Lesson of the day: don't pick hangman words from /usr/share/dict

[jdong]

So, I was writing a hangman game in Python for fun, and needed a wordlist. So I decided to use /usr/share/dict/words, which is the first thing that came to my mind when I needed a wordlist.

Well so let's write a word picking function. I thought the one I wrote was very efficient, scalable and beautiful:



def pick_word():
def wc_l(file):
count=0
for line in file.xreadlines(): count +=1
return count
import random
num_words=wc_l(open('/usr/share/dict/words'))
import linecache
word=linecache.getline('/usr/share/dict/words',
random.randint(0,num_words-1)).strip()
if len(word) > 1:
return word
else:
return pick_word()


Ok, let's run it!

__r__rl_ss

Hmm, what is it, you ask? vergerless. What does it mean? *shrug*

So I started looking through the list just to see what was in it, and a snippet from the first few lines:


abacate
abacay
abacinate
abacination
abaciscus
abacist
aback
abactinal
abactinally


Ok, so I guess I should try to find a list of common words rather than using /usr/share/dict/words. 90% of the words in there I don't even recognize :D

[dgray_from_dc]

:lolflag:

[tgalati4]

Makes for killer game of hangman. The computer always wins!

[fatality_uk]

Class. :lolflag:

[Namtabmai]

Err you may want to check your dict word files.
Mine doesn't have that word in it, in fact more of the words look pretty sensible.

[jdong]

I wrote the code on my macbook (OS X 10.4.11) so we might have different dict/words :)