Cheaters

[Meerkatsrule]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with looking for the longest words in the puzzle as a sort of mental challenge for oneself, or competition with oneself and not with others. It's an entirely different way of looking at the puzzles. As a senior citizen I just try to compete against my average. BTW having studied Russian 50 years ago, I love your name, mydak.

[Spike1007]

pdiddp, while I appreciate the "may he rest in peace" part for Spike1005, he's till technically alive. (Comatose?) I just kind of combined goals & didn't go back. Maybe I should bring him back for another run at high average points/word some month when I feel like clicking a lot.

[pdiddp]

pdiddp, while I appreciate the "may he rest in peace" part for Spike1005, he's till technically alive. (Comatose?) I just kind of combined goals & didn't go back. Maybe I should bring him back for another run at high average points/word some month when I feel like clicking a lot.

Oops! Sorry 'bout that! I thought maybe 005 was the one that got lost in the switchover.

[Spike1007]

I guess I wasn't too clear on who made it & who didn't. 005 made it through. It was 007 who was lost, but came back with Stephen's help.. (I did let 006 go, but he barely had a life anyway.)

[lalatan]

I have been playing this game a long time and lalatan, among many others, makes the playing that much more fun for me as I am a slow old brain, an even slower typist and my vocabulary is definitely average. I LOVE to see the long strung-together prefixes and suffixes padding out the words that they (too many user-names to list but you know who they are) have a knack for finding while I'm only finding an 8 letter word... The great thing about lalatan, Spike and many other of the longest word finders is that they are humble and supportive and setting a great example of how to have actual fun in competition.

Thanks for writing these lovely words for us, inkita. I'm glad our gameplay enhances your playing enjoyment.

[mdyak]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with looking for the longest words in the puzzle as a sort of mental challenge for oneself, or competition with oneself and not with others. It's an entirely different way of looking at the puzzles. As a senior citizen I just try to compete against my average. BTW having studied Russian 50 years ago, I love your name, mydak.

Okay, now I'm thinking back to Russian class and wondering what the connection is... it's mdyak, btw... not mydak... but I'm still not coming up with Russian to match.

[Spike1007]

mdyak, Sorry I got your name wrong earlier. Apparently I can't read.

By the way, when I tried looking up "mydak russian", google gave me mudak. Make your own conclusions.

[Brisul]

If we wiped out all of the cheaters' stats, the average score per game HOF list would lose 19 or 20 of the top 21 players. That would actually put me in the top ten or so. It's ridiculous.

[zhensler]

If we wiped out all of the cheaters' stats, the average score per game HOF list would lose 19 or 20 of the top 21 players. That would actually put me in the top ten or so. It's ridiculous.

Are you saying a cheater is anyone who dumps a game before the time's up so the score doesn't count, or what exactly? All the people who play Average Score Per Game game are cheaters?

...Never mind. Had never looked at the Hall of Fame before. I see what you mean.

[bwt1213]

I looked up all the players in the lifetime hall of fame for average points per game. Here's what I saw:

#	username	games played	total points	av. score	av. words	most words	highest score	total words
1.	TheIceberg	16 games	54,502 pts.	3406.37 pts.	538.94 words	794 words	5,318 pts.	8,902
2.	cheater	1 games	3,333 pts.	3333.00 pts.	532.00 words	532 words	3,333 pts.	532
3.	purrfect	77 games	219,756 pts.	2853.97 pts.	457.50 words	786 words	5,099 pts.	35,227
4.	BogglingBoggler	53 games	144,172 pts.	2720.22 pts.	434.01 words	794 words	5,318 pts.	25,713
5.	shadowwalker	4 games	10,602 pts.	2650.50 pts.	415.75 words	765 words	5,006 pts.	19,519
6.	kgator	176 games	436,549 pts.	2480.37 pts.	393.19 words	805 words	5,552 pts.	111,873
7.	UTrsc	796 games	1,728,681 pts.	2169.64 pts.	356.55 words	658 words	4,092 pts.	288,476
8.	jakeflow	1 games	1,804 pts.	1804.00 pts.	305.00 words	305 words	1,804 pts.	305
9.	ThePeggyHill	33 games	57,049 pts.	1728.76 pts.	275.69 words	502 words	3,173 pts.	9,098
10.	askrobot	1 games	1,721 pts.	1721.00 pts.	281.00 words	281 words	1,721 pts.	1,033
11.	butts	139 games	213,791 pts.	1538.05 pts.	250.48 words	660 words	4,227 pts.	34,898
12.	minuum	3 games	3,650 pts.	1216.67 pts.	219.67 words	282 words	1,588 pts.	659
13.	Goodgertron	2 games	2,366 pts.	1183.00 pts.	215.50 words	292 words	1,658 pts.	431
14.	clearlyhax	4 games	4,673 pts.	1168.25 pts.	205.50 words	256 words	1,653 pts.	822
15.	KiriOkosProgram	14 games	15,246 pts.	1088.97 pts.	193.83 words	302 words	1,692 pts.	13,047
16.	WordTwistCyborg	23 games	24,726 pts.	1075.05 pts.	195.57 words	397 words	2,293 pts.	5,789
17.	felddy	5 games	5,296 pts.	1059.20 pts.	191.00 words	310 words	1,692 pts.	955
18.	ObviouslyLegit	1 games	1,038 pts.	1038.00 pts.	153.00 words	153 words	1,038 pts.	291
19.	jajabearbaby	138 games	137,141 pts.	993.75 pts.	186.56 words	375 words	2,050 pts.	25,747
20.	NerdFencer	71 games	67,496 pts.	950.47 pts.	174.23 words	405 words	2,325 pts.	16,812

