Question

using Java;

In Scrabble, each player has a set of tiles with letters on them. The object of the game is to use those letters to spell words. The scoring system is complex, but longer words are usually worth more than shorter words. Imagine you are given your set of tiles as a string, like "quijibo", and you are given another string to test, like "jib". Write a method called canSpell that takes two strings and checks whether the set of tiles can spell the word. You might have more than one tile with the same letter, but you can use each tile only once.

Answer 1

  
   /**
   * Java method that takes as input 2 strings, representing the tiles and word and returns if the word can be spelled using the tiles
   * (each tile can be used only one)
   * @param tiles, letters currently the user have
   * @param word, letters of the word to check
   * @return, boolean, if word can be spelled using the tiles then return true else return false
   */
   public boolean canSpell(String tiles, String word)
   {
       // create an array of same size as number of letters in tiles, with all entries initialized to false
       boolean[] used = new boolean[tiles.length()];
       for(int i=0;i<used.length;i++)
           used[i] = false;
      
       boolean found;
      
       // loop over the word, character by character
       for(int i=0;i<word.length();i++)
       {
           found = false; // set found to false, as ith letter of word has not been found yet in tiles
          
           // loop over the tiles, to search for ith character of word in tiles
           for(int j=0;j<tiles.length();j++)
           {
               // jth letter of tiles = ith letter of word and jth letter has not been used
               if((word.toLowerCase().charAt(i) == tiles.toLowerCase().charAt(j)) && (!used[j]))
               {
                   // set jth letter used to true and set found to true and exit the loop
                   used[j] = true;
                   found = true;
                   break;
               }
           }
          
           if(!found) // if ith letter of word has not been found, return false as word cannot be spelled using the tiles
               return false;
       }
      
       return true; // all letters of word found in tiles, return true as word can be spelled using the tiles
   }