Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Python Basics (2015) Letter Game App Letter Game Introduction

Marcin Mączewski
Marcin Mączewski
4,476 Points
Posted by Marcin Mączewski
Marcin Mączewski
4,476 Points

Getting an endless loop with a "_ Strikes: 0/7" string.

Can someone help me with my code? I keep getting an endless loop that keeps printing:

_ Strikes: 0/7 _ Strikes: 0/7 _ Strikes: 0/7

And so on. Here's my code:

import random

words = [
    'apple',
    'banana',
    'orange',
    'coconut',
    'strawberry',
    'lime',
    'grapefruit',
    'lemon',
    'kumquat',
    'blueberry',
    'melon'
]

while True:
    start = input("Press enter/return to start, or enter Q to quit ")
    if start.lower() == 'q':
        break

    secret_word = random.choice(words)
    bad_guesses = []
    good_guesses = []

    while len(bad_guesses) < 7 and len(good_guesses) != len(list(secret_word)):
        for letter in secret_word:
            if letter in good_guesses:
                print(letter, end='')
            else:
                print('_', end='')

            print('')
            print('Strikes: {}/7'.format(len(bad_guesses)))
            print('')

    guess = input("Guess a letter: ").lower()

    if len(guess) != 1:
        print("You can only guess a single letter!")
        continue
    elif guess in bad_guesses or guess in good_guesses:
        print("You've already guessed that letter!")
        continue
    elif not guess.isalpha():
        print("You can only guess letters!")
        continue

    if guess in secret_word:
        good_guesses.append(guess)
        if len(good_guesses) == len(list(secret_word)):
            print("You win! The word was {}".format(secret_word))
            break
    else:
        bad_guesses.append(guess)
else:
    print("You didn't guess it! My secret word was {}".format(secret_word))

Thanks!

3 Answers

Chris Freeman
MOD
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,454 Points
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,454 Points

It looks like the guess assignment below the while statement (and all lines below it) needs to be indented further. Otherwise it closes the while code block:

    while len(bad_guesses) < 7 and len(good_guesses) != len(list(secret_word)):
        for letter in secret_word:
            if letter in good_guesses:
                print(letter, end='')
            else:
                print('_', end='')

            print('')
            print('Strikes: {}/7'.format(len(bad_guesses)))
            print('')

        guess = input("Guess a letter: ").lower(). # <-- Indent one stop to align with `for` above
Marcin Mączewski
Marcin Mączewski
4,476 Points
Marcin Mączewski
Marcin Mączewski
4,476 Points

Thank you so much! It works flawlessly now!

Nathapong Narumitrekagarn
Nathapong Narumitrekagarn
1,663 Points
Nathapong Narumitrekagarn
Nathapong Narumitrekagarn
1,663 Points

I've found that you can still end up with having answered the word correctly, but the game continues regardless, because the len(good_guesses) will never equal len(list(secret_word)) in cases where a letter is repeated in the word.

i.e. for the word 'apple'

len(list(secret_word))

would return 5.

But you would have answered the complete word with ['a', 'p', 'l', 'e'], which is only four letters long, hence

len(good_guesses)

returns 4.

And so the game doesn't let me win.

To fix this, I ended using this instead of len(list(secret_word)):

len(''.join(set(secret_word)))

I hope this helps! My game works fine now.