Achievements and Accomplishments Thread

[mcdonna]

So this is a brag and a wail. I've been a member since 2009, and just set a new word record today:
QUINQUANONAGINTILLIONTH (23 letters, 48 points)

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BUT my Xfinity Internet connection has been flaky the past month and when I pressed SUBMIT the little ball spun and spun and spun ... and finally gave up.

wordtwist__FAIL.png

So I am recording my accomplishment and my frustration here!

And after one hour and 20 minutes of effort (and two more dropped connections) I have an appointment for an Xfinity tech to appear at my home on Monday afternoon to try to fix the problem.

Donna

[bwt1213]

Second day in a row with a score over 800.

New high score.

Yipee!

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Congratulations! If I were envious, this would trigger it. May tomorrow be better for you.

[Naboka]

Second day in a row with a score over 800.

New high score.

Yipee!

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[bwt1213]

Naboka, you keep saying you're a slow typist. I was decent, but I'm going downhill and I don't like it at all but I can't do anything about it. Right now, if I feel like I'm typing at demonic speed, at the end of the game I've done 105 words. The problem is that I've mistyped about as many words as I've typed. I keep typing a "g" in things that have no "g" in them, and similar kinds of things. So, here's the deal: My average score per game is down about ten over the last year. My average words per game is down about five. My average score per game is up -- but the field is up, too. by a lot. If I averaged this many points per word five years ago, I'd certainly have been in the top twenty. Now I might not make the top fifty. Five years ago, I was averaging 108 words per game. Now, I'm averaging 98. I'm probably about the same age as you, but I'm being whacked by the years in a different way than you are.

I am a very fast reader. I'm not as fast as I used to be, though. When I was in grade school, I was timed (they did a LOT of that kind of stuff back then, as I'm sure you remember) at more than 2,000 words per minute. Now, I'm maybe half that. I have a problem with shaky hands and poor fine muscle coordination. I know how to do handwriting and in a number of different languages and alphabets but I can't DO it any more. So I don't do what you do. I can't. But I can read ungodly numbers of words in a short time and I have a superb vocabulary, but my hands just can't translate that for me. If you think "gee, I'll bet that's frustrating", you understand.

My workarounds are different than yours and they're evolving as my physical capabilities diminish and change. I play only 5x5 now, so the following applies only to that game.
1. Select boards that have more than 300 words on the two lowest categories and more than 300 words on the top two categories. This isn't iron-clad, though, because --
2. If I see a board played to a really high score by someone I always surpass, play it anyway. The other stats don't matter.
3. If I see a board with a whole LOT of words and good players have played it to really disappointing results, reject that game. Something's really wrong with the board.
4. Any board played more than 30 times with a top score under 500 isn't worth my time. The number of words doesn't matter.
5. The best boards have total words for the bottom two categories about the same as the top two categories, and ESPECIALLY have large numbers of very long ultra-rare words. Not that I usually get those words, but their fragments are often worth a lot of points, too. Reject boards that have a really large number of rare and ultra-rare words and far fewer words in the other two categories; yeah, those words exist, but they're not in my lexicon and I will never type them except by accident. Also reject boards that have far fewer rare and ultra-rare words than the lower two categories -- high scores on such boards come down to typing contests, and I will lose those contests.
6. I always need a couple of boards to get my mind and hands in the right shape to post a decent score. Any time I post a reasonable score on the first board, I am certain that I would have done far better if I'd played a few others first. Usually, my best scores are on the third or fourth or subsequent boards.
7. There are days I just can't play. I don't see the words, or I'm slow at it, or my hands won't cooperate. Try as I might, I have trouble breaking 400. On those days, I do something else.

[JohnAkaMrP]

Hi WordTwist community!

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.

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.

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

[2cute]

I have plants in pots on my deck. We have lots of squirrels. They often dig up plants in those pots, looking for nuts they could never have planted in them. They also dig holes in the garden for the same reason, often destroying plants there, too. So now all the plants on the deck are surrounded by chicken wire to keep the squirrels out. And the little buggers will try to pry the chicken wire cylinders apart to get inside, too. And no, it's not that they want to eat the plants for food; they don't eat the plants, just tear them to pieces and then dig holes in the soil in the pot. They're vandals. I think if I want to tend my garden, I should probably have a greenhouse. With steel doors the squirrels can't chew through.

