quarrel-solver 1.9

Tool for Quarrel (video game)

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quarrel-solver

Tool for Quarrel (and other word games)

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Summary

Provides word game-related tools, and can be configured with custom settings, letter scores, and wordlists.

Works on Python 3.6 and above. Tested on Windows 10.

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Contents

• Summary
• Contents
• The quarrel-solver library
• Direct execution
• Example case
• Settings

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The quarrel-solver library

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

Remember to always use the latest version, as not all bugfixes are documented!

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

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

>>> _

Note: for the pip install command, you can use quarrel-solver with a hyphen, or quarrel_solver with an underscore. When importing the module in Python or running it from the commandline, you MUST use an underscore.

For a more informed walkthrough, please see the example case below.

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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.

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Example case

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

• We're playing Quarrel, and thus we get 8 letters.
• Our letters are wetodlnm.
• We have 7 spaces to use.

After installing the library, we'll open a commandline and run the program.

Since we know we don't need words longer than 8 letters, we can minimise loading time by configuring the program to only calculate for words of that length. We can do this by passing our desired settings as command arguments:

$ py -m quarrel_solver --max_words_len 8

Note: this has the same effect as creating a settings.json file, then running the command from the same directory:

// settings.json
{"max_words_len": 8}

## from folder with settings.json
$ py -m quarrel_solver

Whichever way the program is run, it will have to load a wordlist. Once it finishes loading, we can 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

        2 letters - 6 points
         OW, WE, WO

> _

This tells us that the anagram is MELTDOWN, but we can't make that word 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 our opponent cannot score higher than us without all 8 spaces.

Note: a word like LETDOWN scores the same number of points as MOWED, but isn't recognised as a "best word" in this 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.

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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_len	longest length in wordlist	Determines the maximum word length the program will calculate for.
min_words_len	2	Determines the minimum word length the program will calculate for.
settings_path (commandline only)	None	Path to the settings file.

When running directly:

• To change your settings, do one of the following:
  • Open settings.json in a text editor and change any values. Make sure to save the file once you're done.
  • Pass the setting as a command argument like this: --setting_name value
    • This will automatically update the settings file, if applicable.

$ py -m quarrel_solver --display_debug true --max_words_len 8

• If settings.json is not present in your folder, try running the program and letting it fully load. It should then create the file.
• After saving settings.json, the program will not change if it's already running. Close the program and run it again to use the changed settings.

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