Scrabble_challenge.txt

Project

	Write a Scrabble cheater from scratch
	
Goals

	1. practice breaking down a problem and solving itin Python from scratch
	2. practice command line argument parsing
	3. practice reading from files
	4. practice working with dictionaries and for loops
	
Problem Statement

	Write a Python script that takes a Scrabble rack as a command-line argument and prints all valid 
	Scrabble words that can be constructed from that rack, along with their Scrabble scores, sorted 
	by score. An example invocation and output
	
Resources

	1. http://courses.cms.caltech.edu/cs11/material/advjava/lab1/sowpods.zip contains all words in the
	official http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS word list, one word per line
	
	2. Here is a dictionary containg all letters and their Scrabble values:
		
		scores = {"a": 1, "c": 3, "b": 3, "e": 1, "d": 2, "g": 2,
         "f": 4, "i": 1, "h": 4, "k": 5, "j": 8, "m": 3,
         "l": 1, "o": 1, "n": 1, "q": 10, "p": 3, "s": 1,
         "r": 1, "u": 1, "t": 1, "w": 4, "v": 4, "y": 4,
         "x": 8, "z": 10}
		 
Breaking down the problem

	Step 1: construct a word list
	
		Write the code to open and read the sowpods word file. Create a list, where each element is 
		a word in the sowpods word file. Note that each line in the file ends in a newline, which 
		you'll need to remove from the word.
		
		Step 1 resources:
		
			1. File I/O: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-files
			2. Stripping characters(like whitespace and newlines) from a string: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#str.strip
		
	Step 2: get the rack
	
		Write the code to get the Scrabble rack (the letters available to make words) from the 
		command line argument passed to your script. For example if your script were called 
		`scrabble_cheater.py`, if you ran python scrabble_cheater.py RSTLNEI, RSTLNEI would be the 
		rack.
		
		Handle the case where a a user forgets to supply a rack; in this case, print an error 
		message saying they need to supply some letters, and then exit the program using the exit() 
		function. Make sure you are consistent about capitalization
		
		Step 2 resources:
		
			1. Command line argument parsing: http://docs.python.org/library/argparse.html#module-argparse
			2. Getting and checking the number of command line arguments: http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html
			3. Converting letters to lower case: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#str.lower

	Step 3: find valid words
	
		Write the code to find all words from the word list that are made of letters that are a 
		subset of the rack letters. There are many ways to do this, but here's one way that is easy 
		to reason about and is fast enough for our purposes: go through every word in the word list, 
		and for every letter in that word, see if that letter is contained in the rack. If it is, 
		save the word in a valid_words list. Make sure you handle repeat letters: once a letter 
		from the rack has been used, it can't be used again.
		
		Step 3 resources:
		
			1. List manipulation: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#more-on-lists
			2. for loops: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#for-statements
	
	Step 4: scoring

		Write the code to determine the Scrabble scores for each valid word, using the scores 
		dictionary from above.
		
		step 4 resources:
		
			1. Dictionary manipulation: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries
		
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