of unit tests to verify the logic
• Beautiful command-line text interface ( 😜 )

Running it

Installation

Requires Python 3.x, the colorama module for printing colored letters, and a file containing a list of possible words. The default wordlist is in /usr/share/dict/words, which should exist on any desktop Unix system.

Alternatively, the Collins Scrabble Word Lists seem to work nicely! CSW2019 contains 12,972 five-letter words, for example.

Install with pip3 install https://github.com/dlenski/lexeme/archive/main.zip, then play the game with the command lexeme.

Options

usage: lexeme [-h] [-d DICT] [-g GUESSES] [-l LENGTH] [-n] [-a]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d DICT, --dict DICT  Wordlist to use, either an absolute path or a path
                        relative to /usr/share/dict. Default
                        /usr/share/dict/words.
  -g GUESSES, --guesses GUESSES
                        Maximum number of guesses to allow
  -l LENGTH, --length LENGTH
                        Length of word to guess
  -n, --nonsense        Allow nonsense guesses. (Default is to only allow
                        known words.)
  -a, --analyzer        Analyze remaining possible words, and show their
                        number after each guess. If repeated (cheater mode!),
                        it will show you all the remaining possible words when
                        there are fewer than 100
  -t, --timer           Show time taken after every guess.

Screenshots

Example of gameplay, with analyzer (-a) and timer (`-t) enabled, showing you the number of possible remaining words, and the time taken for each guess:

Example of cheater mode (-aa), show you all of the possible remaining words after each guess, as long as there are ≤100 of them:

Inspiration

• Wordle, of course
• @jsha's brilliant Wordlyze (source for the analyzer mode
• The subtle handling of repeated letters inspired the unit tests