How to improve?

[michoel]

Hey all, was wondering if anyone has tips, or can relate what works best for them?
Do you go systematically? Just scan and see what jumps out? Scan for a root and then go systematic? Or systematically look for a root and then scan around it?
Any experiences are much appreciated!

[cosmicsweety]

I start off by looking for -ing and -tion. Then I build words around those.

[dannyb]

Look at the words played at the end of the game. Learn the ultra-rare words (especially the three and four letter ones). Learn the major combos (the "ETAS" combo is a quick 85 points). Learn how to type. I am a two finger "hunt and pecker" and that hurts my scores.

[Naboka]

Probably depends on your goals for a game.

Some people play to find the best or longest word, not even bothering to type in the dozens of words they might see in their search. If you look at the list of best words from last month, you'll see a lot ending in "-ization" or "-ize" such as "disequalizations" and "countermobilized." So, yes, you look for the word elements and expand on them.

You just have to learn the dozens of word elements and how they go together. For example, finding oversimplistical. You see "over," notice the "simp" and "ic" look for the filler to get "oversimplistic" then realize there's "-al." Eureka! You've found a 16 letter word worth 30 points.

For the players who go for higher scores, you're looking at a lot of study. A lot. You'll have to study boards to find new words and add those to your arsenal. Little by little, you'll accumulate words and combos that will add an extra 5 points to your average. Then another 5 points to your average. Then another 5.

The above is probably not as specific as you want. But there are no easy answers. It's study and practice.

And a lot of the words that will make a difference in your game performance are words you will never, ever, ever, ever use in life. You could have the vocabulary of a linguistics professor and still fall short.

For specifics, you'll want to look for anagrams. At first it may be 3 letter combos like eat, ate, tea, tae, eta. Or 4 letter ones like coin, cion, coni.

When you see a letter grouping like ear, you know you can look for the bear, hear, dear, etc. But, you'll also find that you can add an extra "e" to make beare, heare, deare, steare, to really up your point totals. I often just type in the extra "e" just to see if it exists and that works surprisingly often.

You'll find that certain letters provide more points so you lock onto the z, k, q, x. Instead of the e-a-r combo, you'll find a-k-e for ake, kae, kea, adding an "s" for akes, kaes, keas. Which leads bake, cake, tak, (yes: tak, pak, mak) make, stake, staking, etc.

It also leads to sk- words which provide lots of points. Ski, skit, skite, skee, sken, skeen, sker, skeer, skeet, skean, on and on.

You'll find quick point getters with things like saz, zas, rez, lez, sez, rax, zax, zex, suq, zen, zin, miz, moz, wox, coz. What do those words mean? Uhhhhh....

Like what does "ard" mean? Don't know, but it plays and you can get sard, nard, mard, hard, bard, lard, card. Plus, adding an "s."

Or "erk?" Don't know, but: erk, erks, nerk, serk, serks, jerk, zerk, merk, berk, yerk will get you some points. Spellcheck will punish you for trying to type those in normal conversations.

But, those just come from studying boards and seeing what gets points.

As for strategy, each person finds their own depending on the natural drift of their attention. I try to discipline myself to stay on groupings to milk all the points, but my attention will always get distracted by some other part of the board and I'll get absorbed in a new grouping of possibilities, often forgetting to type several of the words I'd seen in the previous group. The game will end and I'll look at the found words, groaning with frustration over all the stuff I'd missed--sometimes convinced that I'd already typed those words in.

Which leads to veins. There seem to be veins of words in most boards. You find those and you've suddenly got a bunch of words to type without even having to look at the board.

Megaword (THE benchmark of scoring) has some videos of getting thousand plus points on 4x4 boards. You can see them on Youtube. By pausing the video, you can study how that player works through the board to find words.

Best advice is to try lots of approaches--repeatedly. Sometimes it takes a few tries for an approach to click. Sometimes just rotating the board will give you obvious words you didn't see. Failing and mistakes are part of the learning process. Allowing yourself to fail makes succeeding easier.

As a personal story about mistakes, I left my Stages SC3 bike in the wrong gear about a month ago. When I got back on and started pedaling, I noticed that I was going faster than normal. With less effort. I keep performance records and my best 10 mile time occurred 2 years ago after a years of training. Thought I would die reaching it. Stayed at maximum heart rate for most of that ride. After setting that record, I decided enough was enough. I didn't want to kill myself and have a heart attack. But, here I was, in the wrong gear (and supposedly a harder gear) going faster with less stress on my heart. Long story short, I beat my old unbeatable record. By 8 seconds. Then beat that record a few days later. And again a few days later. And again a few days ago. All because of a "mistake."

So, life teaches us that the "right way" isn't always the best way.

And the best way tends to differ with each of us.

[Naboka]

Look at the words played at the end of the game. Learn the ultra-rare words (especially the three and four letter ones). Learn the major combos (the "ETAS" combo is a quick 85 points). Learn how to type. I am a two finger "hunt and pecker" and that hurts my scores.

Two fingers!!!?

That's crazy. With your scores!?

In shooting there's the problem of target acquisition and re-acquisition after you've fired. Larger caliber bullets have more kick and take the gun off target more.

I'm trying to imagine how you acquire and re-acquire the board looking at the keys. Mind boggling. To me it's like shooting a 50 cal pistol and trying to get back on target.

[dannyb]

I memorize sections of the board. I have scored well over one hundred points (several times over 200) with one glance at the board. When I finish a long combo, I glance up as I hit enter on the last word of the combo. I need to maximize points per key stroke. That is why I don't have many "long word" records.

[mdyak]

Wow! Very thorough replies, especially from Naboka. I'll add in that I often think there may be a long word on the board so I just type it. It's much faster to guess and type than to actually figure out if it's there. I'll also second the theme already stressed here that it's important to figure out what kind of game you enjoy playing - everyone here is essentially playing their own personal version of the game according to what's fun for them, what they're doing to challenge themselves, etc. Find out what you like and do that.

