Some friends of a friend of mine created a great game called Clockwords. What can I say? Words + deck building == I’m hooked.

Oh yeah, of course I’m going to do some programmatic analysis.

class Clockword < String
  VALUES = Hash.new(0)
  VALUES.merge!({"a" => 1, "b" => 3, "c" => 3, "d" => 2,
                 "e" => 1, "f" => 4, "g" => 2, "h" => 3, 
                 "i" => 1, "j" => 5, "k" => 4, "l" => 2,
                 "m" => 3, "n" => 2, "o" => 2, "p" => 3, 
                 "q" => 5, "r" => 1, "s" => 1, "t" => 2, 
                 "u" => 3, "v" => 4, "w" => 4, "x" => 5, 
                 "y" => 4, "z" => 5})

  def top_letters
    # there are no duplicate letters in the chamber
    top = self.downcase.scan(/./).uniq
    # 8 chambers, so only count the top 8 letters
    top.sort{|x, y| y <=> x}[0..7]    
  end  

  def score
    return VALUES[self.downcase] if self.length == 1
    return self.top_letters.inject(0){|sum, curr| sum + curr.score}
  end
  
  def <=>(other)
    return -1 if self.score < other.score
    return  1 if self.score > other.score
    # if the raw score is the same, let's further 
    # differentiate by the length (more points)
    return -1 if self.length < other.length
    return  1 if self.length > other.length
    return  0 if self.length == other.length
  end 
end