PumpkinEater is a straight up cheater.................

[bkbound]

How is it possible to cheat at this game?

[Spike1007]

I couldn't do it myself (without learning a lot of stuff), but you write a program that interacts with the WordTwist site, and it basically plays for you. Of course you need to know what words to enter. There, I think there three ways to go. One is to use an existing online Boggle solver, entering the WordTwist board layout there, and then entering the resulting words into the appropriate space. (There, you're at the mercy of whichever dictionary the Boggle solver uses.) A second is to assemble your own dictionary and write your own Boggle solver. (I assume that it's much more efficient to test words locally than just trying the whole dictionary in WordTwist, one word at a time. Here, you're limited to how good a dictionary you put together.) A third that someone here talked about once is that all permissible words for the board are supposedly downloaded onto your device (computer, phone, whatever) in some form at the time the board displays. I had my doubts about this, but you can test it by starting a game, disconnecting from the internet, and then playing. Words are still accepted or rejected without any connection to the WordTwist site. Anyway, if you figure out how to access that list, you just enter all the words. (Here, I assume the dictionary will be perfect.)

How well you do on a board depends on the dictionary & the time required to enter all the words.

If you're going for highest average points/word, there are much lower-tech ways to cheat. One is to use a Boggle solver, enter the board layout there, take the best word or words, and enter those yourself. If you're able to find great words once in a while, there's an even easier way, but I'll skip that. (A number of players who go for long words soon figure that out. It's kind of loophole in how in how boards & averages/word are counted.)

Anyway, as you can see, the people here have gotten good at spotting cheaters.

[Brisul]

Stand-up guy, really???? Keep in mind this clown is now in first place on the all time 5 x 5 average list. The admin was able to remove his monthly stats but his lifetime stats stand, likely forever. Brian, keep in mind that you were a top 30 all- time average player on the 5 x 5 side—because of this idiot’s “development” now you are not and he has also pushed me farther down the list. Perhaps stats are not that important to you but I suspect they are based on some of your previous posts.

Had I not notified the admin of his little endeavor, in less than 24 hours he would have taken out top average, top words per game, and top points per game on BOTH 4 x 4 and 5 x 5.......I hardly think this is fair to all the other players here and also doubt his insistence that he was unaware that this is a monthly competition. The landing page has a very prominent competition timer displayed..............just my two cents but I’ve seen so many of these cheats over the years and they’re detracting from the integrity of not only the stats and competition but also the efforts of the honest players. I hardly think we should be feeding this troll........

I'm sorry. I didn't realize the full implications. I just thought his response was reasonable. You are correct in thinking that losing my place on the stats list to some cheater is pretty unnerving for me.

[RussDNails]

No worries Brian—I did not mean to sound harsh or offensive but this guy really hacked me off. I was actively playing during the window where he was running his little experiment and watched him obliterate everyone’s stats for December. In about 8 hours he put up 600,000 points on 5 x 5 and if memory serves around 300,000-400,000 on 4 x 4. The fact that he re-registered with another user name after the admin removed him, only to post a hollow apology made me even more angry. Then people started praising his sincerity and ingenuity!!!

I really wish the admin could find a way to clean up the all-time stats boards. It looks to me like the top 20 all-time high average scores are are all cheaters. That would put Estive, yourself and ThunderRock all in the top 10 and fasteddieb not far behind..........don’t know if you’ve ever checked it out but go to “High Scores>5 x 5 Hall of Fame Rankings” then touch or click on the gray “av. score” header and you’ll see the rankings for all-time high average. I think it’s pretty clear that the first 20 are not legit (some of the names include “PumpkinEater”,
”cheater”, “clearlyhax” etc. At least the games played, total points, av. score, most words, highest score and best word are accurate on the landing page for the 4 x 4 and 5 x 5 Hall of Fames..........

Best,

Russ

[JJBeanie]

..........don’t know if you’ve ever checked it out but go to “High Scores>5 x 5 Hall of Fame Rankings” then touch or click on the gray “av. score” header and you’ll see the rankings for all-time high average.

Thanks for that info Russ. I rarely look at the hall of fame since I'll never be in there. I did look at the beginning of all the pumpkineater drama, and saw that after he was banned, the front page no longer listed him. I had no idea about clicking on some of the table headers would bring up other results. I agree that it would be great for these areas to be cleaned up as well. Once a player is banned, all traces of them should be removed from the site.

