My mother loves words. To this day, she insists that I should become a poet. During a road trip when I was little, she introduced me to a game called Ghost, and we would play all the time.

To play Ghost, players take turns choosing letters, creating a growing fragment of a word. The goal is to avoid completing a word while still maintaining the fragment’s property that it begins some word. There are two ways to lose a round: complete a word or fail to produce a word that begins with your fragment when challenged by an opponent. Of course, if the challenge is unsuccessful and you come up with a legitimate word, the challenger loses the round. Only words with more than three letters count. Generally, each player begins with five lives, one for each letter of G-H-O-S-T.

For example, imagine that Ada, Babbage, and Church are playing a friendly game of Ghost. Ada goes first and plays e. Babbage cleverly follows Ada’s e with an n of his own. Play continues: Church plays g, Ada plays i, and Babbage plays n. “Shucks,” Church says. I guess I’ll play e. Ada points and laughs and assigns Church a G for spelling “engine.” Simple enough.

Whenever I played with just my mom, she would start with the letter z. With only two players, it seemed as though there was no way to counter – she always won when she started with z. But luckily, instead of training to become a poet, I learned a little Python; now I’m the dominant Ghost player in the household.

Attention: If you plan to play Ghost with your friends, you should probably stop reading now so you don’t have a tiresome advantage.

When I initially solved Ghost to defeat my mother, I only looked into the two-player case. It turns out that Randall Munroe has, in his infinite wisdom, already solved Ghost for two players. In an effort not to be entirely redundant in this post, I’m sharing a solution here for n players. When Randall and I end up playing with a mysterious third party, he won’t know what hit him.

Enough talk. Let’s solve Ghost.

## Pruning a Dictionary

First, we need a dictionary. The most reasonable one I could find is the american-english dictionary that ships with some versions of Ubuntu. (Find it at: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/wamerican). I’m pretty sure this is the same dictionary Randall used.

You can use any dictionary you want, of course. I’m on OSX right now, so I also have Webster’s Second International built in: /usr/share/dict/web2. It has 234,936 words, most of which I don’t know. Some cursory googling also revealed TWL06, which seems to be a version of the American Scrabble dictionary.

Then, we prune this dictionary to contain only words that are lowercase (Proper Nouns Aren’t Allowed) and more than three letters long:

>>> 81995


Lists in Python are great, but they’re not the optimal structure for storing words (and – more importantly – prefixes of words) in this case. Enter the trie (from retrieval). A trie is an ordered tree in which every descendant of a node shares the same prefix. A picture would probably be useful; in the diagram below, each complete word is labeled with an arbitrary numeric key. From Wikimedia commons:

Tries are pretty memory efficient too – as you can see in the figure above, we’re storing 8 words using 11 nodes. Finding if a specific word is in a trie is trivially $$O(l)$$ where $$l$$ is the length of the word, because all you need to do is spell the word to find it. In an unsorted list, such an operation is $$O(n)$$, and it’s $$O(log(n))$$ using binary search on a sorted list, where $$n$$ is the size of the corpus. Finding common prefixes and similar operations is equivalently easy. We won’t implement a trie or get into the nitty-gritty details – that might be a topic for another day. Luckily, there are already a few implementations of Python tries available. This solution uses datrie.

The first thing to do is make the trie from the corpus we just loaded into memory:

Notice that we’re never going to use a word that has a prefix that is another word. We’ll never get to “rainbow” because somebody will have already lost on “rain.” Let’s prune the trie to contain only words that don’t have legal words as prefixes:

>>> 19631


Now we’re in prime Ghost-solving territory.

# Solving Ghost

To solve Ghost means to find out which players can lose from every possible game state, assuming all players play perfectly.

We’ll store this solution in another trie, where the keys are every substring in the original trie and the values are sets with the possible losers from that node.

## The Algorithm

We could solve this with some clever recursion, but it’s easier to take advantage of the structure of the trie. To determine the losers in every possible game state, we perform a level-order traversal of the trie and follow these rules at every node:

• If the node is a leaf node, then it completes a word. In that case, the loser is get_turn(word_length, num_players) where word_length is equal to the depth of the trie at the leaf node.
• If the node is not a leaf node:
• If all of the node’s children include the current player in the set of losers, then the player is indifferent between options because any move is a losing move. In that case, the set of losers at the current node is the union over all of the children’s losers.
• If there is at least one child whose set of losers does not include the current player, then the current player does not lose and is indifferent between all non-losing options. In that case, the set of losers at the current node is the union over all of the sets of children’s losers that do not include the current player.

