Description
Problem Description
In this assignment, you will implement a version of a word search game much like Boggle1 and other popular
word games. The approach you take to finding words on the board will be a direct application of depth-first
search with backtracking.
The version of the game that you will implement is played on a square board according to the following
rules.
1. Each position on the board contains one or more uppercase letters.
2. Words are formed by joining the contents of adjacent positions on the board.
3. Positions may be joined horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and the board does not wrap around.
4. No position on the board may be used more than once within any one word.
5. A specified minimum word length (number of letters) is required for all valid words.
6. A specified lexicon is used to define the set of all legal words.
Below, from left to right, is (i) a sample 4 × 4 board with single letters in each position, (ii) a sequence
of positions forming the word PEACE, and (iii) the list of all words with a minimum length of 5 found on
the board using the words in the standard Unix /usr/share/dict/words file as the lexicon.
E E C A
A L E P
H N B O
Q T T Y
E E C A
A L E P
H N B O
Q T T Y
ALBEE ALCAE ALEPOT
ANELE BECAP BELAH
BELEE BENTHAL BENTY
BLENT CAPEL CAPOT
CENTO CLEAN ELEAN
LEANT LENTH LENTO
NEELE PEACE PEELE
PELEAN PENAL THANE
TOECAP TOPEE
The following words are in that lexicon but not on the board: PLACE (rule 2), POPE (rule 4), PALE
(rule 3). Although the word BOY can be constructed according to rules 2 and 3, if it does not appear in the
lexicon being used (rule 6) or if it does not meet the specified minimum word length (rule 5), it would not
be considered a word.
For a word to be valid it must be constructed in accordance with all six rules above. A score for each
valid word is calculated as follows: one point for the minimum number of characters, and one point for each
character beyond the minimum number. Thus, the set of all words of length five or more from the board
above would earn a score of 31. (22 words of length 5, 3 words of length 6, and 1 word of length 7 give 22
+ 6 + 3 = 31 points.)
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggle
1
COMP 2210 Assignment
Implementation Details
Your must implement your solution to the assignment in terms of two provided files: WordSearchGame.java
and WordSearchGameFactory.java, plus one class that you create from scratch all on your own. The
interface WordSearchGame describes all the behavior that is necessary to play the game. So, we can think
of this interface as the specification for a game engine. You must develop your own game engine that meets
this specification; that is, you must write a class that implements the WordSearchGame interface. You can
name this class anything you want and you can add as many additional methods as you like.
The WordSearchGameFactory is a class with a single factory method for creating game engines. You
must modify the createGame method to return an instance of your class that implements the WordSearchGame
interface. Factory classes like this are convenient ways of completely separating an implementation (your
class) from a specification (the provided interface). So, the test suite used for grading can be written completely in terms of the interface and without any knowledge of the specific classes used in the implementation.
A brief example client along with the corresponding output are given below. Although the class that
implements the WordSearchGame interface must be in the same directory, the ExampleGameClient code
is independent of its name or any other details of the class.
public class ExampleGameClient {
public static void main(String[] args) {
WordSearchGame game = WordSearchGameFactory.createGame();
game.loadLexicon(“wordfiles/words.txt”);
game.setBoard(new String[]{“E”, “E”, “C”, “A”, “A”, “L”, “E”, “P”, “H”,
“N”, “B”, “O”, “Q”, “T”, “T”, “Y”});
System.out.print(“LENT is on the board at the following positions: “);
System.out.println(game.isOnBoard(“LENT”));
System.out.print(“POPE is not on the board: “);
System.out.println(game.isOnBoard(“POPE”));
System.out.println(“All words of length 6 or more: “);
System.out.println(game.getAllValidWords(6));
}
}
Output:
LENT is on the board at the following positions: [5, 6, 9, 14]
POPE is not on the board: []
All words of length 6 or more:
[ALEPOT, BENTHAL, PELEAN, TOECAP]
WordSearchGame methods relating to the lexicon
The three methods in the WordSearchGame interface that relate to loading and searching the lexicon are
loadLexicon, isValidWord, and isValidPrefix. While loadLexicon is called only once per game,
isValidWord and isValidPrefix will be called heavily throughout game play. These methods must
be efficient if the game is to run with reasonable response times when using large lexicons. The choice of
collection or data structure to store the lexicon will determine just how efficient these methods can be. You
have two basic choices to represent the lexicon: use a prebuilt collection from the JCF or implement your
own custom data structure or collection for the purpose. If you choose the former option, TreeSet will offer
very good performance and provide very convenient methods. If you choose the latter option, a trie will
provide even better (time) performance and will be a fun challenge to implement. The choice is completely
up to you. A good (and optional) idea would be to develop your solution with a TreeSet to store the
lexicon and then, if you have plenty of time at the end, make an attempt at building your own trie.
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COMP 2210 Assignment
The loadLexicon method reads a list of words from a text file and stores each unique word in the data
structure or collection that you select to represent the lexicon. You will notice that many of the words in
the provided lexicon files are in lowercase while the game board is in uppercase. Be sure that the lexicon
is loaded and all string comparisons are made in a case-insensitive manner. You will also notice that the
provided lexicon files have different content and formats. Using a simple scanner, however, it is possible to
use the same code to read in all the provided lexicon files.
