A self-fulfiller (also called autological word) is a word or an expression that expresses a property that it also possesses. For example, the word short is short, noun is a noun, English is English, pentasyllabic has five syllables, word is a word, and sesquipedalian is a long word. The word or expression thus speaks for itself because it self-references one of its own properties.

In 2011 Dave Morice observed that the word LUCK requires 7 penstrokes, BLACKJACK requires 21 penstrokes, FREEZING POINT requires 32 penstrokes and HOURS IN A DAY requires 24 penstrokes. But there are other possibilities to assign integer values to each letter in the alphabet that give a special or literal meaning to particular words or expressions. We list a few examples.

TEN is spelled with ten raised dots in Braille.

braille
The word TEN in Braille.

FIFTEEN is spelled with 15 dots and dashes in International Morse Code.

morse
The word FIFTEEN in morse code.

TWELVE is worth 12 points in Scrabble.

scrabble
The word TWELVE in Scrabble.

Assignment

Example

>>> penstrokes = [3, 3, 1, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 4, 2, 3, 3]
>>> value = lettervalue(penstrokes)
>>> value['L']
2
>>> value['U']
1
>>> value['C']
1
>>> value['K']
3

>>> wordvalue('LUCK', penstrokes)
7
>>> wordvalue('blackjack', penstrokes)
21
>>> wordvalue('FREEZING POINT', penstrokes)
32
>>> wordvalue('Hours in a Day', penstrokes)
24
>>> wordvalue('Twenty-nine', penstrokes)
29

>>> braille = (1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4)
>>> wordvalue('TEN', braille)
10
>>> wordvalue('ten + ten', braille)
20

>>> morse = [2, 4, 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 1, 3, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4]
>>> wordvalue('fifteen', morse)
15
>>> wordvalue('Se7en', morse)
7

>>> scrabble = (1, 3, 3, 2, 1, 4, 2, 4, 1, 8, 5, 1, 3, 1, 1, 3, 10, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 8, 4, 10)
>>> wordvalue('TWELVE', scrabble)
12
>>> wordvalue('Life, Universe and Everything', scrabble)
42