Question

I’m working on a Python version of hangman that works off of a .txt file wordlist. For some reason, in playthroughs after the initial playthrough, the script won’t show certain letters. Everything else works the way I want it to, more or less.

My code:

import random

wordlist = open("wordlist.txt").read().split()
word = random.choice(wordlist)
strikes = 0
hidden_letters = []
alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
guesses = []

def new_word():
    global word
    global guesses
    word = random.choice(wordlist)
    for letter in set(word):
        if letter in alphabet:
            hidden_letters.append(letter)
    guesses = []

def current_progress():
    for letter in word:
        if letter in hidden_letters:
            print '_',

        elif letter == ' ':
            print ' ',

        else:
            print letter,
    print "\n"

def play_again():
    global strikes
    print "Would you like to play again?"
    answer = raw_input("y/n: ")
    if answer == "y":
        strikes = 0
        main()
    elif answer == "n": exit(0)
    else:
        print "That's not a valid answer."
        play_again()

def letter_in_word(x):
    global strikes
    global hidden_letters
    if x in word:
        hidden_letters.remove(x)
        print "That letter is in the word."
        current_progress()
        if hidden_letters == []:
            print "You win!"
            play_again()
        else:
            print "You have %d strike(s)." % strikes

    elif not x in word:
        print "That letter is not in the word."
        current_progress()
        strikes = strikes + 1
        print "You have %d strike(s)." % strikes

def main():
    new_word()
    current_progress()
    global strikes
    while strikes < 6 and not hidden_letters == []:
        print "Guess a letter. \n Letters that have been already guessed are:", guesses

        guess = raw_input("> ")

        if guess in alphabet and len(guess) == 1:
            if not guess in guesses:
                guesses.append(guess)
                letter_in_word(guess)

            else:
                print "You've already guessed that letter. Pick another."
                current_progress()
                print "You have %d strikes." % strikes

        else:
            print "Sorry, that's not a valid guess."
            current_progress()
            print "You have %d strikes." % strikes

    if strikes == 6:
        print "Oop! You lose."
        print "The answer was:", word
        play_again()

print "Welcome to Hangman!"
print "Six strikes and you lose."
print "----------"      
main()

Answer 1

Your problem: when the player guesses a letter that exists in the current word and in a previous word, but was not guessed in the previous word (the player lost that game), the letter is still in the hidden_letters list because remove(x) only removes the first instance of that letter. In other words, your list contains two of the same letter during some executions, which violates an implied requirement of your code. You can fix this by adding hidden_letters = [] in your new_word() function before you add the new word’s letters.

From the Python tutorial (emphasis mine):

list.remove(x)

Remove the first item from the list whose value is x. It is an error
if there is no such item.