Achievements and Accomplishments Thread

[2cute]

All those problems with Xfinity! I have Spectrum and they're not perfect, either. But their faults aren't at all like yours. With Spectrum, they'll sometimes just go down for a half-hour or an hour and if you call them an automated message will tell you that it was scheduled upgrade or service downtime. But you are never notified about it beforehand, so it either wasn't scheduled or they don't care to tell you. Fortunately, those outages are maybe three or four times a year. And their cost is pretty high, I think. For 100 MBPs I pay $75 a month plus taxes. And they're the only game in town that will give you anywhere near that speed, too. Cellphone carriers are trying to get into the act now, too, but they have data caps. And if you stream your TV as I do, you really don't want data caps. Ever. That's the downside of living in a rural community.

If you're really rural around here -- out on a farm, far out of town -- your best bet is satellite internet. You can get 25 MBPs down, but the uploading speed will probably be less than 1 MBPs. And then bad weather can mean no internet. Cheap and fast internet generally requires you to live in a big city. I would never do that. I have, and it's not for me.

My neighbor used to have Direct TV using a dish on his roof. Well during Superbowl sunday one year it SNOWED & I mean like more than 8" & yep, his dish was full of snow & he didn't have any reception whatsoever. As you can imagine he was pissed. He ingeniously hooked up a hose to the hot water facet inside his home, added a sprayer to it & stood outside 'spraying the dish' with HOT WATER to remove the snow & thus be able to continue enjoying TV. Needless to say, he got rid of Direct TV & switched to Fios by Verizon not too long after that.

I don't think Spectrum is available in my area, I must admit I've never even heard of it before now. Yes, I do live near 2 big cities, yet I wouldn't consider my service 'cheap', actually I think its quite expensive. There is no 'cheap' option, unless you count having no internet & just reading books for entertainment.

[Spike1007]

I did put something in the "Reason for Edit" field. No idea if that made a difference.

[2cute]

I'm not sure I've ever seen an flagged post that got approved either. However, I know I've managed small edits in the not-too-distant past without getting flagged. I tried a second edit once before (after the first one slipped through) & that was apparently too much.

By the way, on my post that did get through, I just cut & pasted my previous "spam" post into it & that worked. Anyway, it would be nice to know the rules (aside from "don't edit").

Yes, I agree a set of rules or legend would be most helpful.

You're lucky to have been able to edit. I've certainly given up trying.

[bwt1213]

All those problems with Xfinity! I have Spectrum and they're not perfect, either. But their faults aren't at all like yours. With Spectrum, they'll sometimes just go down for a half-hour or an hour and if you call them an automated message will tell you that it was scheduled upgrade or service downtime. But you are never notified about it beforehand, so it either wasn't scheduled or they don't care to tell you. Fortunately, those outages are maybe three or four times a year. And their cost is pretty high, I think. For 100 MBPs I pay $75 a month plus taxes. And they're the only game in town that will give you anywhere near that speed, too. Cellphone carriers are trying to get into the act now, too, but they have data caps. And if you stream your TV as I do, you really don't want data caps. Ever. That's the downside of living in a rural community.

If you're really rural around here -- out on a farm, far out of town -- your best bet is satellite internet. You can get 25 MBPs down, but the uploading speed will probably be less than 1 MBPs. And then bad weather can mean no internet. Cheap and fast internet generally requires you to live in a big city. I would never do that. I have, and it's not for me.

[Spike1007]

I'm not sure I've ever seen an flagged post that got approved either. However, I know I've managed small edits in the not-too-distant past without getting flagged. I tried a second edit once before (after the first one slipped through) & that was apparently too much.

By the way, on my post that did get through, I just cut & pasted my previous "spam" post into it & that worked. Anyway, it would be nice to know the rules (aside from "don't edit").

[2cute]

I just posted & then edited my post (adding the word "how"), and the system flagged it as potential spam. It's getting pickier. This time though, it actually told me that & highlighted my post in green, telling me that it won't be visible to others until the moderator OKs it.