For an example, consider a trie with the words “aa”, “ab”, “baa”, “bb”, “bcaa”, “bcab”, “caaaa”, and “caab”:

If we follow the algorithm above, then it’s easy to derive the losers at each node:

As you can see, player 2 loses. Player 1 will play either ‘a’ or ‘c,’ forcing player 2 into a losing situation. Even though player 1 is not guaranteed to lose with a move of ‘b,’ it counts as a losing node because the other players can coordinate to make player 1 lose.

Finally, it’s time for the actual implementation. Instead of doing a formal level-order traversal, we’re just examining substrings from longest to shortest (ordered arbitrarily within those equivalence classes). This works because once we have solved for all strings of length $$n$$, we can solve for all strings of length $$n-1$$.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need an easy way to find out whose turn it is at any node in the trie:

>>> 2
>>> 4
>>> 1


Let’s find out who loses from each initial position in a 2-player game.

'' {2}
a {1}
b {1}
c {1}
d {1}
e {1}
f {1}
g {1}
h {2}
i {1}
j {2}
k {1}
l {1}
m {2}
n {1}
o {1}
p {1}
q {1}
r {2}
s {1}
t {1}
u {1}
v {1}
w {1}
x {1}
y {1}
z {2}


There, Ghost is solved! solution[prefix] gives a set of losers from that prefix. Any self-respecting game theorist would stop now, but I’m neither of those things. It’s no fun to only know who loses with optimal play – it’s a lot better to actually know how to play optimally in any non-doomed situation. This function takes the solution we just computed, along with the current state of the game (some prefix to a word) and returns the winning moves for the current player.

>>> {'z', 'm', 'j', 'r', 'h'}
>>> set()
>>> {'r', 'l'}


If you arbitrarily choose a letter from the above function, you have an infallible Ghost AI.

## Minimal Strategies

Because it would be nearly impossible to memorize optimal moves from every game state, the last task is to find a minimal list of winning words. Some dictionaries have many such lists – this function finds an arbitrary one. First, let’s just find the list of all “winning words,” or those that can be reached without going into a losing state (we’ll store these in a trie again):

To minimize, we recursively examine the size of the winning set that each possible set of moves would create. This is a slow approach with no pruning, but the winning sets at this point are relatively small so it’s not too much of a concern.

>>> {'jail', 'jejune', 'jilt', 'jowl', 'juvenile'}


We can use this function to find a memorizable (or at least minimal) set of winning words from every starting state.

Player 1's minimal strategy:
:  {'juvenile', 'jail', 'jilt', 'jowl', 'jejune'}

Player 2's minimal strategy:
a :  {'aorta'}
b :  {'blimp', 'blemish', 'bloat', 'black', 'blubber'}
c :  {'crack', 'crepe', 'crick', 'crozier', 'crypt', 'crept', 'crucial'}
d :  {'djinn'}
e :  {'ejaculate', 'ejaculation', 'eject'}
f :  {'fjord'}
g :  {'gherkin', 'ghastliness', 'ghastly', 'ghoul'}
h :  No winning moves.
i :  {'iffiest'}
j :  No winning moves.
k :  {'khaki'}
l :  {'llama'}
m :  No winning moves.
n :  {'nymph', 'nylon'}
o :  {'ozone'}
p :  {'pneumatic'}
q :  {'quoit', 'quack', 'quest', 'quibble', 'quibbling'}
r :  No winning moves.
s :  {'squeeze', 'squelch', 'squeamish', 'squeezing'}
t :  {'trochee', 'truffle', 'tryst', 'traffic', 'triumvirate', 'trefoil'}
u :  {'uvula'}
v :  {'vulva'}
w :  {'wrath', 'wrought', 'wrist', 'wrung', 'wryly', 'wreck'}
x :  {'xylem'}
y :  {'yttrium'}
z :  No winning moves.


