whats wrong with this?

can anyone tell me why this code doesn't work how its supposed to, its the hangman game but it doesn't play how its supposed to

#!/bin/bash
NoAttempts="0"
livesgiven="5"
LivesRemain=$livesgiven
LettersAttempted=""
wordfile=words
numwords=0
function menu()
{
clear
cat << menu

~~~~~~~~~~~~  DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Enter your selection \(Y/N\):
menu
read selection
case $selection in
[Yy]\)   randomwords clear ;;
[Nn]\)   echo "Goodbye!"
        clear ;;
*\)      menu;;

esac
\}
function randomwords\(\)
\{
while read line
do
        wordline[$numwords]=$\(echo -n "$line"\)
        numwords=$\(\($numwords \+1\)\)
done < $wordfile
numwords=$\(\($numwords -1\)\)
selection=$\(\($RANDOM%$numwords\+1\)\)
wordpuzzle=$\(echo -n $\{wordline[$selection]\}|tr [a-z] "-"\)
letter_entry
\}
function letter_entry\(\)
\{
                                                                                                                                           24,1          Top
lettercount=$\(echo -n $wordpuzzle | wc -c \)
liveslost=$\(\($livesgiven-$LivesRemain\)\)
clear
echo "This is a $lettercount letter word."
echo "You have made $NoAttempts attempts, with $LivesRemain lives remaining and have attempted the following letters: $LettersAttempted"
echo "Please enter a letter to guess the puzzle:"
echo "$wordpuzzle"
read letter_new
puzzle=$\(echo $wordpuzzle | grep -c "-"\)
while [ $puzzle -gt 0 ]
do
        case $letter_new in
                [A-Za-z]\)  LettersAttempted=$letter_new$LettersAttempted
                        NoAttempts=$\(\($NoAttempts \+ 1\)\)
                        lettercheck=$\(echo $\{wordline[$selection]\} | grep -c $letter_new\)
                if [ $lettercheck -eq 0 ]
                then
                        LivesRemain=$\(\($LivesRemain-1\)\)
                                if [[ $LiveRemain == 0 ]]
                                then
                                        clear
                                        echo "Sorry you have no more lives left. You lost! Thank you for playing Hangman."
                                        lostmessage
                                else
                                        letter_entry
                                fi
                else
                         wordpuzzle=$\(echo $\{wordline[$selection]\} | tr -c [$LettersAttempted] "-"\)
                        letter_entry
                fi ;;
                *\)      echo " Please only enter an alphabet"
                        letter_entry ;;
        esac
done
clear
echo "Congratulations!
The word was $\(echo $selection\). You have successfully completed the word puzzle with $NoAttempts attempts and the lost of $liveslost lives"
echo "Thank you for playing Hangman!"
while true
do
        echo "Do you want to play again? \(Y/N\)?"
        read prompt
                case "$prompt" in
                [Yy]\)   menu ;;
                [Nn]\)   return 1 ;;
                                                                *\)      echo "Answer Y or N" ;;
                                                        esac
                                                done
\}
menu

couple of hints:

wrap the code in [ code ] and [ /code ] tags ( without spaces ) so that indentation and stuff
is not lost when posting.

Your "tr" commands need to look like this:

tr "[stuff]" "-"

You must have double quotes around that first argument.

However, this really isn't the problem. The problem is the design.
You need to exchange hyphens for correct letters -- not the other way around.

For this, you will need a much more sophisticated logic for exchanging
correct letters for hyphens.

I recommend commenting out all the "clear" lines.

Then running the thing through bash using:

bash -xvf hangman

Hopefully your screen emulator has a scroll bar and you can watch what
commands get executed.

Good luck.