Words to add to the dictionary

[2cute]

Yeah, those cheaters who can score over 500 points and also get the ultra-long words. Something has to be done about them.

Cheating has become just too easy. Every day I get calls from people wanting to buy my house or sell me cheats to various word games. Yesterday a Nigerian Prince claimed his WordTwist solutions would not only enable me to score 500 points and get ultralong words, but also bring me thousands in government subsidies. For only $500 I could rise to the top of the WordTwist world and ride in tickertape parades.

I wonder what is it about Nigeria that seems to produce these people who think they can outsmart us. I know scam artists (aka cheaters) come from many countries with the most recent in the news, Russia, yet its always the Nigerians that seems to come up with the elaborate schemes.

I too have had quite a few laughs from people who thought they could outsmart me, well that WAS before, when I used to answer my phone. Now I screen ALL my calls. If you want to talk to me, leave a message. If I don't know who you are, you won't get a callback.

[2cute]

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.

Ohh, that's very informative, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing that out!

I see, ok, that was a good idea. Thanks.

[2cute]

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.

Welcome to WordTwist & the forum Baron!

[BoredInTheCar]

Wow, after reading admin's comments, I realize it's more complicated than I thought. Like Naboka, I'm glad it's not my responsibility to decide!

[Naboka]

Maybe I'm overthinking it all, but at a quick glance there will likely be something on the order of 500 or so more 3 letter words (an increase of 37%), and 2500 more 4 letter words (an increase of 44%) added if we are adhere to the most liberal boundaries (i.e. everything that isn't an abbreviation, initialization, or proper name). And, by definition, almost all of these new terms would have to be scored as "ultra rare". I'm just concerned that this could potentially change the feel and experience of the game by flooding it with thousands of high-scoring short words that will puff up the total words/score available in each board by quite a bit.

Some examples of potential new words, just out of interest:

AAD: Tyneside dialect for "old"
AAM: Historical measure of liquids (Dutch and German)
ABE: Uncommon archaic British usage of "to be"
ARO: Shortened term for someone who is aromantic, coined in 2014

surprised there are only 1350-ish 3 letter words here. (if 500 new words would be 37%)

How to find balance.

Apparently, not as easy and straightforward as we would suspect. So many nuanced and agonistic factors we on the outside don't consider.

To satisfy one dissatifies another.

The old "what about..." argument. To exclude some and include others. Especially with a constantly changing language. Each new generation challenges previous ones with new terminology.

I don't envy your task. More responsibility than I'd care to shoulder alone.

Perhaps, in the interests of reducing your workload, you could ask for volunteers to pre-audition the chorus line of hopefuls on your lists--

to see which can potentially dance and carry a tune.

(Speaking of agonist: skelata isn't accepted, nor does it appear in Lexic, though it is a perfectly acceptable plural for skeleton.)

[floppers]

We take both "color" and "colour" right? And "mould" and "mold"? To me, that's good, and I hope that sort of inclusiveness will continue.

For those of us who speak English, Australian, Irish, Kiwi and American, and a little French, German, and Latin, embracing everything certainly increases our scores! the "s" versus "z" thing is awesome! I've not found much use for my smattering of Mandarin though...

[admin]

Why is a Welsh English word of less value than a Singaporean English word or an Australian English word or an American English word or an Indian English word? I say we should accept them rather than judge, for example, that UK English is correct but Indian English isn't.

Maybe I'm overthinking it all, but at a quick glance there will likely be something on the order of 500 or so more 3 letter words (an increase of 37%), and 2500 more 4 letter words (an increase of 44%) added if we are adhere to the most liberal boundaries (i.e. everything that isn't an abbreviation, initialization, or proper name). And, by definition, almost all of these new terms would have to be scored as "ultra rare". I'm just concerned that this could potentially change the feel and experience of the game by flooding it with thousands of high-scoring short words that will puff up the total words/score available in each board by quite a bit.

Some examples of potential new words, just out of interest:

AAD: Tyneside dialect for "old"
AAM: Historical measure of liquids (Dutch and German)
ABE: Uncommon archaic British usage of "to be"
ARO: Shortened term for someone who is aromantic, coined in 2014

[BoredInTheCar]

- what about English variants, like Scottish English? terms used specifically only in Wales, or Ireland, or New Zealand?.

For what it's worth, which may not be much, my considered opinion is: Embrace them all.

Why is a Welsh English word of less value than a Singaporean English word or an Australian English word or an American English word or an Indian English word? I say we should accept them rather than judge, for example, that UK English is correct but Indian English isn't.

We take both "color" and "colour" right? And "mould" and "mold"? To me, that's good, and I hope that sort of inclusiveness will continue.

[floppers]

we already have terms from Scottish, Australian, Kiwi , Irish, and American English, and English itself is an ever evolving language, some of the evolution coming from other languages (originally mainly Latin, French, Greek)...culinary terms are an example of this, as are medical terms, because we really shouldn't need to translate them into "english"...coq au vin always sounds so much more appetising...as for me, I could continue, but am about to indulge in a croque monsieur....

[admin]

Dictionary change is slated for near the end of the year. There are a few other projects lined up before that one, and I still have a bunch of decisions to make dictionary-wise, i.e.

- do we allow "internet-speak", texting language, etc.?
- what about borrowed words from other languages? where's the cut-off?
- what about English variants, like Scottish English? terms used specifically only in Wales, or Ireland, or New Zealand?

My inclination is to heavily edit the words we will be adding to the 3-4-5 letter word lists, as a huge influx of new short words will just radically change the game. So all words of that size I'll likely have to go through manually and decide on a case-by-case basis. 6-letters and longer I'm more inclined to just use a standard wordlist dump as they will come into usage far less often.

[Naboka]

For clarification, some of the words currently at https://www.lexic.us/ are not in the present WordTwist word base, but will be when the change comes?

Just tried "aretaic" and "etic"which don't work now, but are in the lexic database. Also tried reata with the same results.

Of course, poor typing may be the explanation for the words not working.

[admin]

No insults please, we're all here to have fun.

[BaronTopor]

There are more inclusive dictionaries than those used by many puzzles, including a standard like Merriam-Webster International. It is not wrong to expect words that are familiar to be allowed, when so many extremely unfamiliar words are allowed. I have, by the way, been playing for years, but only just registered. I also much prefer a five-minute game. So there. If you don't like it, shut up.

[jbud1980]

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 see that you are a new player, and welcome! I understand where you are coming from and when I first started playing (about 18 months ago) I secretly thought those who earned insanely high scores were somehow cheating. However, this was a new site to me, and I didn't want to say anything until I started to play for some time. I have learned/seen that obvious cheaters are swiftly dealt with by the Admin. There will always be somebody who will best you, so just play to have fun...

[bwt1213]

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.

The 600 point rule applies to 5x5 boards, but the daemon that harvests the boards can let some linger for a while. I came across one by Estive, who scored 1320 points or some such high number. I played the same board and got only 520 or so -- not even half, and less than half as many words as well. But boards with scores over 600 are rare indeed. There are a whole lot of 500 point boards, but ones over 600 disappear within a few hours. Think about it for a while: RussDNails plays a lot of boards for a very high average, but almost the only boards I see are the ones in the 500-point range. Only rarely will I see a board over 600, yet nearly all boards Russ plays must be well over 600.