## 3+ Players

Below is the minimal strategy for three players. It’s a little unwieldy to memorize, though.

The minimal strategy for 3+ players isn’t particularly useful in a real game, however, because it assumes that all players play perfectly. It’s possible that one of the other 2+ players won’t play in his/her/its own best interest, so the final word could end up being outside any winning strategy.

Interestingly, it’s possible for all 3+ players to be in a losing situation in the same context. Since no player knows what the others will do if indifferent between options, some prefix could be equally “dangerous” for all players.

Player 1's minimal strategy:
:  {'quorum', 'quixotic', 'quest', 'quatrain'}

Player 2's minimal strategy:
a :  {'ajar'}
b :  {'byes', 'bypass', 'byplay', 'bystander', 'byelaw', 'byproduct', 'byte', 'bygone', 'bypast'}
c :  {'czar'}
d :  No winning moves.
e :  {'eons'}
f :  No winning moves.
g :  {'gaff', 'gaps', 'gavotte', 'gage', 'gander', 'gantlet', 'gawk', 'gaping', 'gather', 'gave', 'gape', 'gating', 'gang', 'gags', 'gagged', 'gate', 'gannet', 'gaging'}
h :  No winning moves.
i :  {'iamb'}
j :  No winning moves.
k :  {'krypton', 'kronor'}
l :  No winning moves.
m :  {'myna', 'myopia', 'myth', 'myself', 'myopic', 'mysteries', 'mystery'}
n :  No winning moves.
o :  {'oyster'}
p :  {'pneumonia', 'pneumatic'}
q :  No winning moves.
r :  No winning moves.
s :  {'svelte'}
t :  {'tzar'}
u :  {'ubiquitous'}
v :  No winning moves.
w :  {'wuss'}
x :  No winning moves.
y :  {'yttrium'}
z :  {'zygote'}

