Words to add to the dictionary

[bwt1213]

A lot of musical terms are missing, including instrument names. And what about the cheaters who get 500+ scores and ultra-long words? There isn't enough time. I would like to have a five or ten-minute option.

I have long proposed a completely different game. There is no time limit. You have, instead, a time within which you must enter at least one new valid word. Perhaps the limit is five seconds, or ten, or thirty. But there is a limit, and you have to enter a valid new word. The game ends when you have not entered a valid new word within the time limit.

In this proposed game, there is no special advantage to typing fast. If you are typing one-handed because of stroke, no problem. If you struggle because of vision problems, that's also okay. If you have to spell out the letters as Hawking did, that's still okay.

Look, typing speed is a nice thing to have. But that shouldn't be what this game is about. This game ought to recognize that there are many capable, intelligent, and competitive people who are at some handicap -- by reason of age, injury, disease, or birth -- and need a game at which they can compete on some kind of level field with everyone else.

Yes, this is a NEW game. Its records don't compare to the ones in the current games. So we need a whole new records section and a new standings section for 4x4 and 5x5. And by all that is holy, there ought to be a 6x6.

[BaronTopor]

A lot of musical terms are missing, including instrument names. And what about the cheaters who get 500+ scores and ultra-long words? There isn't enough time. I would like to have a five or ten-minute option.

[BoredInTheCar]

Yes, those charts don't change. Think about it ... a game may have only been played once, with a mediocre score, and yet the chart would still show, for example, 138 common words, 102 wide words, 63 rare words, and 197 extremely rare words. If that represented what had been played so far, that one player would have had to have gotten about 500 words - not possible.

Your second paragraph isn't quite how I would describe what I did (though it would have been technically possible to do that it). I just studied a small set of boards at my leisure off line, then I was well prepared for those particular boards when they came up "live." Sort of like taking a lot of practice tests and then being able to do well on the real GMATs.

[2cute]

Naboka and @2cute: first, yes, I am only talking about 5x5 boards. I often forget that 4x4 boards even exist and that many comments in the forum are about the 4x4s!

However, my unique identifiers would also work in the 4x4 world. In 2cute's example, my identifier would be 27, 16, 9. (Based on the chart showing that there are a total of 27 common words, 16 common 3-letter words, and 7 common 4-letter words.

So that information is set by admin & its ultimate someone could get for a puzzle? I thought that box represented what had been played so far & thus after several people played it the values hence 27 maybe become 30 common words found.

Ohhhh, so your system was to take that info (in my example 27-16-9) & categorize it, then before you played the board, you look @ your notes, find the one you played offline w/plenty of time to find as many words as you could & then when you found it online you'd just type all those words in as if you had just found them. Do I understand that right?

[BoredInTheCar]

Naboka and @2cute: first, yes, I am only talking about 5x5 boards. I often forget that 4x4 boards even exist and that many comments in the forum are about the 4x4s!

However, my unique identifiers would also work in the 4x4 world. In 2cute's example, my identifier would be 27, 16, 9. (Based on the chart showing that there are a total of 27 common words, 16 common 3-letter words, and 7 common 4-letter words.)

[lalatan]

Paleodendrologist(s) need to be added. Palaeodendrologist(s) were accepted. None of the 4 words were in lexic.us

[Naboka]

I don't think that's true. Hence the Russ board I shared in 'The Strange & the Unexpected' thread. He played it only once & got 743 points & I came across it so it was still playable for someone of your skill level (certainly not mine).

Think the 600 rule applies to 4x4 play. Maybe this is about 5x5 boards which I nothing about.

BoredInTheCar did mention their system involved 4 letter and 5 letter words. Seems to indicate 5x5 as the 4x4's would start with 3 letter words. Not to mention playing bunches of 800 point games is more in line with 5x5, which has an extra minute and words worth more points.

Also, I believe the boards can linger for a bit before being pulled. Not sure for how long. When I'm clicking through hundreds of games, I've seen the higher point boards alread played. Even increased the scores on a couple. So...?

Nor do I have a clue as to the 5x5 total point threshold.

