quarrel-solver 1.2

Tool for Quarrel (video game)

Works on Python 3.12.0 and above. Tested on Windows 10.

Summary

Tool for Quarrel by Denki Games (released on iOS in 2011 and Xbox Live Arcade in 2012).

How to use (with quarrel-solver)

Install the quarrel-solver library to use all functionality in your own projects.

$ py -m pip install --upgrade quarrel-solver
$ py

>>> from quarrel_solver import Ruleset
>>> q = Ruleset(
...     settings = {
...         'max_words_len': 8
...     }
... )
>>> print(
...     q.solve_str('wetodlnm')
... )

See the example case below to find out what this displays.

Direct execution

$ py -m quarrel_solver

If you call the library directly, you'll be greeted with a commandline program. Its input screen looks like this:

> _

Type your letters into the field, press Enter, and wait for the program to calculate the best words. Once it's done, choose one from the list that corresponds with the number of letters you have available, or the next lowest. See the example below to find out why you might not need to use all of your spaces.

Please note that if you plan to use the program without the library, you'll need to install its dependencies manually first.

$ py -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Example case

Here's an example using the default program settings. Our situation is the following:

• We're playing Quarrel (thus we can only use words up to 8 letters).
• We have seven (7) spaces.
• Our letters are wetodlnm.

We'll input our letters and press Enter.

> wetodlnm

        --- query: delmnotw (8 letters) ---

        8 letters - 18 points
         MELTDOWN

        5 letters - 14 points
         MOWED

        4 letters - 12 points
         MEWL

        3 letters - 10 points
         MEW, MOW, WEM

        2 letters - 6 points
         EW, OW, WE, WO

> _

We can't make the anagram MELTDOWN because we can only use 7 letters. In this case, our best word is MOWED (14 points). Based on this output, we also know that unless our opponent has 8 spaces, they cannot score higher than 14 points.

Note that a word like LETDOWN (7 letters) scores the same number of points as MOWED. However, LETDOWN isn't recognised as a "best word" in this example case. This is because when words are tied for points, the program will choose the word/s with the fewest letters.

The fewer letters your word has, the faster you can write it into your game. This is especially important in Quarrel, as the tiebreaker for equal points is input speed.

Settings

Upon being run directly, the program will automatically generate (or look for) a settings.json file in the directory which the command is run from. This file contains the program's settings, which can be changed to suit your needs.

When using quarrel-solver, you should can pass a dict with any of the following keys into build_settings to generate a full settings object, then pass the output to a Ruleset to create a new instance. Here are all the currently supported settings:

Setting	Default	Description
all_lowercase	false	Displays output in lowercase letters. The default setting displays capital letters to mimic the style of word games like Scrabble and Quarrel. However, some people may find lowercase output more readable.
allow_repeats	false	Determines whether letters can be used more than once. Change this according to your word game's rules; for example, Scrabble tiles can only be used once in a single word, whereas New York Times's Spelling Bee allows the reuse of letters.
display_debug	false	Shows the program's inner workings whilst calculating. Note that this may negatively affect performance on certain devices or IDEs.
exclude_words	[]	List of words that the program will never output.
ignore_scores	false	Determines whether point values for words are considered, in which case only the highest-scoring words are displayed. If you don't care about scoring, turn this off to see all words.
include_words	[]	List of additional words for the wordlist.
letter_scores	"quarrel"	Determines the letter scoring system used for calculating points. The value here is passed into build_letter_scores(), and defaults back if invalid.
max_words_length	longest length in wordlist	Determines the maximum word length the program will calculate for.
min_words_length	2	Determines the minimum word length the program will calculate for.

When running directly:

• To change your settings, simply open settings.json in a text editor and change any values. Make sure to save the file once you're done.
• If the settings file is not present in your folder, try running the program and letting it fully load. It should then create the file.
• After saving your settings, the program will not change if it's already running. Close the program and run it again to use the changed settings.

References

This project makes use of the following resources:

• The scrabble library's wordlist, adapted from Collins Scrabble Words (2019) (source: StackExchange)
• Quarrel's letter scoring system, taken directly from in-game (source: Wikipedia)