Words to add to the dictionary

[bwt1213]

Since Stephen has said there will be an update to the dictionary, and that the update will be done all in one chunk, and it will happen later in the year, it seems to me that there should be at least a thread where we can all post words we are certain ought to be in the dictionary. I am tempted to once again ask that all gerunds have plurals, and any noun form ending in "ing" ought to have an "ings", but I know others (who don't know what they are talking about) will disagree. So, bag that. This thread ought to include things that we KNOW are words and ought to be included WITHOUT DOUBT (or argument). There should be a separate thread for adding whole piles of words, and I can think of one immediately. Take any English verb. If it ends in a consonant, adding "er" to it makes it a noun that means "who or which --- (verb)s". Examples: turn/turner, burn/burner, start/starter, storm/stormer, etc. If the verb ends in an "e", add an "r" for the same effect. Examples: bore/borer, pare/parer, stare/starer, fare/farer, etc. Problem: a whole LOT of such words are disallowed. "Parer" is disallowed. I've seen it actually used -- there are old gadgets advertised as "apple parers". And for things like "gorers" and "shorers" and "plowers", anyone who speaks English in any part of the world know exactly what those words mean and the fact that the dictionary says they aren't words is irrelevant (and stupid).

So, if we have a separate thread for the "ings" and "r(s)" and "er(s)" that bedevil us and a main thread (this one) with individual words that each of us feel certain ought to be added, by the end of the year we will have a word list that Stephen can compile and meld with his own list and update the dictionary. And we can hope that WordTwist and Stephen can help regularize English and come down on the side of the angels with the "r/er" and "ings" cases.

So: THIS thread for any words you know are words. Post as many as you like. But they must be words and not in the current dictionary.

[admin]

Good idea - I will add, please check to see if a word is on https://www.lexic.us/ first before you place it here. We've already updated lexic.us with the updated word list we plan to lean most heavily on for the Wordtwist update, so if you see the word currently on that dictionary site, it is absolutely already on the to-be-added list and should not be repeated here.

As an example, parer, shorer and plower (and plurals) are all there. Gorer is not.

Thanks!

[BoredInTheCar]

"Tainter" is missing as well.

[2cute]

"Tainter" is missing as well.

Love your profile name - very unique!

[bwt1213]

I hope Stephen reads this. There is a word list file available on line, containing 500,000+ words. If Stephen could dump a list of the words in WordTwist's dictionary, it would save a lot of time comparing each list; it could even be automated. Warning: a lot of the "words" in the other list are obvious acronyms and abbreviations, so it will not be possible to just meld their list to Stephen's. If anyone is interested, here's the list: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dw...ords_alpha.txt

[admin]

Thanks for the link! I do have that bookmarked as a resource, but it isn't going to be a magic bullet, unfortunately. (And this is a good example of why getting a "perfect" Wordtwist dictionary is really, really difficult.)

If you search that file you'll find that it is missing a LOT of plurals. It has gorer, for example, which is great, but it doesn't have gorers. It has furtiveness, but not furtivenesses. I haven't gone super deep past that point because that alone makes it a non-starter but there are likely many similar issues with missing verb endings, etc. etc.

The problem with just dumping any big list of new words into Wordtwist is that it will often create more problems than it solves. It will add 200,000 new words, sure, but if it adds GYLLEWHAMPUS to the dictionary, but doesn't include GYLLEWHAMPUSES, then we're going to get players complaining why one is in there and the other isn't. Whatever solution we come up with has to be comprehensive.

I do have a plan for this, though, with two separate resources that should pair well together and which seem fairly complete in terms of pluralizations and verb endings. It's just going to take a lot of work to systematically go through these data sets and make sure I'm not including a whole lot of junk with the "good data". Decisions need to be made re: things like abbreviations, "text-speak", highly specialized terms, terms borrowed from other languages, etc. There are a TON of potential 3- and 4-letter words that fall in these gray-area categories, for example... including them ALL in the dictionary update could radically change the nature of the game, and maybe not for the better.

[BoredInTheCar]

"revoter" is missing.

The lexic.us website does have one that has always puzzled me by its absence here: rationer. Some words are a stretch, but "rationer" surely gets used in times of shortages to refer to the people divvying up the rationed items.

[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.

[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]

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 ...)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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?