[2cute]

Easy answer on how to track boards: screen shots! I identified boards by the first three numbers in the top row of the information grid - a board that I identified as 208. 78, 63 had 208 total common words, 78 4-letter comment words, and 63 5-letter common words. It was almost unheard of for two boards to have all three of those numbers the same, so that provides a unique identifier for each board.

These days there seem to be a huge number of boards in play at any given time, but it used to be more common to see the same boards over and over. Note that I said "more common," not common. However, if you clicked through boards a couple hours a day you would indeed come across the same boards many times during a month. And by "many" I just mean 50+ times in a month so that you can be eligible for the highest average score list. That's fewer than twice per day; completely achievable if you are insanely obsessed with the game. (I don't have that kind of time any more, but in Jakarta I did, as I had few responsibilities.)

I can't remember what my cut-off point was, but I think it was something like a minimum of 200 common words total. Whenever one of those came up, I'd look at my list, and if the board was one I'd been studying, I'd play it. If it was new to me, I would "harvest" it with a screen shot and play it off line.

As to boards being retired - they may be permanently retired at some point, but I am virtually certain that they go back into play for at least a few times when they are taken out due to a 600+ score.

You can see the effect of this if you look carefully at the numbers when you click through boards. Quite a few of the "superboards," which for convenience I will define as boards with more than 175 common words, tend to have been played very few times and the high scorer will be an "unknown" player who probably isn't highly skilled.

Why would that be? Think about it. Top players are clicking through boards looking for high-scoring boards to play. When they hit a super board, they play it. And because they are very good, they score above 600. The board is then removed and recycled. It comes back then and only sticks around as long as no-one scores above 600. So the only scores you'll see will be from players who can't achieve that. The board will remain active as long as it has only been played by "average" players, but as soon as someone really good gives it a try, they score above 600 and the board is recycled again.

On the rare occasion that I see a superboard that has been played 20-30 times, and a top score of perhaps 580 from a very good player, I'll know that it's probably an unusually tough board. Even if there are hundreds of words, they must be configured in a way that is a little harder than usual to find. On such boards, I anticipate that my own score will probably be lower than I would ordinarily expect. That often seems to be the case.

As much as I love words for their own sake, "gaming" the game through analysis is an additional part of the fun. Operations research was my favorite quantitative course in graduate school (economics, not so much ...)

Great analysis.

Ok I realize you had to have some sort of organizing system in order to find the board again after you played it offline with unlimited time. Yet, I don't understand your system. Before you play the board there's the image of what has been played before you begin:

Screen Shot 2022-04-13 at 2.13.18 PM.png
Take like this one. What number would it be categorized? This is the part I don't understand. I mean after many people play it wouldn't the numbers change?

[2cute]

How in the world did you keep "played" boards for study? If you compiled super boards and played them off line...

I'm at a loss as to how you could remember which board did what. Then to know it's THE board... Big mystery to my limited mind.

A while ago, I ran into games I'd studied after playing and they came up either that day or a day later. After getting the high score, I felt like I'd cheated.

But, I could only recognize them as boards I'd played because they had huge pockets of identifiable high point words.

And it had only been a very short turn around.

If the rumor is true that boards are retired after 600 points are scored, how in the world is it possible to repetitiously play 800 point boards. It's usually a stroke of luck to see any that have a score of 600. Even one a week is noticable.

I keep hundreds of pages of words with high scores for study. But entire boards? Head scratching time.

I don't think that's true. Hence the Russ board I shared in 'The Strange & the Unexpected' thread. He played it only once & got 743 points & I came across it so it was still playable for someone of your skill level (certainly not mine).

[2cute]

It's actually an accurate description, or at least it was 6-7 years ago.

Years ago I played as "Jakarta Jane," achieving reasonably high ranks and average scores through something resembling brute force. There were fewer boards in play back then, so with absurd levels of perseverance it was possible to click through boards until you found ones you'd previously identified and studied. I compiled a couple hundred "super boards" that I practiced playing off line until I could get 800+ points every time, then I'd hunt for those games and play them on line.

I lived in Jakarta at the time and fairly often found myself a passenger in a car with with enough internet to play Wordtwist, but not play it well. I didn't want to play as JakartaJane and ruin my high averages with faulty internet, so instead I played as "BoredInTheCar."

