Supybot Word Games Plugin

This is a plugin for the popular IRC bot Supybot that implements a few word games to play in your IRC channel.

Typical installation process:

1. Clone this git repository in your downloads directory.
2. Create a symlink called Wordgames in supybot/plugins pointing to it.
3. In IRC, load Wordgames.

Note: These games rely on a dictionary file (not included). On Ubuntu, you can normally just install the wamerican package. See the Configurable Variables section to customize.

Commands

The following commands are exposed by this plugin:

worddle [start|join|stop|stats]

Start a new Worddle game, join an existing game, or stop the current game. start is the default if nothing is specified. stop is an alias for @wordquit, added for ease of use. Use 'stats' to see a few bits of information about the board after the game.

wordshrink [difficulty]

Start a new WordShrink game. Difficulty values: [easy] medium hard evil

wordtwist [difficulty]

Start a new WordTwist game. Difficulty values: [easy] medium hard evil

wordquit

Shut down any currently running game. One solution will be displayed for the word chain games, to satisfy your curiosity.

Game Rules

Worddle

Worddle is a clone of a well-known puzzle game involving a 4x4 grid of randomly-placed letters. It's a timed, multiplayer game where you compete to find words that your opponents didn't find.

When you start a new game, or join an existing game, the bot will send you a private message indicating that you are playing. All your guesses must be sent to the bot in this private conversation, so your opponents can't see your guesses. At the end of the game, the results will be presented in the channel where the game was started.

To be a valid guess, words must:

• be made of adjacent letters on the board (in all 8 directions, diagonals ok)
• be at least 3 letters in length
• appear in the dictionary file.

At the end of the game, if a word was found by multiple players, it is not counted. The remaining words contribute to your score using these values:

 Length | Value
--------+-------
  3, 4  | 1 point
  5     | 2 points
  6     | 3 points
  7     | 5 points
  8+    | 11 points

WordShrink

WordShrink and WordTwist are word chain (or word ladder) style games. A puzzle will be presented in the form:

word1 > --- > --- > word4

... and your job is to come up with a response of the form word2 > word3 that completes the puzzle. (You can optionally include the start and end words in your response, as long as each word is separated by a greater-than sign.)

In WordShrink, each word must be made by removing one letter from the preceding word and rearranging the letters to form a new word. Example session:

<mike> @wordshrink
<supybot> WordShrink: lights > ----- > ---- > sit
<supybot> (12 possible solutions)
<mike> sight > this
<supybot> WordShrink: mike got it!
<supybot> WordShrink: lights > sight > this > sit
<ben> lights > hilts > hits > sit
<supybot> ben: Your solution is also valid.

WordTwist

WordTwist is very similar to WordShrink, except that the way you manipulate the words to solve the puzzle is changed. In WordTwist, you change exactly one letter in each successive word to form a new word (no rearranging is allowed). Example session:

<mike> @wordtwist medium
<supybot> WordTwist: mass > ---- > ---- > ---- > jade
<supybot> (5 possible solutions)
<mike> mars > mare > made
<supybot> WordTwist: mike got it!
<supybot> WordTwist: mass > mars > mare > made > jade

Configuration Variables

plugins.Wordgames.wordFile

Path to the dictionary file.

Default: /usr/share/dict/american-english

plugins.Wordgames.wordRegexp

A regular expression defining what a valid word looks like. This will be used to filter words from the dictionary file that contain undesirable characters (proper names, hyphens, accents, etc.). You will probably have to quote the string when setting, e.g.:

@config plugins.Wordgames.wordRegexp "^[a-x]+$"

(No words containing 'y' or 'z' would be allowed by this.)

Default: ^[a-z]+$

plugins.Wordgames.worddleDelay

The length (in seconds) of the pre-game period where players can join a new Worddle game.

Default: 15

plugins.Wordgames.worddleDuration

The length (in seconds) of the active period of a Worddle game, when players can submit guesses.

Default: 90

A Technical Note About Worddle

This game sends a lot of PRIVMSGs (between the channel and all the players, the messages add up). It attempts to send them in a single PRIVMSG if possible to combine targets.

Supybot: I run Supybot with the latest git (there are show-stopper bugs in 0.83.4.1) and the Twisted driver (but Socket should work as well).

IRC Server: I had to tune my IRC server to handle this game, due to the large amount of messages it sends. You may find that it has problems on your server due to flood controls (bot may be either fake lagged or kicked from the server). If the game seems extremely slow, it is either an old Supybot or the server is throttling you.

I would like to add an option to tune the verbosity of the game to mitigate this for restrictive servers.

Credit

Copyright 2012 Mike Mueller mike@subfocal.net Released under the WTF public license: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/

Thanks to Ben Schomp ben@benschomp.com for the inspiration and QA testing.