Achievements and Accomplishments Thread

[lalatan]

Oh well. Sure very few are interested in all this, so... Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother to post at all. Though I write to sort out my thoughts, so it's beneficial to me if no one else.

I enjoy your posts on a number of topics, even if they don't apply to me directly.
Looks like you're going to have to record video screen captures to convince the skeptics just like MegaWord and I had to do. One of the best time investments in WordTwist I made. Stopped all the accusations of cheating just like that.

carmelcorn22, I'm a long word player so I'll defer your question to naboka.
In the meantime have a look at this thread, watch the videos and expand your concept of what is humanly possible with talent, skill, study and a lot of determination:

https://forum.puzzlebaron.com/forum/puzzle-baron/wordtwist/22984-how-good-is-megaword

[Naboka]

Question for you lalatan and Naboka: Can you explain how one could get "only" rare words in a 3 minute game of Wordtwist? How could you not slip in a few common words accidentally? Getting that many obscure words without a common seems impossible. I'm probably unaware of a different way to play or a different version that allows the game to be slowed down. Please explain, that would help a lot!

That quest to find ultrarare words is documented in lots of earlier posts. But, a summation:

I got bored doing the everyday words, so decided to set a challenge for myself of finding what I called a Red Board. Arbitrarily, I decided it had to be at least a hundred words. Otherwise, you type in one UR word and you've got a Red Board.

When you finish a game, the found words are listed to the left in the color category. Red, orange, yellow, green.

After over a year of trying and eliminating any words that weren't ultrarare, I finally managed to get the Red Board. Took lots of study, lots of failures, lots of discipline. Lots of mistyped words ruined the attempts. Probably a lot of players remember that quest, the near misses and final success.

I'm essentially playing a different game. I see the eat, ate, tea, eta and tae but don't type in the first 4. Only the tae is UR. I'm seeing many of those common and wide words but ignoring them. There are literally hundreds of those anagram groupings to learn. The trick is to eliminate the non-reds.

Why?

Why not?

I approached it as a foreign language. In that language certain words are used, others are not. But the only meaning assigned to those words is binary: red/not red.

I only do 4x4. Those two minutes are laborious enough for my hands. My digits start getting tired after about a minute and a half. So it's not even the 3 minutes of 5x5.

Most of the games I play end up with all 4 categories. Trying to find only UR words gets a little boring too. I like words like seity and aseity. One's ultra rare, one isn't. Or if I see a fairly common word like repudiations that will likely be the longest word I'll type it.

I sometimes post the screenshot readouts of a board's completed words list just because I think others are curious. I'd rather other players understood that it's not a big mystery about how I do it. The listed words are there in the order typed. They're mostly words we see lots and lots if we study the board results after playing. It's just a matter of memorizing those words and finding commonalities.

I place words in clusters according to commonalities. It creates a 3 dimensional Venn diagram of word possibilities. Sometimes, I'll have 3, 4, 5 or more clusters that I'm trying to drain simultaneously. I'll jump back and forth between the clusters, assessing what comes next. It organized chaos. Much like the middle finish line of a large cross country meet.

I don't know of a way to slow down the game. I do know that lots of us dump games that are failing miserably. I finish less than a third of the games I start. Often, that's predetermined because I'm looking to get a certain number of ultra rare words in a certain number of seconds. That's an exercise I use a lot to view and mentally organise a board so that it can be organised into words.

I help my wife with her kindergarten class most days. The mental process is similar. You get the kids to recognize what's on the page, then convert that information to usable memory. They look at because, spell b-e-c-a-u-s-e while looking at the page, then try to spell it from memory. Then they come back the next day and attempt to spell it. Sometimes they can, sometimes not after weeks of trying. People are different.

A mind is capable of ungodly amounts of data storage. What I do on Wordtwist is simply a more complex version of spelling because.

But it all comes down converting patterns of information into usable groupings. And hopefully usable patterns like lalatan has mastered to piece together long words from word segments. You don't want to be dependent on what you know. You want to be able to create with that knowledge and extrapolate further information.

As the wife tells me, I talk to much and overthink everything.

Apologies if I failed to make this stuff comprehensible.

ps: I would have given your post a like, but those bars under your user name indicate social interaction. If I give a single like to a new poster it will fill all the bars to orange. Seems unfair that my being loquacious should merit that influence. So, consider your post liked.

[Naboka]

I enjoy your posts on a number of topics, even if they don't apply to me directly.
Looks like you're going to have to record video screen captures to convince the skeptics just like MegaWord and I had to do. One of the best time investments in WordTwist I made. Stopped all the accusations of cheating just like that.

carmelcorn22, I'm a long word player so I'll defer your question to naboka.
In the meantime have a look at this thread, watch the videos and expand your concept of what is humanly possible with talent, skill, study and a lot of determination:

https://forum.puzzlebaron.com/forum/puzzle-baron/wordtwist/22984-how-good-is-megaword

I enjoy your posts too.

As for recording...

That someone thinks I'm cheating is a weird sort of compliment by default. They've got to think I'm performing beyond what's probable. Just wish the dirty rats who keep wiping out my records would come to terms with that greatness and leave my games alone. grumble, grumble, grumble. Wish I could figure a way to cheat myself a thousand point game. Then I could be so proud of myself I could stop people in the mall and tell them how good I am.

There have been a few players that I wondered about. They were either exceptionally good with no learning curve evident, or they were using some kind of computer assist.

