A crazy, surprising run continued

[mdyak]

Congrats to folkslinger on setting another all-time high in the APPW competition last month. It took skill and remarkable perseverance to achieve a 48 pt value. After I reached 50k 5x5 best/longest word records I thought I might see how high I could go in the monthly competition but you've made it so I don't have to bother anymore.

Congrats to Spike on setting a personal best above 46 pts and to mdyak for a solid 3rd place finish of 40 pts. Also, welcome back to mcdonna.

Thanks so much for the acknowledgment! I would try harder, but... I want to play more and there seem to be fewer and fewer high point words out there to play! I end up throwing away a lot of games before they time out, and I think this month I'll just let it go and back to getting more longest and best word records. The other gets boring after a while, and the whole point I think is to have fun!

[lalatan]

Thanks folkslinger. I agree about Spike. He is a long word pioneer and still comes up with some fantastic finds. He and Aussiemum were my inspirations when I was starting out.

McDonna, I haven't been able to view either of your 2 recent posts. I hope you're not getting flagged as spam, which is sometimes a problem on this forum...

[mcdonna]

Thanks, lalatan. I didn't realize they were visible ... yet not. I contacted Stephen. He replied that he's on holiday and would get to it as soon as he could.

In brief, I said how much I missed everybody the last two years. And explained that I had to pull away because I was so addicted and failing to get work done. Then last fall I was diagnosed with ADHD ... and then some stuff about that which I think is why my posts languished in the Unapproved queue.

Anyway I did miss y'all and really appreciate your welcoming me back. And I agree that Spike is AWESOME. In addition to being a great player, he made some posts years ago with helpful advice. In 2017 I saved this list in Evernote:

components, courtesy of Spike:
PSYCHO, NEURO, IMMUNO, PHYSIO, AUTO, PHYTO, HYPER, MICRO (if you find this, look for a preceeding SUB), OVER, UNDER, ELECTRO, MAGNETO, ULTRA, SUPER, PARA, PHOTO, CO,
ABILITY ABILITIES, LOGY, LOGIES, (obviously), GRAPHY, GRAPHIES, ISMS, ISTS
PALAEO, PALEO
-NESSES, -LINESSES, -EDNESSES, -FULNESSES, -LESSNESSES
-HEARTEDNESS(ES) words: CHICKEN, STOUT, STRONG, BIG, SOFT, BROKEN, LARGE, LARGE
-HANDEDNESS(ES) words: LEFT, RIGHT, EVEN, SURE, UNDER, FORE
-HEADEDNESS(ES) words: ROUND, RIGHT, STRONG, BULL, BONE, WOODEN, SORE, PEA

[Spike1007]

mcdonna, thanks, and welcome back!

[2cute]

Well. Brisul, I had something happen in about the first month I played here, and I have never had it happen again. I exactly matched the high score, AND the most words, AND the longest word, AND the word with the most points all on the same board. Of course, that meant I got credit for exactly zero records (and deserved none). I called that an "invisible game". Has anyone else ever done it? And just FYI -- I did not use all the same words, because I got credit for some unique ones, and the game had been played about a dozen times previously.

Wow, what a unique experience. No, that's never happened to me. I've gotten exactly the same best & longest word as the best score several times & I guess I had a semi-invisible game.

[2cute]

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.)

How do you know how long it took you to find each word?

[bwt1213]

Wow, what a unique experience. No, that's never happened to me. I've gotten exactly the same best & longest word as the best score several times & I guess I had a semi-invisible game.

I've matched on three and come close on the fourth maybe a half-dozen times in the last 8 years. Getting the same points and the same high score is the "easiest" to match. Getting the same longest word is not extremely difficult. But then getting the same highest-point word seems the most difficult. Especially with the high-point-word mavens around. Yeah, right, run the gauntlet and then have to find "unrepresentativenesses" besides. Or a 25 letter name for a number you can't comprehend or a compound you never knew existed.

[mcdonna]

... Or a 25 letter name for a number you can't comprehend or a compound you never knew existed.

Yeah over the years I've learned how to mash bits of words together to make mystery medical compounds. I even have an idea of what some of the bits mean.

Today I found my first incomprehensible number! Though it's only 19 letters: QUINQUAGINTILLIARDS

Evidently while I was on my 2-year sabbatical either Stephen added a cosmic scale to the boards or else people started seeing what had been there all along. I was flummoxed at first, then remembered Google. (Not googol.) And turned up a Wikipedia page with the formulae for compounding these numbers. According to it, QUINQUAGINTILLIARDS is 10³⁰³ in the Traditional European (aka Peletier or "long scale") format. And yes I used their table while working the board. Is that cheating? Give me a few years and I might not need it any more.

In case anyone else is interested, the page is wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash Names_of_large_numbers.

[Spike1007]

mcdonna, a few things changed while you were away. Stephen enlarged the dictionary (with more to come), as you noticed. There are also now a few 25-letter words. In addition, an artificial cap on word scores has been lifted, so that can go over 45 points/word (and Stephen talked about the possibility of making rarity values for words board-dependent, affecting the point value).

[lalatan]

How do you know how long it took you to find each word?

After I found the word, I looked at the countdown timer for the game and subtracted the remaining time from 3 minutes. Those stats were from 2 years ago. Later this month I think I'll try the same experiment to see where I'm at.

[2cute]

After I found the word, I looked at the countdown timer for the game and subtracted the remaining time from 3 minutes. Those stats were from 2 years ago. Later this month I think I'll try the same experiment to see where I'm at.

While you were playing? Wow!

[lalatan]

Not even eggshattering news but I said I was gonna do the experiment again and felt somewhat behooved to thus share the results:

TIME TAKEN 22-6-22.jpg
As I suspected I've become quicker finding words but, after 2 more years of game play, that should be expected. (btw these were all games where I set the best/longest word records)

Naboka and BoggleOtaku: thanks for the intel on DYSMORPHOPHOBIC. I set a record on another board for DYSMORPHOPHOBIA. The day after I got BoggleOtaku's game when there were only a total of 26 available words. Matched his record then. I think the word is cemented in my mind now...