[Naboka]

"Maximizing points per key stroke."

A critical mathematical decision for those of us who can't type extremely fast.

Impressive your memory and glancing skills must be.

Because my lack of finger dexterity contributes to spotty typing skills I'm prone to lots of typos. I've had to adopt a similar approach where I spend most of my time watching the letters being typed after glancing at the board. If I try to find new words while typing, the errors tend to negate what I've done. So, very little time actually looking at the board...

which results in very few longest words.

Before, if I studied the board while typing I sense that errors occurred but wouldn't know exactly where. And I'd have to waste precious time trying to find exactly which 3 words of the 10 got mistyped rather than moving forward. 3 seconds could be 5 words. Doesn't take much before you've lost out on 20 words that you could have gotten. Or more.

That became a strategy after finishing games, looking at the found words and cursing when I realized I must have mistyped as many as 20-30 words--because I saw them, typed them and failed to get them. #@!%#@**@#!!!

Since my first solution to that problem was to smash the computer against the wall, I figured I'd need a less expensive approach.

When I first started playing more competitively I was awed by your average words per game. Your average was higher than the best single games I could manage. To get anywhere near 400 points in a game was a thrill. The first time I earned a trophy, I wasn't good enough to get on any of the average boards.

My typing probably puts me at a threshold. Gone are the days where I could run faster or jump higher with practice and training.

My fingers have their own agenda. I think they're lobbying for long strolls at the beach with their friends, my toes. I suspect their strategy is to perform so poorly that I actually will smash the computer and find something that doesn't demand their cooperation.

Then they can retire to taking up their favorite hobbies:

mindless picking and scratching
.

[mdyak]

It's also really fun when "typos" turn out to be words I've never heard of! Another reason to just keep typing. My 75-year-old fingers are pretty bent out of shape from arthritis, but typing actually warms them up. I'm sitting here anyway working on a book I'm writing, and a three minute break jogs my brain and is fun.

[meeeep]

Also, don't underestimate the power of guessing words, especially if you have time to spare and can't see anything. Over time you learn (hopefully) which are words and which aren't. (Or maybe you'll stay like me and keep typing 'tere' even though it's not a word)

[2cute]

Hey all, was wondering if anyone has tips, or can relate what works best for them?
Do you go systematically? Just scan and see what jumps out? Scan for a root and then go systematic? Or systematically look for a root and then scan around it?
Any experiences are much appreciated!

Great question! This would be helpful for me too. Thanks for asking!

[2cute]

Look at the words played at the end of the game. Learn the ultra-rare words (especially the three and four letter ones). Learn the major combos (the "ETAS" combo is a quick 85 points). Learn how to type. I am a two finger "hunt and pecker" and that hurts my scores.

Really? Wow! You do really well considering.

[2cute]

Probably depends on your goals for a game.

It's study and practice.

And a lot of the words that will make a difference in your game performance are words you will never, ever, ever, ever use in life. You could have the vocabulary of a linguistics professor and still fall short.

As for strategy, each person finds their own depending on the natural drift of their attention.

Best advice is to try lots of approaches--repeatedly. Sometimes it takes a few tries for an approach to click. Sometimes just rotating the board will give you obvious words you didn't see. Failing and mistakes are part of the learning process. Allowing yourself to fail makes succeeding easier.

As a personal story about mistakes, I left my Stages SC3 bike in the wrong gear about a month ago. When I got back on and started pedaling, I noticed that I was going faster than normal. With less effort. I keep performance records and my best 10 mile time occurred 2 years ago after a years of training. Thought I would die reaching it. Stayed at maximum heart rate for most of that ride. After setting that record, I decided enough was enough. I didn't want to kill myself and have a heart attack. But, here I was, in the wrong gear (and supposedly a harder gear) going faster with less stress on my heart. Long story short, I beat my old unbeatable record. By 8 seconds. Then beat that record a few days later. And again a few days later. And again a few days ago. All because of a "mistake."

So, life teaches us that the "right way" isn't always the best way.

And the best way tends to differ with each of us.

That is exactly true!

Yep, for me I've found learning new words is more fun & interesting than just memorizing meaningless words to achieve some sort of score beyond what I had already achieved.


Great advice Naboka - not that I didn't like all the rest of this message, I did. I thought lots of it was really helpful. Thanks for taking the time to share it w/us!

[2cute]

My fingers have their own agenda. I think they're lobbying for long strolls at the beach with their friends, my toes. I suspect their strategy is to perform so poorly that I actually will smash the computer and find something that doesn't demand their cooperation.

Then they can retire to taking up their favorite hobbies:

mindless picking and scratching.

LOL

I get mad @ my fingers too. They don't type what I see. I thinking type this word & they have a mind of their own & type something else entirely that ... ISN'T THERE! Urg! -!#%@*&!-

Or my fingers are on the wrong keys, ever since I switched to the new longer keyboard w/the numbers on one end, I don't know, my fingers always end up on the wrong keys, its frustrating. Logically it shouldn't matter, nothing has changed except that extra 5 1/2 inches on the end. I think I just need to move my chair over to a new spot. If I could only remember to do that. Hmm ...

[BoredInTheCar]

Look at the words played at the end of the game. Learn the ultra-rare words (especially the three and four letter ones). Learn the major combos (the "ETAS" combo is a quick 85 points). Learn how to type. I am a two finger "hunt and pecker" and that hurts my scores.

Hey, I never picked up on "etas." Now that I think about it, I can see 10 four-letter words in that set (listed below). Am I missing any?

sate
seat
eats
east
tase
teas
seta
etas
ates
taes