I wouldn't know how to do the record video screen captures. Might be interesting to try it. Though most of my games are failures and not worth recording. Might be tedious trying to capture a success.

[Brisul]

New high score. I think that will be my last game for the month.

[fasteddieb]

New high score. I think that will be my last game for the month.

Congratulations!

[Brisul]

Congratulations!

Thank you! Let's see if I can hang on to 3rd place this month.

[Naboka]

Am beginning to recognize which games to speed up on. Third personal best high score this month: 882, then 890, then 894.

If I could only figure out how to relax through the frazzles and jitters towards the end of the game--where getting too excited and too sped-up causes all those errors.

As it is, my wrists, hands and fingers have to take a break after games like this to recover.

(helps finding a game with relevant z's and k's.)

record 894 .png

[dannyb]

Looks like 900 is just around the corner. I'm sure that you will get there.

[Naboka]

Sometimes...

you know it's not gonna happen...

you know it's gonna hurt all of your averages...

you know it's....

but...

you gotta try.

just because.

And even when you fail...

it's just ..

learning.

Atelophobia be damned.

Failing is half the fun.

right???

And certainly the path to improvement is paved with failures.

(Or so they say.)

Screen Shot 2024-03-22 at 1.05.53 PM.png

There were only 50 ultra-rare words and I usually avoid those games.

And all those common words!

Not my bailiwick.

[bwt1213]

You're so close to MegaWord you could tap him/her on the shoulder. If I were that close, I'd consider it a banner achievement. But, in fact, I'm not going to get that close to anyone of MegaWord's capabilities. I'm just not that good and I can recognize that as reality. So I'm not in your league, either.

[Naboka]

You're so close to MegaWord you could tap him/her on the shoulder. If I were that close, I'd consider it a banner achievement. But, in fact, I'm not going to get that close to anyone of MegaWord's capabilities. I'm just not that good and I can recognize that as reality. So I'm not in your league, either.

Ah, Megaword was probably just having a bad game. I'm not anywhere near his ability.

Mostly, the post was showing off the word atelophobia or the fear of being imperfect. (Throwing around big words always makes me feel smarter than I am.)

I build forts with big words and hide behind them.

We've got kids in kindergarten who have this weird incipient fear of not being perfect. They just freeze up in near-terror about not knowing how to do something. It's sometimes a real struggle to get them comfortable with making mistakes and failing. At that age, the fear isn't usually paralyzing and you can get them out of it. They're a bit young to have dug such deep mental trenches they can't get out.

Another one is atchiphobia or the fear of failure or being judged negatively.

Thing is you've got to get the kids (and yourself) comfortable with failing and imperfection to improve their (your/my/our) chances of learning.

I've noticed these things in myself and other adults. That weird discomfort with failure and being imperfect. Kind of silly. I would guess we're all on a scale of these things, but I'm not a psychologists, so...

I would bet a gallon of Ben and Jerry's that there are lots of areas where I'm not in your league. Not even in the same building. Such as computers and programming. Or math.

My iMac's got so much memory tied up that even with all it's capacity, it's running like a geriatric up Pike's Peak. I don't have a clue how to remedy it. Probably will just use some of the wife's money to buy myself a new one. Being a kept man has its benefits.

I still have to get the wife's help adding someone to my phone contacts. You'd think... Annoys the hell out of her that I'm such a technological idiot.

So, any bravado I might exhibit is probably a mushy version of hubris oatmeal.

[bwt1213]

Question for you lalatan and Naboka: Can you explain how one could get "only" rare words in a 3 minute game of Wordtwist? How could you not slip in a few common words accidentally? Getting that many obscure words without a common seems impossible. I'm probably unaware of a different way to play or a different version that allows the game to be slowed down. Please explain, that would help a lot!

You could probably go back in Naboka's posts to find the details, but I remember him discussing many notebooks filled with ultra-rare words that he would memorize for use in the games. And even then, it took years of practice to become skilled at using only those words (he compared it to learning a new language). After all that, games in which he did not achieve his goals were dumped and he'd start over with a new game, counting only those games meeting his standards. Those are what I understand the bare bones of his method are. If you follow in his footsteps, there is a lot of work before you.

[jbud1980]

I bested my highest scored playing 4X4.

Highest Score:

735 points

There are so many new players who are amazingly good...

[Naboka]

I bested my highest scored playing 4X4.

Highest Score:

735 points

There are so many new players who are amazingly good...

Congratulations. That thrill of getting a new personal best...

A couple of new players are definitely incredible. They're crushing flesh and blood. Even Megaword must feel humbled. It's almost like watching Marvel characters. The Wordtwist version of Cosplay.

Just ran across a game by asdf. Surprised his games are still in play. With the new boards his score was no longer perfect--he had 118 words verses the 128 now available. The new crew could probably zap-pow-bam! that easily.

Brings back memories of first encountering Wordtwist. I would watch my wife play and noticed Unbeatable always got perfect boards. Guess that skill set will always be with us.

User names ... reincarnation?

What can you say.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Did you ever get around to reading The Art of Learning? Another of my favorite books.

[lalatan]

Naboka, congrats on your new personal best of 118 UR words played. An astounding achievement once again. I also noticed your best word for the month: Quadragintiremes.
A quirky and exotic qu- word I never saw before.

Last night I played my best/longest be- word: beghosting for 18 pts, 10 ltrs. Longest and probably the strangest too.