please, do not raise issues to ask for help, use questions instead

print your input. your code has false positives, for example it returns 1 for [";~P", "; D"]. neither of these is a valid smiley according to the rule: P is not a valid mouth, and there can be no whitespace between the eyes and the mouth

I think there is somethin wrong in the random tests. For each of these three tests I have the same amount of smileys but the error is: "Test failed. Expected: 2 But was: 3".

Has somemone the same problem?

total = 2:
"-P" "8)" ":-)" "8~P" ";)" "P" "-)" "8 ("

total = 0:
";~P" "8("

total = 2:
"8D" ": D" "8 D" ";D" ":)" "8-P"