Note that the lexicon must be loaded before calling many of the other WordSearchGame methods.
If any method that is dependent on a lexicon is called before loadLexicon, your code must throw an
IllegalStateException. See the source code documentation for details.
The isValidWord method searches the data structure that holds the lexicon for a specified string and
indicates whether or not that string is present. If the string is present then it is a valid word. If the string
is not present then it is not a valid word.
The isValidPrefix method searches the data structure that holds the lexicon to determine if any
word in the lexicon begins with the specified string. For the purposes of this method, a string should be
considered a prefix of itself. For example, “cat” is a prefix of “cat” as it is of “catalog”.
WordSearchGame methods relating to the board
The setBoard method accepts an array of length N2
that specifies the content of each position on the
N × N board. The elements of the array are the Strings on the board listed in row-major order. Thus, the
elements in the array from index 0 to N2 −1 correspond to the positions on the board from left to right, top
to bottom. The element at index 0 stores the contents of the board position (0, 0) – the upper left corner
– and the element at index N2 − 1 stores the contents of the board position (N-1, N-1) – the bottom right
corner. In general, the String at index p = row × N + col is the content of board position (row, col).
For example, the array a = [“E”, “E”, “C”, “A”, “A”, “L”, “E”, “P”, “H”, “N”, “B”,
“O”, “Q”, “T”, “T”, “Y”] would correspond to the board show below on the left. The same board is
shown below on the right but with each element annotated with its row-major position. Note that the letter
N is at board position (2, 1), which corresponds to row-major position 2 × 4 + 1 = 9.
E E C A
A L E P
H N B O
Q T T Y
E 0 E 1 C 2 A 3
A 4 L 5 E 6 P 7
H 8 N 9 B 10 O 11
Q 12 T 13 T 14 Y 15
The primary responsibility of the setBoard method is to populate the data structure that you choose
to represent the board with the contents of the provided array of Strings. Once again, the choice of data
structure to represent the board should be made in support of the algorithms that will depend on it (see
game play methods below). Two obvious data structure choices include (a) just keeping the one-dimensional
array of strings as the board representation or (b) creating a two-dimensional array of strings to directly
represent the two-dimensional board being modeled. Other choices are possible, and the one you pick is at
your discretion.
The implementing class of the WordSearchGame interface must have a default board. Specifically, the
above board should be set as the default so that it is available for game play even if the setBoard method
has not been called.
The getBoard method returns a string representation of the current board suitable for printing to
standard out (i.e., as an argument to System.out.println). There is no particular format required.
Choose the format that is most helpful to you. This method will not be tested or graded.
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COMP 2210 Assignment
WordSearchGame methods relating to game play
The methods that implement game play options are getAllValidWords, isOnBoard, and getScoreForWords.
The getAllValidWords method returns a SortedSet of strings containing all words on the board that
are of a specified minimum length and can be constructed according to the game rules. If no words can be
found, this method returns an empty SortedSet.
The isOnBoard method takes a string argument and determines if that string can be found on the board.
There is no requirement that the string be in the lexicon or have a minimum length. There is, however, the
requirement that it be constructed according to rules 2, 3, and 4. If it is possible to find the string on the
board, this method returns a List of Integers representing the row-major positions of each substring2
in the individual board positions used to construct the string. For example, isOnBoard(“PEACE”) would
return the list [7, 6, 3, 2, 1].
E 0 E 1 C 2 A 3
A 4 L 5 E 6 P 7
H 8 N 9 B 10 O 11
Q 12 T 13 T 14 Y 15
Both getAllValidWords and isOnBoard can be implemented using slightly different versions of
depth-first search. The specific depth-first algorithms that you implement must be efficient enough for use
on large game boards with large lexicons.
The getScoreForWords method returns the cumulative score of all the scorable words in the given
SortedSet. To be scorable, a word must (1) have at least the minimum number of characters, (2) be in the
current lexicon, and (3) be on the current board. Each scorable word of length K > M is worth 1+ (K −M)
points, where M is the specified minimum length.
Provided word list files for the lexicon
You have been provided with several word list files for creating lexicons.
• CSW12.txt – 270,163 unique words, used in international Scrabble tournaments
• OWL.txt – 167,964 unique words, used in North American Scrabble tournaments
• words.txt – 234,371 unique words, provided with Unix distributions
• words_medium.txt – 172,823 unique words, subset of the Unix list
• words_small.txt – 19,912 unique words, small subset of the Unix list
Your solution should run efficiently with each of these files used for the lexicon.
Acknowledgements
Word search games of various sorts are popular CS 2 assignments because they bring together several
important topics all in one place. This incarnation of the word search problem owes thanks to (at least):
Julie Zelenski, Owen Astrachan, and Mike Smith.
2Since the board positions contain strings and not just single characters, the List returned by isOnBoard contains strings.
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