[flamingoroadie]

When will the pop up car ads stop! Enough already. I'm trying to see the word list. What gives?

[admin]

Can you email me a screenshot of what you're seeing? puzzlebaron@gmail.com

[Brisul]

No worries Brian—I did not mean to sound harsh or offensive but this guy really hacked me off. I was actively playing during the window where he was running his little experiment and watched him obliterate everyone’s stats for December. In about 8 hours he put up 600,000 points on 5 x 5 and if memory serves around 300,000-400,000 on 4 x 4. The fact that he re-registered with another user name after the admin removed him, only to post a hollow apology made me even more angry. Then people started praising his sincerity and ingenuity!!!

I really wish the admin could find a way to clean up the all-time stats boards. It looks to me like the top 20 all-time high average scores are are all cheaters. That would put Estive, yourself and ThunderRock all in the top 10 and fasteddieb not far behind..........don’t know if you’ve ever checked it out but go to “High Scores>5 x 5 Hall of Fame Rankings” then touch or click on the gray “av. score” header and you’ll see the rankings for all-time high average. I think it’s pretty clear that the first 20 are not legit (some of the names include “PumpkinEater”,
”cheater”, “clearlyhax” etc. At least the games played, total points, av. score, most words, highest score and best word are accurate on the landing page for the 4 x 4 and 5 x 5 Hall of Fames..........

Best,

Russ

I never realized I was in the top ten of average score per game list on the HOF page. That's amazing!

[FormerPumpkinEater]

It looks like the admins cleaned up the Hall of Fame lists of blatant bots. This is great, I think it will deter future botters.

When I got started I just searched for online boggle, found this site, did a couple games, checked out the high scores, and saw all the highest game scores and averages we clearly bots, so I figured it was a bot friendly site and tried to beat them like I said in my original post.

I had no idea there were forums, a community, the monthly competition, or people that even actively played on the site until the account was banned and I saw my username in the bottom of my screen "PumpkinEater is a straight up cheater........." and checked out that link (this forum thread lol).

Was never trying to wreck the human scores with my program, just wanted to see if I could top the crazy bot averages like 3300 for 5x5. Like RussDNails said, almost all of them had obvious cheater names, including someone named CHEATERCHEATERCHEATER. And I wasn't trying to hide that I was automated either (Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater).

Anyway, looks like all those scores were cleaned up. Like the entire top 20 of the 5x5 average game and single game high score list. And that should help deter people that come in for a bots vs bots challenge.

[RussDNails]

Thanks to the admin for cleaning up the Hall of Fame lists! This is great and I’m glad to see these lists now are a true reflection of all the honest players’ efforts.........

[bwt1213]

Look, this is NOT "Cheating" in any way, but I'm curious. I noticed among the list of all-time high scores some current players who would not now approach those numbers. Now, some of those players have physical reasons for their now-lower scores. And, in the old days, there were fewer boards to play and a dedicated player might study up on a board and pretty much master it -- and then encounter that same board. And there was earnest talk about occasional boards where the timer unaccountably stopped, giving the player basically an unlimited amount of time to play a game. As I have said, NONE of those things are in any way "cheating". But I'm curious. How many of those all-time high scores were achieved by a malfunctioning timer, a limited number of boards, or some other such reason? Yeah, I can imagine players who are better than Megaword and Fasteddieb and estive and brisul and all the rest of our luminaries, but to see players with higher best scores and then rather pedestrian "best words" and overall average scores invites some kind of explanation. Personally, I find it difficult to understand how someone could get 50 more words than Megaword's best game and yet have a best word that isn't even 20 points or 15 letters long. It's easier to imagine that a decent player hooked into a game where the timer failed, and just went for it. Hey, if I played a game and the timer never shut me off, I have no idea what kind of score I'd get. But I doubt I'd submit the game until I got good and bored with it. Maybe that's just me, but I doubt it.

[RussDNails]

Yeah, if you’re talking exclusively about all-time high scores and most words when you click or press on those columns in the hall of fame, there are a few that seemed to have slipped through. Specifically on the 5 x 5 side I would have also tossed “bmezo” and “kozyol”s scores. It looks like they were legit players so the admin likely didn’t/couldn’t exclude them but as you said the most likely explanation for their impossibly two high scoring games and word counts were likely the result of a timer failure........at least now the overall Hall of Fame lists are much cleaner than they were before.........