from random import choice
word_list=["alien", "sponge", "bar", "night", "valkyrie", "water", "gentle", "python", "boring", "hand", "cereal", "word", "sad", "minecraft", "lamb", "turkey", "fire", "whelp", "dwarves", "cyan", "skyrim", "pie", "cake", "portal", "life", "death", "ogre", "mister"]
selected_word=choice(word_list)
characters=len(selected_word)
length=characters
num=characters-1
word=list(selected_word)
guessed_word_string="-"*characters
guessed_word=list(guessed_word_string)
print "Note that this is only a test, and therefore, there are only a few words in the game."
win=False
lose=False
tries=input("How many tries do you want? (Standard is 10, maximum is 50) Please remember to use numbers instead of words, for the latter will crash the game: ")
if tries>50:
    while tries>50:
        print "Oops, you did something wrong. Please do not excede the maximum number of tries in your selection."
        tries=input("Go ahead, try again: ")
print "The word is", characters, "letters long."
print "You have", tries, "tries left."
game="running"
while game=="running":
    if win==True:
        print "Congratulations! you guessed the word!"
        game="finished"
    elif lose==True:
        print "Oh, bummer... You lose. :( Maybe you want to try again?"
        game="finished"
    else:
        while win==lose:
            if word==guessed_word:
                win=True
            elif tries==0:
                lose=True
            else:
                if win==True:
                    print "Congratulations! you guessed the word!"
                elif lose==True:
                    print "Oh, bummer... You lose. :( Maybe you want to try again?"
                else:
                    print guessed_word_string
                    answer=raw_input("Choose a letter to guess: ")
                    while len(answer)!=1:
                        answer=raw_input("You must select a single letter: ")
                    if answer in word:
                        while answer!=word[num]:
                            num-=1
                        if guessed_word[num]==answer:
                            print "Silly! You already selected that letter!"
                        else:
                            guessed_word[num]=answer
                            num=characters-1
                            guessed_word_string=""
                            while length>0:
                                length-=1
                                guessed_word_string=guessed_word[length]+guessed_word_string
                            length=characters
                            print "Correct!"
                    else:
                        print "Nope, try again!"
                        tries-=1
                        print "You have", tries, "tries left."