I eventually tired of the massive rote work involved in keeping JakartaJane's scores high (even if I hadn't, the strategy wouldn't work now, there are too many games active) and retired the name. So now I'm "BoredInTheCar" and am not trying to achieve any particular goals most of the time. Some months I play only great boards; sometimes I deliberately go for small boards. Usually I keep all my scores whether or not they're any good, although this month I'm trying to see if I can make the top 10 average score (If I do I'll be #9 or #10) so I'm curating my games a bit more than usual.

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

[Naboka]

Easy answer on how to track boards: screen shots! I identified boards by the first three numbers in the top row of the information grid - a board that I identified as 208. 78, 63 had 208 total common words, 78 4-letter comment words, and 63 5-letter common words. It was almost unheard of for two boards to have all three of those numbers the same, so that provides a unique identifier for each board.

These days there seem to be a huge number of boards in play at any given time, but it used to be more common to see the same boards over and over. Note that I said "more common," not common. However, if you clicked through boards a couple hours a day you would indeed come across the same boards many times during a month. And by "many" I just mean 50+ times in a month so that you can be eligible for the highest average score list. That's fewer than twice per day; completely achievable if you are insanely obsessed with the game. (I don't have that kind of time any more, but in Jakarta I did, as I had few responsibilities.)

I can't remember what my cut-off point was, but I think it was something like a minimum of 200 common words total. Whenever one of those came up, I'd look at my list, and if the board was one I'd been studying, I'd play it. If it was new to me, I would "harvest" it with a screen shot and play it off line.

As to boards being retired - they may be permanently retired at some point, but I am virtually certain that they go back into play for at least a few times when they are taken out due to a 600+ score.

You can see the effect of this if you look carefully at the numbers when you click through boards. Quite a few of the "superboards," which for convenience I will define as boards with more than 175 common words, tend to have been played very few times and the high scorer will be an "unknown" player who probably isn't highly skilled.

Why would that be? Think about it. Top players are clicking through boards looking for high-scoring boards to play. When they hit a super board, they play it. And because they are very good, they score above 600. The board is then removed and recycled. It comes back then and only sticks around as long as no-one scores above 600. So the only scores you'll see will be from players who can't achieve that. The board will remain active as long as it has only been played by "average" players, but as soon as someone really good gives it a try, they score above 600 and the board is recycled again.

On the rare occasion that I see a superboard that has been played 20-30 times, and a top score of perhaps 580 from a very good player, I'll know that it's probably an unusually tough board. Even if there are hundreds of words, they must be configured in a way that is a little harder than usual to find. On such boards, I anticipate that my own score will probably be lower than I would ordinarily expect. That often seems to be the case.

As much as I love words for their own sake, "gaming" the game through analysis is an additional part of the fun. Operations research was my favorite quantitative course in graduate school (economics, not so much ...)

Analysis? Operations research.

A bailiwick held dear.

(disclaimer: this will probably become boring and pedantic pretty quickly.)

How to understand a system. How to improve that system.

Systems analysis always begins with grasping the purpose of the system. What is the system trying to achieve?

It would seem that the purpose of WordTwist is to test one's ability to find and record words in a puzzle. Mental exercise and personal satisfaction.

Of course, there's a competitive aspect with all the "bests" and "highests" and accolades.

Been there, done that, and ..

who cares?

Certainly not the person sitting next to you in a crowded theater. Not the cashier at the grocery store. Not a refugee fleeing for their life.

The success here is about as meaningful as a drop of water compared to an ocean. Certainly, a glass of water requires lots of drops. But...

So many other things in life so much more important than "getting the best score by any means necessary."

Most analysis includes benefit/loss factors. What is gained, what is lost? Does the proposed adjustment increase productivity? Does the change improve product quality? Are there cost increases associated with the increases in productivity or product quality that negate those changes?

For an individual, behavior has rewards and costs. I guess each of us has to figure out what's valuable and what isn't. Being honest is valuable, but telling the truth almosts always comes with costs. Sometimes steep costs. Most people feel honesty fails basic reward/risk assessment. It''s a tightrope walk across the chasm being degrees of dishonest and maintaining the trust of others. Losing the trust of everyone in our lives would be catastrophic. Trust is part of the reward for honesty.