zhensler: I dumped the list for everyone to review. I don't know about you, but I'd guess that almost all of those 5 x 5 players are cheaters. A good number of them are actually known to be cheaters. If you get someone known to be NOT a cheater, like fasteddieb, and note that he's averaging about 215 words per game and leading everyone else by far, then what do you call someone averaging three or four times that many, and with a best game that would require a typing speed in excess of the world record for a human? Every one of the top seven listed here are cheaters. Beginners to this site who want to accuse others of cheating ought to look at what a real cheater looks like. It's not a case of "gee, they're so much better than me". It's "gee, they're so much better than flesh and blood". One more thing to note: if you play a game and then decide that the score wouldn't be good enough and bail on it THAT GAME STILL COUNTS AS A GAME PLAYED IN YOUR LIFETIME POINTS PER GAME AVERAGE. So, if fasteddieb has a lifetime average of 830 or so imagine what it would be; he has to have abandoned some (phone calls, sudden illness, etc.). Now look at those average points per game and think: is "WordTwistCyborg" a human? How about "KiriOkosProgram"? "clearlyhax"? "askrobot"? Yes, I think Brisul has a right to be unhappy.

[Spike1007]

Edit: This in response to a post from bwt1213, which seems to have disappeared.

I'll buy all that, except I'd substitute "average points per game" for "average points per word". Dedicated (and real) players have played MANY more games than any of these guys have, and have kind of stuck to what's humanly possible. I think admin has kind of stuck to scrubbing monthly stats for obvious cheaters. I imagine that dealing with these is more of a challenge. (I think it's interesting that ObviouslyLegit managed to get 1038 points with 153 words (and playing only one board). (I guess I ignored others who did even better.) In the mean time, I say that we should go ahead & elevate Brisul to superstar status.

[bwt1213]

Yes, Spike, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. I never noticed that I had typed "average points per word" instead of "average points per game" until you mentioned it, and then I had to go back and read it twice to see the error. Sorry.

[Spike1007]

My mind does the same thing. Sorry, I was kind of nitpicking there (only because I generally go for average points per word & noticed that). I'd never really paid attention to the hall of fame before. That would be hard to clean up, especially when it comes to the more borderline cases.

By the way, bwt, your original post seems to have disappeared. I don't know if you deleted it, or you tried to edit it & it went the way of other edited posts where it was tagged as spam or something. For those who want to know, go to 5x5 hall of fame and click on the header for average points per game (I think).

Never mind, the post is back.

[Spike1007]

bwt, when you said that a game is still counted in your lifetime average points/game when you bail on it, I'm not sure that's true. I go for big words, and when I don't find one (more than one is rare, and I think my max is 3), I generally abandon the game. (I do let some boards just time out while I'm still looking, or I get distracted, or whatever. Those count.) My lifetime average words per game is about 0.8, while average points per game is 18+. I bail on WAY more boards than I accept, and if those were counted, my averages would easily go down by a factor of 10 (and I'm being kind to myself).

(Sorry, I'm nitpicking again.) That said though, it doesn't alter your conclusions about cheaters in the hall of fame.

[bwt1213]

Yes, I did try to edit my post. Yes, I got a note saying it was flagged as spam. I thought it would come back, but I guess I was wrong. As far as games counting in your lifetime total games played (and therefore your lifetime average) I did check that once before, a long time ago. I checked the games played, then abandoned a game and checked again. The point total didn't change, but the game total increased by one. Perhaps that's changed now. I haven't checked it that way recently.