A crazy, surprising run continued

[crazykate]

5 seconds to find preposterousnesses? Impressive!

[lalatan]

image_228.jpg
crazykate's comment in the "Cheateres" thread made me curious about how long I take to play a game on avg while looking for best/long word records. So I built a simple spreadsheet and logged my results for May 27. I thought I'd post it here so I wouldn't clutter that thread. I was surprised by the number of games where I found new words. (Stephen must be cranking out more new boards. Btw I take a screenshot of new words I find worth over 22 pts and file them in a folder. Then I know when I first found the word.)

[lalatan]

Congratulations on your impressive results!
I'm not sure the board title is accurate anymore though, there's too much method to your madness to call it crazy and by now none of us are surprised by your continued success in racking up records.

I too experience periods of diminished enthusiasm for the game, but when that happens I change my goals and that keeps things interesting for me. I know you tend to stick to your principles, but maybe you could log out occasionally to try a new style off the record?

Thanks Kate! I posted a reply yesterday, edited it and then it was flagged as spam. I waited til the end of the day for Stephen to approve it but he didn't. So late last night I nuked it and started over today.

It's true the thread title is outdated now. I also realized it's somewhat redundant but it seems once it's started, there's no changing it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually tried playing points/game a few times under 1 of my old usernames. I wasn't good at it. My mind always wanted to look for long words. I play about 1/2 as many games/month now as I did early last year. Instead of playing as much I found there's a lot of good info and entertainment on YouTube. I tried the trivia game on this website but it didn't engage me like Boggle. I still enjoy the long word game so I'll wait and see where it goes. I used to be in hurry to collect records but not so much anymore.

Enjoy the games.

[lalatan]

Thanks Spike! It's always good to see your username on the forum and the APPW trophy list.

I tried editing the post before yours and it became spam somehow.

[Spike1007]

Good luck on your goal of 30k by year's end, and congrats on the 25k!

[crazykate]

When I was kid I liked to watch the car odometer roll over to the next thousand. When it rolled over to 100k miles from 99,999 I thought that was best ever. Strangely enough (maybe not ) I like when it happens in WordTwist too. Yesterday I reached 25k 5x5 best/longest records since starting May 2017. It's gratifying. I should reach 30k by year end as long as I'm able and willing to do so. (Lately, I'm losing some of my zeal for playing but the new boards Stephen issued last Dec. helped me remain interested.)

Congratulations on your impressive results!
I'm not sure the board title is accurate anymore though, there's too much method to your madness to call it crazy and by now none of us are surprised by your continued success in racking up records.

I too experience periods of diminished enthusiasm for the game, but when that happens I change my goals and that keeps things interesting for me. I know you tend to stick to your principles, but maybe you could log out occasionally to try a new style off the record?

[lalatan]

When I was kid I liked to watch the car odometer roll over to the next thousand. When it rolled over to 100k miles from 99,999 I thought that was best ever. Strangely enough (maybe not ) I like when it happens in WordTwist too. Yesterday I reached 25k 5x5 best/longest records since starting May 2017. It's gratifying. I should reach 30k by year end as long as I'm able and willing to do so. (Lately, I'm losing some of my zeal for playing but the new boards Stephen issued last Dec. helped me remain interested.)

[lalatan]

We all do what we can. At the risk of being platitudinal, "Life is what happens when you had something else planned."

[Razorflame]

It seems like I wasn't able to keep my word about playing on here for 30-60 minutes a day when I made that post 8 months ago

Here's hoping that I am able to start making that commitment again.

[Spike1007]

Thanks for letting me know. I miss the main-page notification that a message was waiting. Also, congrats on the October trophy!

[lalatan]

Spike, I sent you a message a while ago if you want to read it. It seems to me this forum gives you no indication you received 1 unless you look at the message center.

[lalatan]

I've waffled on whether I think things have changed since the migration.

I gave it 2.5 months before I commented for the same reason. It still could just be my impression of what's going on.

I see duplicate boards (sometimes within just a few clicks), and sometimes closely-spaced boards that have basically the same long word, but maybe one without the plural, or maybe an S rather than a Z. Their stock of longer words is obviously limited, and after a while you've seen most of them.

Agreed. Sometimes I marvel that they come up with as many new words as they do. But it could be that they were out there all along and I just didn't see them til now.

