Broken machinery

[Naboka]

Anyone ever have their mental machinery break while playing this game?

[bwt1213]

Anyone ever have their mental machinery break while playing this game?

Yup. With me, it takes the form of deciding on a particular misspelling of a word, and then hammering that same wrong word in, over and over. Often enough, I'm not even aware that I'm doing it. A short example: "that" is entered as "taht". And, then when I'm aware that I'm in that bad loop, I stop and take a deep breath and type the word in slowly and carefully: "taht". AAAIIIIII!!

[pdiddp]

My form of breakage usually involves starting a new game and then staring at it unable to find words (except a few paltry 3 pointers) because I still have words and letter combos from the previous game stuck in my head! Sometimes it's several seconds before my head clears and I 'remember' it's a new game. Good thing I don't worry about going for high word or point scores!

Speaking of broken, is anyone else having a problem with games not loading?

[onrust]

yes, games aren't loading for me either...

[Nylimb]

Speaking of broken, is anyone else having a problem with games not loading?

Yes, I keep getting this error message: "We are having problems loading this game. Please try starting a new game."

[admin]

We had a database problem which should now be fixed. Let me know if you still experience any problems.

[walden123]

My mental machinery breaks when I find a game with lots of 9+ words (especially one that hasn't been played before) and i just DON'T SEE ANY PREFIXES OR SUFFIXES. Then I end up looking until the very end and don't get any words.

[Spike1007]

I kind of do the same thing if I don't see any promising word parts. (Then again, I'm usually perfectly happy to just quit the game & go on to the next one.) Actually, it's more frustrating to me when I see parts & am sure something's there, but just can't put them together.

[Naboka]

Yup. With me, it takes the form of deciding on a particular misspelling of a word, and then hammering that same wrong word in, over and over. Often enough, I'm not even aware that I'm doing it. A short example: "that" is entered as "taht". And, then when I'm aware that I'm in that bad loop, I stop and take a deep breath and type the word in slowly and carefully: "taht". AAAIIIIII!!

I've been trying to relax so that I can type faster. I've done a lot of meditation for sports to gain focus, so thought that would work. Somewhere along the line, I was observing myself observing the board (metacognition) and playing. I became aware of mental/neural circuitry forming patterns. Some of those were resistors of some sort that would prevent the mental signals from traveling faster to my fingers. Weird. As I continued to play and relax, I started to get faster, but suddenly just blew the circuit patterns in my brain. Pfft! My head was an empty wasteland. My scores plummeted for a couple of days. I could hardly find the right keys. But, it wasn't distressing. It was kind of relaxing and peaceful. I just figured I'd had a demo day on my older unworkable patterns and could start to rebuild new and faster ones. When we learn, we put things on automatic because our conscious minds can only handle limited information. We chunk the information, patterns and skills to make it less cumbersome. Unfortunately, we can set up inefficient chunks, patterns and circuits that might be automatic and might get the job done but they hamper us as much as help.

[Naboka]

I kind of do the same thing if I don't see any promising word parts. (Then again, I'm usually perfectly happy to just quit the game & go on to the next one.) Actually, it's more frustrating to me when I see parts & am sure something's there, but just can't put them together.

After ever game, I wonder, "how did they see those words?" Even after I walk my finger through the maze. Guess it's like chess where you gradually learn more and more complex patterns. Josh Waitzkin, who was the subject of Searching For Bobby Fisher, has an excellent book on learning.

[lalatan]

I just figured I'd had a demo day on my older unworkable patterns and could start to rebuild new and faster ones. When we learn, we put things on automatic because our conscious minds can only handle limited information. We chunk the information, patterns and skills to make it less cumbersome. Unfortunately, we can set up inefficient chunks, patterns and circuits that might be automatic and might get the job done but they hamper us as much as help.

Interesting stuff, Naboka. When I was recording my videos last month to disprove the cheating accusation I tried to relax just before recording but still felt keyed up. I got less anxious the more I did it. Then something surprising happened to my long word play. I thought, "You can go faster, play more games and set more records than you have been without getting anxious about it." After that I went on a tear, 665 records set in 15 days. I was having a great time playing! At the end of the day I'd look at my stats and wonder how I had set that many records because it didn't seem like it. (Then I had to take some time away from the game because my forearms were getting tendinitis.) The experience of recording those videos somehow elevated my game play to another level. (My wife, who took psychology in college, said it mapped new neural pathways in my brain.)

[Naboka]

Interesting stuff, Naboka. When I was recording my videos last month to disprove the cheating accusation I tried to relax just before recording but still felt keyed up. I got less anxious the more I did it. Then something surprising happened to my long word play. I thought, "You can go faster, play more games and set more records than you have been without getting anxious about it." After that I went on a tear, 665 records set in 15 days. I was having a great time playing! At the end of the day I'd look at my stats and wonder how I had set that many records because it didn't seem like it. (Then I had to take some time away from the game because my forearms were getting tendinitis.) The experience of recording those videos somehow elevated my game play to another level. (My wife, who took psychology in college, said it mapped new neural pathways in my brain.)

