Introduction

Scrabble is a popular word game in which players form words on a game board using letter tiles. Each tile has a specific point value, and the objective of the game is to accumulate the highest score. In this tutorial, we will learn how to write a program in C++ that calculates the score of a given Scrabble word.

Objective

The goal of this program is to take a word as input from the user, calculate its Scrabble score based on letter values, and output the total score. The program will use a predefined point system for the letters of the alphabet as follows:

• A, E, I, O, U, L, N, S, T, R: 1 point
• D, G: 2 points
• B, C, M, P: 3 points
• F, H, V, W, Y: 4 points
• K: 5 points
• J, X: 8 points
• Q, Z: 10 points

C++ Code

#include 
#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

// Function to calculate Scrabble score
int calculateScrabbleScore(const string& word) {
    // Point system for each letter
    unordered_map<char, int> letterPoints = {
        {'A', 1}, {'E', 1}, {'I', 1}, {'O', 1}, {'U', 1}, {'L', 1}, {'N', 1}, {'S', 1}, {'T', 1}, {'R', 1},
        {'D', 2}, {'G', 2},
        {'B', 3}, {'C', 3}, {'M', 3}, {'P', 3},
        {'F', 4}, {'H', 4}, {'V', 4}, {'W', 4}, {'Y', 4},
        {'K', 5},
        {'J', 8}, {'X', 8},
        {'Q', 10}, {'Z', 10}
    };

    int score = 0;
    
    // Convert word to uppercase for case-insensitive comparison
    for (char ch : word) {
        ch = toupper(ch);  // Convert character to uppercase
        if (letterPoints.find(ch) != letterPoints.end()) {
            score += letterPoints[ch];
        }
    }

    return score;
}

int main() {
    string word;
    
    // Get the word from the user
    cout << "Enter a word to calculate its Scrabble score: "; cin >> word;
    
    // Calculate and display the score
    int score = calculateScrabbleScore(word);
    cout << "The Scrabble score for the word '" << word << "' is: " << score << endl;

    return 0;
}

Program Explanation

The program consists of the following parts:

• Header Files: We include iostream for input/output operations, string to handle string data types, and unordered_map for storing letter-point mappings.
• calculateScrabbleScore Function: This function takes a word as input, converts each character to uppercase, and then looks up its score in the unordered_map where we store the letter-to-point mapping. The total score is then calculated and returned.
• main Function: It asks the user to input a word, calls the calculateScrabbleScore function, and then prints the result on the screen.

How to Run the Program

1. Copy the provided C++ code into a text editor or IDE of your choice (such as Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, or online compilers like repl.it).
2. Save the file with a .cpp extension (e.g., scrabble_score.cpp).
3. Compile the program using a C++ compiler. For example, if you’re using a command-line interface, type g++ scrabble_score.cpp -o scrabble_score.
4. Run the compiled program by typing ./scrabble_score (on Linux/Mac) or scrabble_score.exe (on Windows).
5. Enter a word when prompted, and the program will display its Scrabble score.