This would also prevent deer from enjoying your feast as well. I once had a neighbor that had a garden in his back yard, the deer arrived nightly to feast on his accomplishment. Then he got wise, he created a cage w/electrified wire & would turn it on around dusk. After being zapped by cage more than once the animals stayed away.

[2cute]

Since I am a two finger hunt and peck typist, after I click play, I take a glance at the board memorize a section of the board that "looks good" look down at the keyboard and peck through the combinations. With that first look I often get over 100 points, sometimes over 200 points and occasionally over 300 points. I just had a 456 point "one look" opening. That is a record for me (ended up with 579 points with a lot more "looks"). I just felt that I needed to blow my own horn.

That's pretty amazing for a hunt & peck technique! Congrats on your achievements!

[Naboka]

This is looking promising.

Set a monthly best, which was my second best ever. Next game beat that by a point. Then the next game on a new board hit my third 700 in a row. Think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

A little part of me felt guilty about the games going out of circulation because some of the top players would have topped a 1,ooo points on them, but...


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[dannyb]

Adding green (unique plays) to a board has always been fun. It's like adding value.

This is the first time getting over 100 greens on an already played board.

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Nice, over 100 greens is very impressive. I'm going to have to see how many greens i can get on a board.

[Naboka]

Adding green (unique plays) to a board has always been fun. It's like adding value.

This is the first time getting over 100 greens on an already played board.

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[Naboka]

Since I am a two finger hunt and peck typist, after I click play, I take a glance at the board memorize a section of the board that "looks good" look down at the keyboard and peck through the combinations. With that first look I often get over 100 points, sometimes over 200 points and occasionally over 300 points. I just had a 456 point "one look" opening. That is a record for me (ended up with 579 points with a lot more "looks"). I just felt that I needed to blow my own horn.

Danny, I can thank you for part of the strategies that changed my game. Getting 456 points on a single look is mind boggling!

[dannyb]

Since I am a two finger hunt and peck typist, after I click play, I take a glance at the board memorize a section of the board that "looks good" look down at the keyboard and peck through the combinations. With that first look I often get over 100 points, sometimes over 200 points and occasionally over 300 points. I just had a 456 point "one look" opening. That is a record for me (ended up with 579 points with a lot more "looks"). I just felt that I needed to blow my own horn.

[jbud1980]

Possible candidate for 4x4 board of the year/decade/century. A glorious 682 possible words, involving all the right letters in all the right quantities in just about a perfect orientation. About the only thing you could fault is the lack of an s to make -ing words into -ings words. I scored a personal best 160 words and nearly also set a new personal best for overall score. If I were to do an after-action review on my play, I would key in on failing to play a lot more of those -ing possibilities, but I think my brain was overloaded with just so many words to play.

By the way, I don't come to forum often, but I've been meaning to stop in and nominate Naboka in the category of 'Folks Who Have Transitioned from Really Good Players to Ridiculously Good Players.' I suppose we're all improving to some degree over time, but Naboka, it feels like you somehow took yourself to a whole next level in a short period of time. Any tips, or was it more like brute force from playing more and more?

John
Wordtwist new high word score (724 160).PNG

Congrats John. You are one of the best players here, and yes, I agree that Naboka is a ridiculously good player who is now a Big Fish like yourself and many others. From what I gather he spent a lot of time studying and getting better with time. It's quite admirable, tbh.

[2cute]

I've been meaning to stop in and nominate Naboka in the category of 'Folks Who Have Transitioned from Really Good Players to Ridiculously Good Players.'I suppose we're all improving to some degree over time, but Naboka, it feels like you somehow took yourself to a whole next level in a short period of time. Any tips, or was it more like brute force from playing more and more?
John

Here here Naboka ... you have my vote!

[JohnAkaMrP]

Possible candidate for 4x4 board of the year/decade/century. A glorious 682 possible words, involving all the right letters in all the right quantities in just about a perfect orientation. About the only thing you could fault is the lack of an s to make -ing words into -ings words. I scored a personal best 160 words and nearly also set a new personal best for overall score. If I were to do an after-action review on my play, I would key in on failing to play a lot more of those -ing possibilities, but I think my brain was overloaded with just so many words to play.

By the way, I don't come to forum often, but I've been meaning to stop in and nominate Naboka in the category of 'Folks Who Have Transitioned from Really Good Players to Ridiculously Good Players.' I suppose we're all improving to some degree over time, but Naboka, it feels like you somehow took yourself to a whole next level in a short period of time. Any tips, or was it more like brute force from playing more and more?

John
Wordtwist new high word score (724 160).PNG