word-wheel

Word Wheel puzzle state calculator and dictionary scanner

Usage

This module installs the ww command which either accepts a four letter word and computes the word wheel state for that word, or accepts the -s, --scan argument and prints a list of all words included in words.json and how many other words appear on the word wheel at the same time.

To compute the state for the word 'pear'

To scan the dictionary (words.json)

~$ ww -s | sort -r | head -n20

4: zobu
4: tete
4: shun
4: perk
4: papa
4: oppo
4: octa
4: noon
4: mary
4: lang
4: juju
4: guls
4: drip
4: dodo
4: deed
4: abba
3: zols
3: zobo
3: zits
3: zila

What the hell is this?

I got this "word wheel" game for christmas this year and found it pretty interesting. The word wheel is four wooden wheels that each have the alphabet on them, and the goal is to rotate them to create multiple words at the same time. It's actually really hard. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to write a little program to compute the state of the wheel given a word and then run a dictionary through that and see how many words it's possible to make at the same time. Apparently four is the maximum, but that also depends on the dictionary you use.

Also, I found it interesting that one of the four-word states (drip, guls, mary, octa) contains the words octa and guls (the plural of gul) which is defined as:

Gul n. 1. a large octagonal design derived from the shape of a rose, a motif on Oriental rugs.