Ytukyg

I came up to solve this problem in javascript:
Given a string of words, you need to find the highest scoring word.

Each letter of a word scores points according to it's position in the alphabet: a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 etc.

You need to return the highest scoring word as a string.

If two words score the same, return the word that appears earliest in the original string.

All letters will be lowercase and all inputs will be valid.

my code is the following:

    function high(x){

  x = x.split(" ");

  var bestWord = 0;

  var bestWordS = "";

  for (var i = 0; i < x.length; i++){

    var word = x[i].split("");

    var letter;

    var wordScore;

      switch(word[i]){

        case "a":

          letter = 1;

          break;

        case "b":

          letter = 2;

          break;

        case "c":

          letter = 3;

          break;

        case "d":

          letter = 4;

          break;

        case "e":

          letter = 5;

          break;

        case "f":

          letter = 6;

          break;

        case "g":

          letter = 7;

          break;

        case "h":

          letter = 8;

          break;

        case "i":

          letter = 9;

          break;

        case "j":

          letter = 10;

          break;

        case "k":

          letter = 11;

          break;

        case "l":

          letter = 12;

          break;

        case "m":

          letter = 13;

          break;

        case "n":

          letter = 14;

          break;

        case "o":

          letter = 15;

          break;

        case "p":

          letter = 16;

          break;

        case "q":

          letter = 17;

          break;

        case "r":

          letter = 18;

          break;

        case "s":

          letter = 19;

          break;

        case "t":

          letter = 20;

          break;

        case "u":

          letter = 21;

          break;

        case "v":

          letter = 22;

          break;

        case "w":

          letter = 23;

          break;

        case "x":

          letter = 24;

          break;

        case "y":

          letter = 25;

          break;

        case "z":

          letter = 26;

          break;     

      }

      wordScore += letter;

      if ( wordScore > bestWord){

        bestWord = wordScore;

        bestWordS = x[i];

      }

    }

    return bestWordS;



}

I don't know what is wrong the function always returns an empty string ( "" )

Assuming that the "score" of each word is as in your example, you could simply:
Edit: fixed an issue with the sort function, thanks to @KoshVery

 const scoresByLetter = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".split('');

    const sentence = "azzzzim zoom";

    const words = sentence.split(" ");

    

    //Declearing a function to calculate score for a single word

    const calculateWordWeight = (word)=>{

        return Array.prototype.reduce.apply(word, [(score, letter) =>{

            return score + scoresByLetter.indexOf(letter);

        },0]);

    };

    

    //Calculating score for each word

    const scores = words.map(calculateWordWeight);

    

    //Finding the highest score value

    let highestScore = Math.max(scores);



    //Then finding the highest value index

    let highestScoreIndex = scores.indexOf(highestScore);



    //Finally, finding the word by the index

    let wordWithHighestScore = words[highestScoreIndex];

    

    alert(wordWithHighestScore);

You might store all your letters in a string and use indexOf to get a letter score.

Also you might use one reduce to get a word score and another reduce to find a word with the greatest score:

const abc = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';



const high = (x) => x.split(/s+/).reduce((a, w) => (w = [w, [...w].reduce((a, l) => a += 1 + abc.indexOf(l), 0)]) && ~~a[1] > w[1] ? a : w, )[0]



console.log(high('lorem ipsum dolor'));

Update for those who have troubles reading oneliners,

a very readable version using two nested for loops:

const abc = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';



const high = (x) => {

  let words = x.split(/s+/);

  let best, maxscore = 0;

  for (let word of words) {

    let score = 0;

    for (let letter of word) {

      score += 1 + abc.indexOf(letter);

    }

    if (score > maxscore) {

      best = word;

      maxscore = score;

    }

  }

  return best;

}



console.log(high('lorem ipsum dolor'));