Player 3's minimal strategy:
ab :  {'abhor'}
ac :  {'acme'}
ae :  {'aegis'}
af :  {'afar'}
ag :  {'ague'}
ah :  {'ahoy'}
ai :  {'aisle'}
aj :  {'ajar'}
ak :  No winning moves.
al :  {'alum'}
am :  {'amnesia', 'amniocenteses'}
an :  {'anus'}
ao :  {'aorta'}
ap :  {'apse'}
aq :  {'aquiline', 'aquiculture', 'aqueous', 'aqueduct', 'aquifer', 'aqua'}
ar :  {'arks'}
as :  {'asocial'}
at :  {'atelier'}
au :  {'auxiliaries'}
av :  {'avow', 'avoirdupois', 'avocado', 'avoid'}
aw :  {'awry'}
ax :  {'axon'}
ay :  {'ayes'}
az :  {'azure'}
ba :  {'baffling'}
be :  {'bebop'}
bi :  {'bizarre'}
bl :  {'blow', 'bloc', 'blooper', 'blond', 'bloom', 'blog', 'blossom', 'blood', 'blob', 'bloat', 'blousing', 'blot'}
bo :  {'bozo'}
br :  {'bras', 'bravado', 'brackish', 'bravo', 'bran', 'brawl', 'brawn', 'bracing', 'brace', 'brag', 'bramble', 'bravura', 'brave', 'brain', 'braising', 'brat', 'braille', 'braving', 'bray', 'braking', 'brad', 'braid', 'bract', 'brake'}
bu :  {'buzz'}
by :  {'byte'}
ca :  {'cayenne'}
ce :  {'cephalic'}
ch :  {'chlorophyll'}
ci :  {'cistern'}
cl :  No winning moves.
co :  {'cove'}
cr :  No winning moves.
cu :  {'cuff'}
cy :  {'cyanide'}
cz :  {'czar'}
da :  {'dawdling', 'dawn'}
de :  {'demo', 'demur'}
dh :  {'dhoti'}
di :  {'dibbling'}
dj :  {'djinn'}
do :  {'doff'}
dr :  {'drub', 'drunk', 'drug', 'drudging', 'druid', 'drum'}
du :  {'duff'}
dw :  {'dwarves', 'dwarf'}
dy :  {'dyke'}
ea :  {'eave'}
eb :  {'ebullience'}
ec :  {'ecumenical'}
ed :  {'educable'}
ef :  No winning moves.
eg :  {'egalitarian'}
ei :  {'eider'}
ej :  {'eject'}
ek :  {'eking'}
el :  {'elms'}
em :  {'emcee'}
en :  {'envelop', 'envy', 'envoy'}
eo :  {'eons'}
ep :  {'epaulet'}
eq :  {'equinoctial', 'equestrian', 'equability', 'equilateral', 'equip', 'equivalent', 'equal', 'equidistant', 'equator', 'equities', 'equivalence', 'equinox', 'equanimity'}
er :  {'erect'}
es :  {'esquire'}
et :  {'eternal'}
eu :  {'eucalyptus'}
ev :  {'ever', 'eves', 'even'}
ew :  {'ewer', 'ewes'}
ex :  {'exult', 'exude', 'exuberance', 'exuding'}
ey :  {'eyrie'}
fa :  {'favor'}
fe :  {'fever'}
fi :  {'five'}
fj :  {'fjord'}
fl :  {'flea', 'flex', 'fleck', 'fled', 'flee', 'flesh', 'flew'}
fo :  {'foyer'}
fr :  No winning moves.
fu :  {'fuel'}
ga :  {'gaff'}
ge :  {'gear'}
gh :  {'ghoul', 'ghost'}
gl :  {'glee', 'glean', 'glen', 'gleam'}
gn :  {'gnus'}
go :  {'gown'}
gr :  {'gryphon'}
gu :  {'guzzling'}
gy :  {'gyrating', 'gyration', 'gyro'}
ha :  {'haemophilia'}
he :  {'heft'}
hi :  {'hims'}
ho :  {'hock'}
hu :  {'huff'}
hy :  {'hyena'}
ia :  {'iamb'}
ib :  {'ibex'}
ic :  {'icon'}
id :  {'idyl'}
if :  {'iffiest', 'iffy'}
ig :  {'igloo'}
ik :  {'ikon'}
il :  {'ilks'}
im :  No winning moves.
in :  {'inquietude', 'inquest'}
io :  {'iota'}
ip :  No winning moves.
ir :  {'iron'}
is :  {'isms'}
it :  {'itch'}
iv :  {'ivies'}
ja :  {'jazz'}
je :  {'jewel'}
ji :  {'jiujitsu'}
jo :  {'jowl'}
ju :  {'just'}
ka :  {'kazoo'}
ke :  {'kestrel'}
kh :  {'khaki', 'khan'}
ki :  {'kiwi'}
kl :  {'klutz'}
kn :  {'knavish', 'knave', 'knapsack', 'knack'}
ko :  {'koala'}
kr :  {'krypton'}
ku :  {'kumquat'}
la :  {'lallygag'}
le :  {'left'}
li :  {'lion'}
lo :  {'lozenge'}
lu :  {'luau'}
ly :  {'lymph'}
ma :  {'maxed', 'maxes'}
me :  {'meow'}
mi :  {'miff'}
mn :  {'mnemonic'}
mo :  {'mozzarella'}
mu :  {'muzzling'}
my :  {'myth'}
na :  {'nays'}
ne :  {'need'}
ni :  {'nirvana'}
no :  {'noxious'}
nu :  {'nuzzling'}
ny :  {'nymph'}
oa :  {'oasis', 'oases'}
ob :  {'obit'}
oc :  {'ocarina'}
od :  {'odes'}
of :  {'often'}
og :  {'ogre'}
oh :  {'ohms'}
oi :  {'oink', 'ointment'}
ok :  {'okay'}
ol :  {'olfactories'}
om :  {'ominous', 'omit', 'omission'}
on :  {'onion'}
op :  {'opossum'}
or :  {'orotund'}
os :  {'osier'}
ot :  {'other'}
ou :  {'ours'}
ov :  {'ovoid'}
ow :  {'owing'}
ox :  {'oxbow'}
oy :  No winning moves.
oz :  {'ozone'}
pa :  {'paean'}
pe :  {'pejorative'}
ph :  {'phrasal', 'phrenology'}
pi :  {'pirouetting'}
pl :  No winning moves.
pn :  No winning moves.
po :  {'poxes'}
pr :  No winning moves.
ps :  {'psalm'}
pt :  {'pterodactyl'}
pu :  {'puzzling'}
py :  {'pyorrhea'}
qu :  No winning moves.
ra :  {'raja'}
re :  {'request', 'requiem'}
rh :  {'rhubarb'}
ri :  {'riot'}
ro :  {'royal'}
ru :  {'ruff'}
sa :  {'sahib'}
sc :  {'scything'}
se :  {'sever', 'seven'}
sh :  No winning moves.
si :  {'sift'}
sk :  {'skating', 'skate'}
sl :  No winning moves.
sm :  {'smear', 'smelt', 'smell'}
sn :  {'sneezing', 'sneer', 'sneak'}
so :  {'sojourn'}
sp :  {'sphinges', 'spheroid'}
sq :  No winning moves.
st :  No winning moves.
su :  {'suturing'}
sv :  No winning moves.
sw :  {'swum', 'swung'}
sy :  No winning moves.
te :  {'tequila'}
th :  {'thalamus', 'that', 'thallium', 'thaw', 'than', 'thalami'}
ti :  {'tiff'}
to :  {'toque'}
tr :  No winning moves.
ts :  {'tsar'}
tu :  {'tuft'}
tw :  No winning moves.
ty :  {'tyke'}
tz :  {'tzar'}
ub :  {'ubiquitous', 'ubiquity'}
ud :  {'udder'}
ug :  {'ugliness', 'ugliest', 'ugly'}
uk :  {'ukulele'}
ul :  {'ulcer'}
um :  {'umiak'}
un :  {'unzip'}
up :  {'upend'}
ur :  {'uranium'}
us :  {'using'}
ut :  {'utter'}
uv :  {'uvula'}
va :  {'vain'}
ve :  {'veal'}
vi :  {'vixen'}
vo :  {'vouch'}
vu :  No winning moves.
vy :  {'vying'}
wa :  {'waffling', 'wafer', 'waft'}
we :  {'were'}
wh :  {'whys'}
wi :  {'wife'}
wo :  {'wove'}
wr :  {'wrung'}
wu :  {'wuss'}
xe :  {'xerography', 'xerographic'}
xy :  {'xylophonist', 'xylem'}
ya :  {'yank'}
ye :  {'yews'}
yi :  {'yield'}
yo :  {'yore'}
yt :  {'yttrium'}
yu :  {'yule'}
za :  No winning moves.
ze :  {'zero'}
zi :  {'zilch', 'zillion'}
zo :  {'zombi'}
zu :  {'zucchini'}
zw :  {'zwieback'}
zy :  No winning moves.


