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Learn Python with Pyordle!

Pyordle is a Python 3 implementation of a popular online word game in 2022. It is for teaching Python basics and is thus not of professional code quality. The basic version is text-only; optional enhancements include a graphical user interface, and a solver to automatically solve similar puzzles or give hints to the player.

Links

Required files

Game implementations

Python interpreters

Online: online-python – must open pyordle_answers.txt and pyordle_valid.txt as tabs, no tkinter
Online: onlinegdb – must open pyordle_answers.txt and pyordle_valid.txt as tabs, broken tkinter
Windows: single-file Python interpreter – no tkinter
Android: Pydroid 3 – cannot call with command-line arguments, contains ads

Agenda

Intro

about me
about this course
tell us your
- name
- programming experience
- what you hope to get from this course
about Python
- Python 2 vs 3 (print, input, strings, /, names of things etc)
set up Python

Basics

print
simple variables
- naming conventions
- int
- float
- bool
strings
- multiline strings
- extracting characters
- lower, upper
operators
- precedence
- /
shortcut operators (e.g. +=)
input vs raw_input
.format vs %
multiline commands (\)
multicommand lines (;)
comments
indentation
functions
- default parameters
- return
- global

Exercise 1: Have a go at exercise 1 in the sidebar!

Simple multi-element datatypes

list
tuple
set
dict
list comprehension
len
range
join
extracting elements
- reversing a list

Handling local files

reading files
writing files

Exercise 2: Read word lists into sets

Flow control

if, elif, else
while
for
- enumerate
- items, keys, values
break
continue

Exercise 3: Input valid guesses

More I/O

command-line parameters
Web access

Exercise 4: Think up an algorithm to evaluate players' guesses

More advanced stuff

sorted
lambda

Exercise 5: Display the results and end-game messages

Not covered

object-oriented (class)
exceptions
multithreading
regular expressions
specific applications
- advanced games (Pygame, PyOpenGL)
- numerical computing and statistics (numpy, scipy)
- imaging (PIL, OpenCV)
- machine learning (PyTorch, TensorFlow)

Solution template

The "Solution template" link above gives an outline of the text-only game. Comments marked TODO: and ... are to be completed by the learner.

In exercise 1,

try to understand the workflow
implement display_message to print a newline followed by the message given
randomly pick a word from answer_s as answer

Solution for exercise 1

For exercise 2,

copy pyordle_answers.txt and pyordle_valid.txt to the same folder as the Python script
read these word lists into sets answer_s and valid_s

Solution for exercise 2

As exercise 3,

implement input_guess to accept a valid guess from the player

Solution for exercise 3

In exercise 4,

implement evaluate_guess to populate guess_mark_l with the correct "colours"

Solution for exercise 4

For exercise 5,

implement display_result to tell the user the result
display appropriate message when a game ends

Solution for exercise 5

As optional exercises,

implement a hint mode to suggest possible words to the player
implement a demo mode to let the computer play itself
implement a solver mode to let the computer solve a third-party puzzle
implement a graphical user interface using tkinter

The modes can be either read from a command-line argument or hardcoded.

Solution for optional exercises

If your environment does not support reading local files, such as some online interpreters, below is a version with the word lists compressed and encoded into the Python script under the comment ## Read words (how it works is beyond the scope of this course!)

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