Or, at least, convincing others that you're honest.

Part of the gain/loss assessment includes opportunity costs. Could these resources be put to other uses that would achieve more profitable gains? Would it make more sense to spend one's time "gaming the game" or improving one's ability to actually play the game?

At times, I often wonder if I should stop playing this game completely because there are so many, many, many other valuable things I could do with my time. But, the mental exercise probably will lessen the chances of gettiing alzheimer's. And, analysing the personal operation system that's involved in playing the game has been valuable.

And playing allows me to believe I'm actually doing something productive while avoiding all the things I should be doing that actually are productive.

Self deception is one of my biggest rewards in WordTwist. Very valuable that self deception. Profitable indeed.

Profit is value gained. Value applies to all sorts of things. Not necessarily monetary.

"Gaming" the game leaves me wondering about value gained vs value lost.

A guy's a blood pressure monitor reads 160/102, which is unhealthy hypertension. Instead of excercising and eating right, this clever fellow, who knows a lot about electical devices "modifies" the monitor so that it now reads 110/65. Perfect. He's healthy.

And what has he gained?

Or a guy wants to improve his mile times, so he rigs the stop watch to operate at half speed. His 7:49 mile now "times" under 4 minutes! What an athlete! He spreads the news on social media he's broken 4 minutes in the mile.

And what has he gained?

Having a $40 knockoff Rolex might make a person feel successful, but...

Is it real?

Does it matter?

Doing a lot of home improvement projects quickly teaches the value of accurate measurement.

Social creatures are constantly measuring each other. Birds perform all sorts of weird "dances" so the female can measure who gets to fertilize her eggs. To some degree, we're all dancing for each other, pretending to measure up to invisible standards. But, males have been tricking females since long before eggs became chickens.

Your system for gaming the system certainly solved a lot of retreival complications. Have to admire the simplicity of your solution. (Even if it does seem mind numbing and stultifying in execution.)

Next time I'm at the grocery store, I'll have to ask the cashier how important it is in her life. She probably doesn't even care that the credit card is stolen--as long as the purchase goes through.

[bwt1213]

Yeah, tell me about it. When I wrote mathematical models to game the stock market, it started off being trivial -- because my "opponents" were idiots. The problem was that the opponents became twice as smart about every six months. Aha! The game is on! I made tens of millions for those who employed me, but not even millions for myself. That was my fault, not theirs. The end game was people who wrote programs in machine language using data feeds literal FEET from the stock market and traded based on nanoseconds difference in time delay (speed of light; their feed was physically coupled to the stock market by less than ten feet of optical cable). First come, first served.

Ah, but for the old days -- when I could run tightly-coded programs on microcomputers that would outperform mainframes and make the stock exchanges send the SEC examiners to my company every few weeks because the exchanges were certain we were cheating. Somehow. A couple of years later, the exchanges hired people like me and could do what I did. That's life in the fast lane.

[BoredInTheCar]

Easy answer on how to track boards: screen shots! I identified boards by the first three numbers in the top row of the information grid - a board that I identified as 208. 78, 63 had 208 total common words, 78 4-letter comment words, and 63 5-letter common words. It was almost unheard of for two boards to have all three of those numbers the same, so that provides a unique identifier for each board.

These days there seem to be a huge number of boards in play at any given time, but it used to be more common to see the same boards over and over. Note that I said "more common," not common. However, if you clicked through boards a couple hours a day you would indeed come across the same boards many times during a month. And by "many" I just mean 50+ times in a month so that you can be eligible for the highest average score list. That's fewer than twice per day; completely achievable if you are insanely obsessed with the game. (I don't have that kind of time any more, but in Jakarta I did, as I had few responsibilities.)

I can't remember what my cut-off point was, but I think it was something like a minimum of 200 common words total. Whenever one of those came up, I'd look at my list, and if the board was one I'd been studying, I'd play it. If it was new to me, I would "harvest" it with a screen shot and play it off line.

As to boards being retired - they may be permanently retired at some point, but I am virtually certain that they go back into play for at least a few times when they are taken out due to a 600+ score.