Smart wife. Smart you. Love your story. Gives me hope. Studies of champions find your type of attitude and mindset: any doubts overcome by a positive certainty that you can perform. The rest of us have layers of doubt and negativity that simply get in the way at critical moments. Even in championship games you have players that choke when the grand prize is on the line. We can try to layer positive images and positive goals over the doubts, but conflict persists and performance suffers. I'm a quick thinker/learner and can manufacture positive thoughts by the thousands. My unconscious mind, however, is formidable and can outgun me many times over with doubts that I can't even perceive or imagine. They're just ghosts lingering out of reach, distracting and pulling. Makes for an interesting life. People often find me confident to the point of arrogance, but my own wicked wizard is constantly giving me unreachable challenges peppered with insecurities. I would hope the wizard's motive's were as benign as keeping me humble, but I suspect something less pure.

[Naboka]

Okay, it's official. I've gotten worse. In the last week I've encountered a few games I'd played before and still had the high score. Yesterday I missed that score by 60 points. Today I got a 403 against a 465. Sigh! I'm trying to rebuild the broken mental machinery so I decided to start at kindergarten and work my way up. Oh well, at least I'm far more relaxed about playing. Hopefully, being relaxed will speed things up dramatically.

[bwt1213]

If you have a smart TV or stream your TV, go to Pluto TV (free, completely). Go to channel 575. It's People Are Incredible. It shows people attempting and succeeding at things that sometimes just take your breath away. If you're ever tempted to think you could never do something, or that you're certainly going to fail, or that no one could do a particular thing, watching that for a half-hour or so will probably cure you. The only part I really don't like concerns people doing dangerous stunts on high objects, because the consequences of failure then are not a bruise or a damaged ego. So when you see someone standing on their head and juggling with their feet, you can imagine that it's just a matter of enough practice and that you could do that, too. Same thing with this game. As far as losing to your own previous high score, I've lost to myself by more than 100 points. Sometimes, you just don't see the mother lode and miss out.

[Naboka]

If you have a smart TV or stream your TV, go to Pluto TV (free, completely). Go to channel 575. It's People Are Incredible. It shows people attempting and succeeding at things that sometimes just take your breath away. If you're ever tempted to think you could never do something, or that you're certainly going to fail, or that no one could do a particular thing, watching that for a half-hour or so will probably cure you. The only part I really don't like concerns people doing dangerous stunts on high objects, because the consequences of failure then are not a bruise or a damaged ego. So when you see someone standing on their head and juggling with their feet, you can imagine that it's just a matter of enough practice and that you could do that, too. Same thing with this game. As far as losing to your own previous high score, I've lost to myself by more than 100 points. Sometimes, you just don't see the mother lode and miss out.

I've seen People Are Incredible. Some of their talents are beyond my reach regardless of how many hours I might study or practice. People can do amazing things. When I was into martial arts I could break bricks with a punch, but doing so required hundreds of hours pounding a makiwara which causes small bone fractures which heal and make the bones heal more dense. People would say, "I can't believe you didn't break your hand" not realizing that it required hundreds of fractional breaks to get to that point.

Failure is simple a part of progress. Falling on your face just makes the successes sweeter. But the joke is that you can't get the successes without the failures.

Still, we all differ. There will always be someone tougher or smarter or faster. There will be people who think faster, type faster, perceive faster. (Except that one person at that one point in time.)

That doesn't mean thorough study and practice won't improve your performance. Just that being better than others is a foolish pursuit. Just improving yourself and your performance is good enough.

Good to hear you've lost by a hundred points to yourself. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed so I'm just catching onto the importance of word families and word similarities. So many times I've suddenly caught sight of that mother lode you speak of just as time runs out. It's a concept I'm developing. I'm trying to improve the speed of pattern recognition right now. Too often the board devolves into a chaos of letters without connections. Too many vowels or consonants. Yet the outstanding players seem to see them and more than double what I can do.

One of the things I'm enjoying about this game at the moment is its therapeutic aspect. We all have patterned responses to stress and pressure. By putting myself under pressure playing the game, those patterns become evident and I can take steps to manage and correct them. The game itself is simply a vehicle to replicate those stressful situations in a safe environment. The game becomes less important than the parallel emotional responses. Replicating those stresses probably cause my embedded mental practices to "shatter." But, shattering bad practice is a good thing. I'm relearning good practice.

I like reading the forums to pick up stray comments about game strategy. Like all subjects, trying to learn it all yourself makes progress more difficult. We tend to repeat our mistakes, not knowing why, but being stuck in our own loops.