Little word puzzle solver: save as python script and run with -h for usage

word-puzzle.py

import re
import argparse

def getSortedLetterList(wordList):

  # Calculate the frequency with which characters appears in the dictionary
  letterCount = {}
  totalCount = 0

  for word in wordList:
    word = word.lower()
    word = re.sub('\W', '', word)
    for letter in word:
      totalCount += 1
      if letter in letterCount.keys():
        letterCount[letter] += 1
      else:
        letterCount[letter] = 1

  letterFrequency = {}

  for letter in letterCount:
    letterFrequency[letter] = letterCount[letter] / float(totalCount)

  for letter in sorted(letterCount, key=letterFrequency.get):
    print letter + ": " + str(letterFrequency[letter])

  return sorted(letterCount, key=letterFrequency.get)

def findUncommonWords(allowedLetterRank = 15, filename = '2of4brif.txt'):
  wordList = open(filename).read().splitlines()
  letterList = getSortedLetterList(wordList)

  # Look for words including the top "allowedLetterRank" uncommon letters
  regex = re.compile('^[' + ''.join(letterList[0:allowedLetterRank]) + ']+$')

  for word in wordList:
    if regex.match(word):
      print word

def main():

  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Find words with only uncommon letters." +
    " Specify the range of letters to use (starting from the least common letter)" +
    " using -r. Lists the frequency rankings of the letters first then the words found.")
  parser.add_argument("-r", "--rank", type=int, default=15,
    help="Find words within this range of uncommon letters")
  parser.add_argument("-f", "--file", default="2of4brif.txt", 
    help="Filename of dictionary (must be in the same directory)")

  args = vars(parser.parse_args())
  rank = args["rank"]
  filename = args["file"]

  findUncommonWords(rank, filename)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()
 

Find 2of4brif.txt here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wordlist/12dicts-5.0.zip