## Losers

It is of the utmost importance to decide on a dictionary before partaking in a friendly game of Ghost. Player 2 can win using the Scrabble dictionary, but player 1 always wins with the other two.

Dictionary Minimum Word Length Number of players Losers Winning moves for player 1
web2 3 2 {2} {‘a’, ‘h’, ‘l’}
web2 3 3 {3} {‘t’, ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘n’}
web2 3 4 {3, 4} {‘j’, ‘l’}
web2 4 2 {2} {‘a’, ‘h’, ‘l’, ‘e’}
web2 4 3 {3} {‘t’, ‘a’, ‘d’}
web2 4 4 {3, 4} {‘j’, ‘r’, ‘l’}
TWL06 3 2 {1} None
TWL06 3 3 {3} {‘m’, ‘n’}
TWL06 3 4 {3, 4} {‘h’, ‘q’}
TWL06 4 2 {2} {‘m’, ‘n’}
TWL06 4 3 {1,2,3} None
TWL06 4 4 {3, 4} {‘h’, ‘q’}
american-english 3 2 {2} {‘j’, ‘m’, ‘h’, ‘z’}
american-english 3 3 {2, 3} {‘n’, ‘s’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘z’, ‘p’}
american-english 3 4 {3, 4} {‘r’, ‘z’}
american-english 4 2 {2} {‘j’, ‘m’, ‘h’, ‘r’, ‘z’}
american-english 4 3 {2, 3} {‘s’, ‘p’, ‘q’}
american-english 4 4 {4} {‘m’, ‘z’}

The Moral: if you’re going to play Ghost with your mother, make sure you use the Scrabble dictionary. Then you can win when she plays ‘z.’