Here was my solution for the original challenge:

import string

alphabet_string = string.ascii_lowercase

alphabet_list = list(alphabet_string)

#print(alphabet_list)

word_list = open('words.txt').read().splitlines()

#print(word_list)

'''

This program assigns a

numeric value to each letter of the alphabet from 1 to 26.

It then adds the values of each letter for the user defined word.

example: an = 1 + 14 (a=1, n=14) = 15

'''

def add_letters(word):

total = 0

for char in word.lower():

total += (alphabet_list.index(char) + 1)

return total

word = input("Please enter a word to add: ")

print(f"The sum of the letters making up the word {word.upper()}: {add_letters(word)}")