You can see the effect of this if you look carefully at the numbers when you click through boards. Quite a few of the "superboards," which for convenience I will define as boards with more than 175 common words, tend to have been played very few times and the high scorer will be an "unknown" player who probably isn't highly skilled.

Why would that be? Think about it. Top players are clicking through boards looking for high-scoring boards to play. When they hit a super board, they play it. And because they are very good, they score above 600. The board is then removed and recycled. It comes back then and only sticks around as long as no-one scores above 600. So the only scores you'll see will be from players who can't achieve that. The board will remain active as long as it has only been played by "average" players, but as soon as someone really good gives it a try, they score above 600 and the board is recycled again.

On the rare occasion that I see a superboard that has been played 20-30 times, and a top score of perhaps 580 from a very good player, I'll know that it's probably an unusually tough board. Even if there are hundreds of words, they must be configured in a way that is a little harder than usual to find. On such boards, I anticipate that my own score will probably be lower than I would ordinarily expect. That often seems to be the case.

As much as I love words for their own sake, "gaming" the game through analysis is an additional part of the fun. Operations research was my favorite quantitative course in graduate school (economics, not so much ...)

[Naboka]

It's actually an accurate description, or at least it was 6-7 years ago.

Years ago I played as "Jakarta Jane," achieving reasonably high ranks and average scores through something resembling brute force. There were fewer boards in play back then, so with absurd levels of perseverance it was possible to click through boards until you found ones you'd previously identified and studied. I compiled a couple hundred "super boards" that I practiced playing off line until I could get 800+ points every time, then I'd hunt for those games and play them on line.

I lived in Jakarta at the time and fairly often found myself a passenger in a car with with enough internet to play Wordtwist, but not play it well. I didn't want to play as JakartaJane and ruin my high averages with faulty internet, so instead I played as "BoredInTheCar."

I eventually tired of the massive rote work involved in keeping JakartaJane's scores high (even if I hadn't, the strategy wouldn't work now, there are too many games active) and retired the name. So now I'm "BoredInTheCar" and am not trying to achieve any particular goals most of the time. Some months I play only great boards; sometimes I deliberately go for small boards. Usually I keep all my scores whether or not they're any good, although this month I'm trying to see if I can make the top 10 average score (If I do I'll be #9 or #10) so I'm curating my games a bit more than usual.

How in the world did you keep "played" boards for study? If you compiled super boards and played them off line...

I'm at a loss as to how you could remember which board did what. Then to know it's THE board... Big mystery to my limited mind.

A while ago, I ran into games I'd studied after playing and they came up either that day or a day later. After getting the high score, I felt like I'd cheated.

But, I could only recognize them as boards I'd played because they had huge pockets of identifiable high point words.

And it had only been a very short turn around.

If the rumor is true that boards are retired after 600 points are scored, how in the world is it possible to repetitiously play 800 point boards. It's usually a stroke of luck to see any that have a score of 600. Even one a week is noticable.

I keep hundreds of pages of words with high scores for study. But entire boards? Head scratching time.

[BoredInTheCar]

Love your profile name - very unique!

It's actually an accurate description, or at least it was 6-7 years ago.

Years ago I played as "Jakarta Jane," achieving reasonably high ranks and average scores through something resembling brute force. There were fewer boards in play back then, so with absurd levels of perseverance it was possible to click through boards until you found ones you'd previously identified and studied. I compiled a couple hundred "super boards" that I practiced playing off line until I could get 800+ points every time, then I'd hunt for those games and play them on line.

I lived in Jakarta at the time and fairly often found myself a passenger in a car with with enough internet to play Wordtwist, but not play it well. I didn't want to play as JakartaJane and ruin my high averages with faulty internet, so instead I played as "BoredInTheCar."

I eventually tired of the massive rote work involved in keeping JakartaJane's scores high (even if I hadn't, the strategy wouldn't work now, there are too many games active) and retired the name. So now I'm "BoredInTheCar" and am not trying to achieve any particular goals most of the time. Some months I play only great boards; sometimes I deliberately go for small boards. Usually I keep all my scores whether or not they're any good, although this month I'm trying to see if I can make the top 10 average score (If I do I'll be #9 or #10) so I'm curating my games a bit more than usual.