Spike the moderator never reads it & we never see it. I think they should remove the edit button because I haven't been able to edit my comments now over 2 years. That green box is annoying & I've actually deleted the entire post & tried to repost the corrected version & nope, it won't let me. I've even rewritten it, so it says about the same thing but in a different way, nope, it won't let me do that either. Its like once I try to edit in that discussion, I'm blocked out of interacting at all. So now I just reread what I've written before I post reply, if there's a mistake, it stays & everyone will just have to guess what I meant so I can continue participating in the given discussion.

[2cute]

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)

Wordtwist-lost-QUINQUANONAGINTILLIONTH.png
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

I also have Xfinity & have noticed problems just streaming TV shows.

I suspect for you, they will give you a new router. You are very lucky to have a tech come to your home to help you. When I changed routers, I had to go to the 'store' & get one myself, then when I couldn't figure out how to set it up & called to talk to someone, the guy just kept on telling me to reboot my computer over & over since he had no idea how to help me. I got frustrated w/him & gave him the boot. It took me a few hours to figure out how to set it up by just guessing. Finally once I did, my internet improved.

Sorry that happened to you. Yes, taking a screen print you at least have proof you achieved it, but of course its not the same as having it added to your 'My Scores' section.

[mcdonna]

Thanks, Spike! I'll keep that in mind.

[Spike1007]

mcdonna, there may be a small bit of hope if this happens to you again. After some tests, I decided that communication between your computer & the WordTwist server happens just twice per game. When you start a game, all necessary info is sent to your computer. From then until the end, you & your computer basically play autonomously, no communication needed. When time runs out, your computer wants to send results and the server waits to get them. However, there doesn't seem to be a real deadline for this. The server will just wait. I started a game, disconnected from the internet, then waited (as much as half an hour) to reconnect, then I refreshed the page. At that point, game results were reported to the server and I got the usual screen showing my play results, with all my words counting. Anyway, if your Xfinity connectivity is intermittent & you lose it during a game, you may be able to wait, hitting "refresh" occasionally, until your connection comes back. With luck, the game will count.

[mcdonna]

Thanks, Spike, for the sympathy. I hate to suffer silently. If it had only been a board record or my best for the month, it wouldn't have bothered much, but it's hard to let go of a PR!

I've been switching over to my phone's "personal hotspot" (Verizon) when Xfinity goes down and am almost ready to just cancel Xfinity altogether. At 71 I'm mostly retired. But I'm still doing some web development here and there, and the extra speed comes in handy sometimes.

I'll let you know what we find out at the tech visit.

[Spike1007]

I just posted & then edited my post (adding the word "how"), and the system flagged it as potential spam. It's getting pickier. This time though, it actually told me that & highlighted my post in green, telling me that it won't be visible to others until the moderator OKs it. Anyway, here's my post in case the earlier one doesn't show up:

mcdonna, you have my sympathies (and congratulations just for finding the word).

I have Xfinity too and have intermittent problems where my modem somehow loses the connection to the internet, usually in the mornings. My problem is kind of the opposite though. I'll try to drop a game to maintain my APPW after entering some low-value word, the little spinning ball shows up, the board times out, and the game counts, tanking my average.

Then again, the problem is probably the same, and our symptoms are just different. From what I can tell, once you start a game, it's running both on your computer and the server, with some (but not constant) communication between the two. (I have deliberately disconnected the internet during play, and the game seems to play normally (at least until time is out). It still counts down and I'm able to enter words on my end.) Anyway, if you lose connection before playing a word, it's gone (unless communication does start up again before the game is over). At least some times though, if you lose connection after playing the word, it seems to count, and I assume that communication has taken place somewhere along the line. Now I'm tempted to do some more tests (probably on 4x4 so that I don't screw up my 5x5 stats), and learn more about when communication takes place.

This stuff is probably irrelevant (I just like trying to figure out how things work), but I hope Xfinity fixes things for you. I'd like to know what the tech finds.

[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)

Wordtwist-lost-QUINQUANONAGINTILLIONTH.png
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!

Screen Shot 2022-08-02 at 8.10.21 PM.png

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!

Screen Shot 2022-08-02 at 8.10.21 PM.png

[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.