Since I do like getting new best words, I'm currently kind of fan of fast recycling. I agree that seeing what someone else has been able to do with a board is a good indicator of whether to play it or not (so a 1k score recycling criterion definitely makes sense for some), but that almost has the opposite effect on me. I don't often do better on a board where a 14+ letter word has been found, but I play them anyway, mostly to track my mental acuity & see if I can match it. (If I miss too many, it's time to take a break.)

I do the same at times. Some games that are ripe for recycling I will play to push it over the threshold cliff. Haha, so I guess I'm a fan of fast recycling to some degree.

Off topic, but I found VIOLINISTICALLY a few days ago. I was desperate to find something to go with -CALLY, and that was the best that I could do. It worked, but wasn't worth enough to keep.

Cool, I like that one. Good find!

[Spike1007]

I've waffled on whether I think things have changed since the migration. lalatan, you play a LOT of games, so you might have a better take on it than I do. I don't notice an especially higher number of new boards now. (I could swear that I've seen more in the past, but not consistently.) Then again, I'm still trying only for new best words (past a certain threshold), so I'm not clicking through as many boards as in the past. Post-migration, I started to think that they'd redone the "rarity" value of words. A lot of things I found that I thought should have qualified as ultra-rare were just rare, but I don't keep records to prove that. Anyway, I just occasionally see "trends" that are probably just statistical flukes.

I see duplicate boards (sometimes within just a few clicks), and sometimes closely-spaced boards that have basically the same long word, but maybe one without the plural, or maybe an S rather than a Z. Their stock of longer words is obviously limited, and after a while you've seen most of them. (That doesn't mean I'll find them when they're there.)

Since I do like getting new best words, I'm currently kind of fan of fast recycling. I agree that seeing what someone else has been able to do with a board is a good indicator of whether to play it or not (so a 1k score recycling criterion definitely makes sense for some), but that almost has the opposite effect on me. I don't often do better on a board where a 14+ letter word has been found, but I play them anyway, mostly to track my mental acuity & see if I can match it. (If I miss too many, it's time to take a break.)

Off topic, but I found VIOLINISTICALLY a few days ago. I was desperate to find something to go with -CALLY, and that was the best that I could do. It worked, but wasn't worth enough to keep.

[lalatan]

I swear they are recycling the exact same boards! I play a game that has only been played 2 or 3 times and recognize it as one I already played that had been played a LOT more times when I saw it last. It's taking longer and longer to find a game that looks like fun, and then so many of them are reruns... boring...

They do recycle boards all the time after they're played 50-53 times. In the past I've played a game, set records for it and then have seen the same board w/o the record I set. Sometimes they rotate the board with the same word in it. I like the blend of boards with previously unfound words mixed in with words I encountered before. Since the move to a new server, I am offered more new boards than previously so maybe the daemon does its thing more often now. It seems to take me a little longer to find the boards I want to play but it's not bad. Amazingly, I was able to play 6 games with 45 pt words in them last month. The most I was ever offered before was 3. There were months when I saw no games with 45 pts words.

I feel bad for the speed players having to look through more games. As bwt suggested, the scoring limit for recycling games should be increased from 600 pts to a higher one, like 1k. The current limit doesn't account for the increased abilities of players and is outdated as a result.

One problem of being a long word player is that once you've set records on each of the big 3 (45 pts words) that is the ceiling for moving any higher. As a speed player you can always better your personal high score, words total, avg/game etc. In January 2018 I tried to set 1k best/longest word records and was successful in 25 days. I was hard at it every day (I think I played over 1k games to get there). So this month I thought I'd revisit that challenge to see how many records I can collect w/o playing so many games. (So far I've played 385 games this month and the totals are coming along nicely.) Consequently I'm not sure if I'll try for any APPW trophies or not. If someone gets a decent avg (>15 pts in 4x4 and >35 pts in 5x5 imho) I won't compete.

Edit: I set 1,248 best/longest word records during the month of May and retained 1,214 of them at month end. I hit 1k records on the 25th, the same day as last time but with much less stress and effort than before.

[Razorflame]

I swear they are recycling the exact same boards! I play a game that has only been played 2 or 3 times and recognize it as one I already played that had been played a LOT more times when I saw it last. It's taking longer and longer to find a game that looks like fun, and then so many of them are reruns... boring...

If you only go for longest words, then you are going to find a ton of repeating boards.