Sorry for this Great Wall of Text. I started this after Naboka graciously replied to an earlier post of mine with a lengthy description of their methods for having improved their scoring in a remarkable and quick fashion (I’ve now moved Naboka onto the list of people who I aspire to beat if I have a one-in-a-hundred game). I wanted to respond in kind at the time, but I found it more difficult to type what I’ve got below than I guessed it would be. In part, I think I can trace that difficulty to the reality that I literally never talk about my playing this game with anyone, including my wife or our two girls. They know I play, but I feel like I might bore them to talk about it.
Anyway, I see now that Naboka may have deleted their earlier reply. At the risk of seeming out-of-context, here’s that wall of text I’ve just finished describing what I think has got me where I am, along with what I’m working on and one potential tool that could bump me up to another tier.
Things I think I do pretty well (these are not unique to me, I’m just saying that they’re part of my skill set):
Orderliness of word entry - if I perceive the appropriate sets of letters are present, I’ll type out what’s available in a reasonably repeatable manner. So instead of having muscle memory for single words, I feel like I have muscle memory for sets of words. When things are really clicking on a suitable board, I can pile on a lot of words/points pretty quickly.
Building new words by adding to the end - I suspect that everyone whose play styles emphasize word/point totals are doing the same thing, but I feel like I really emphasize word sets that build upon each other one letter at a time. I haven’t yet been able to think of one with 8+ letters, but there are a lot of 7-lettered words where the first three letters make a valid word, the first four likewise make a word, etc. NURSERS and PURSERS are two random examples that are available somewhat often. This complements the item just above.
Typing - I consulted Captain Obvious, who says that being able to type pretty quickly is a necessity for reaching beyond a certain plateau of words and total score. I’m 53 and was very interested in computers when I was young. I took a typing class (in 9th grade I think?) and put some energy into doing well and getting to some pretty decent words per minute. I hadn’t actually tested myself in decades until just now, but I got 84 wpm with 98% accuracy, which I think is better than what I could bang out on a typewriter in days of old. Typing speed helps both 1) on boards I could theoretically find many more words than I can actually type in two minutes, and 2) on boards with relatively fewer words, since I can knock those out and then have some time left over to look for words that just don’t jump out at me.
Building new words by adding to the end - I suspect that everyone whose play styles emphasize word/point totals are doing the same thing, but I feel like I really emphasize word sets that build upon each other one letter at a time. I haven’t yet been able to think of one with 8+ letters, but there are a lot of 7-lettered words where the first three letters make a valid word, the first four likewise make a word, etc. NURSERS and PURSERS are two random examples that are available somewhat often. This complements the item just above.
Typing - I consulted Captain Obvious, who says that being able to type pretty quickly is a necessity for reaching beyond a certain plateau of words and total score. I’m 53 and was very interested in computers when I was young. I took a typing class (in 9th grade I think?) and put some energy into doing well and getting to some pretty decent words per minute. I hadn’t actually tested myself in decades until just now, but I got 84 wpm with 98% accuracy, which I think is better than what I could bang out on a typewriter in days of old. Typing speed helps both 1) on boards I could theoretically find many more words than I can actually type in two minutes, and 2) on boards with relatively fewer words, since I can knock those out and then have some time left over to look for words that just don’t jump out at me.
What I’m working on:
Spending less time trying letter combos that just aren’t words - this was another item I talked about with Captain Obvious, who confirmed that time spent typing letter combos that aren’t words is counter-productive (especially if I fear that I’ve mistyped it and try it a second time, doink). At the present time, I could probably improve just as much from teaching myself that certain letter combos just aren’t words as I could from learning new words.
Getting better at -ing’s - I’ve been making a conscious effort for a while to get better at finding legitimate words ending in -ing and likewise not spending time to enter -ing combinations that aren’t words. However, I’m nowhere close to where I’d like to be, so sometimes boards with -ing can be trouble for me. I’ll realize at the end that I’ve spent xx seconds looking for -ing words and have scored fewer points than if I’d simply been working on other parts of the board.
Building new words by adding to the start - at any point in time, I’ve got a very informal and strictly in my head set of words that can serve as the back end of longer words. I then make a conscious effort to find and work on those words and extensions. For example, at the moment, I try to extend EACH whenever it’s available by adding one or two letters at the start to form longer words (beach, leach, meach (?), peach, reach, teach, breach, preach, bleach). My guess is that this particular set of words could be a worthwhile investment since those extended words in many cases can be further supplemented with an -es, -er/ers, -ing/ings, -ed, etc. At some point after I feel like I can find those words without conscious effort, I’ll move on to some other word that can serve as a springboard to many others.
Getting better at -ing’s - I’ve been making a conscious effort for a while to get better at finding legitimate words ending in -ing and likewise not spending time to enter -ing combinations that aren’t words. However, I’m nowhere close to where I’d like to be, so sometimes boards with -ing can be trouble for me. I’ll realize at the end that I’ve spent xx seconds looking for -ing words and have scored fewer points than if I’d simply been working on other parts of the board.
Building new words by adding to the start - at any point in time, I’ve got a very informal and strictly in my head set of words that can serve as the back end of longer words. I then make a conscious effort to find and work on those words and extensions. For example, at the moment, I try to extend EACH whenever it’s available by adding one or two letters at the start to form longer words (beach, leach, meach (?), peach, reach, teach, breach, preach, bleach). My guess is that this particular set of words could be a worthwhile investment since those extended words in many cases can be further supplemented with an -es, -er/ers, -ing/ings, -ed, etc. At some point after I feel like I can find those words without conscious effort, I’ll move on to some other word that can serve as a springboard to many others.
What I think I should start doing that would help me:
Using an appropriate web site to help me learn additional words that end in some other word (i.e. what I mentioned just above). I don’t know why I didn’t think to look until recently, but plenty of web sites will provide a list of words ending in some letter combination. The problem that jumps out is disagreement on what are valid words. Just as one example, I looked at the first three Google results for “words ending in each”. Each agrees on five everyday words, but one adds meach, and another one adds both meach and geach. If anyone knows of a particular site whose dictionary is close to what Wordtwist uses, I’d be grateful for that pointer!
Bonus points to anyone who has reached the end. I hope you’ve found an item or two that might help you on your WordTwist journey!
Cheers,
John
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