Just a little, my Precious.

[Naboka]

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If I ever start scoring thousand point games, please realize ....

or more likely:

I've become the mealy-minded slimebag that lurks in the hearts/minds of all , buried in the reptilian murk completely lacking a sense of conscience.

Why?

My sister in law and her husband came to visit. He's worked at Apple for decades. Whenever our computers misbehave, we call him up and from a 950 miles away he takes over the device and gets it fixed.

(He also finds all the inappropriate stuff I might have downloaded since his last incursion. Reciprocated bonus. It's good to have friends.)

Anyway, we were playing Wordtwist. He'd never played and was scoring what typical well-read individuals do early on. And was offended by mine.

Being competitive, he said that in two days he could destroy me.

Yeah, right.

(Being a sports fan, he's adopted a trash-talking, winner take all attitude about games. Winning is all. Sportsmanship is for losers.)

It didn't take him the full 48 hours. He contacted some friends, programmed whatever he needed, and came back to completely put my best to shame.

Since he was going to use my account (to avoid the ads that he'd grown to hate) for his demonstration of superiority, we agreed that he had to abort without finishing any of the games. I didn't want those scores distorting my averages or bests.

AND HE DESTROYED ME.

COMPLETELY.

And it didn't take him the full 2 minutes. He was beating my best-ever scores in less than a minute. He was making Megaword look average.

We discussed several tells that a player was likely using computer assist. He had workarounds for everything.

He even offered a hybrid boost, where he could put numbers of words in common groupings so all I had to do was push a key. We worked out a couple of these common groupings with around 20-30 words. I searched some games, found a board that would work, hit the keys he'd designated and had my best score ever in a minute and a half. And that's with fumbling with the process. Game aborted.

So tempting to keep that score.

It didn't matter if all the words within a grouping applied as long as some did. One stroke for 7-12 words. Cheap points.

Every day I battle with not eating the chocolates I habitually buy. Some days I succeed. Most days I don't.

Seeing those little boosts sitting on my computer are even more tempting. Just a couple of key strokes away from averaging over a thousand points a game.

When I reach to delete the Temptation, some part of my brain slithers from the shadows, wraps my will in a constrictor's death grip, and my hand falls weakly from the keyboard.

Such a lovely.

My lovely.

My precious.

Maybe I will ask my wife to delete it. Or my brother-in-law.

Maybe.

[bwt1213]

A long time ago, I mentioned cheating that would be difficult or impossible to spot. You have exactly what I was thinking of -- down to the "press a shortcut key to spew many words at once". You wouldn't have a shortcut for EVERY word possible that way, but to get an imposing score you wouldn't need to.

[BoredInTheCar]

Interesting story. I had always wondered if something like that were possible - this is assuming I am understanding it correctly. For example, to take a lame example that is not worth many points, if the letters AEST are adjacent in a 2x2 square, you can spell seat, sate, seta, ates, eats, east, tase, taes, and teas. What Naboka is describing would involve having pre-set a single-stroke command to spew out those words one after another, faster than one could type them. Is that right?

[tawantinsuyo]

Kudos to you for 'fessing up before giving in to the temptation.

[Naboka]

Interesting story. I had always wondered if something like that were possible - this is assuming I am understanding it correctly. For example, to take a lame example that is not worth many points, if the letters AEST are adjacent in a 2x2 square, you can spell seat, sate, seta, ates, eats, east, tase, taes, and teas. What Naboka is describing would involve having pre-set a single-stroke command to spew out those words one after another, faster than one could type them. Is that right?

Exactly.

But to maximize points we used exclusively ultra rare words. For example, we used ree, reen ren ern een, rees reens rens erns, snee snees, esne esnes enses, ese eses sese sess, sesses esses, nesses, teene, teener teenes, teeners, ene enes senes, renes, nene, nenes, lene, lenes, ableness, ablenesses and a bunch more that would be tedious to list. There were about 95 words in that grouping. Even if you only hit 10 of the 95, you'd have a lot of points for nothing. 75 points for one keystroke is sinfully efficient.

But, you'd more than likely get 300 to 5oo, depending on the board you pick after recognising what's there. And how many groups you had to utilize.

When you're talking about 300 to 500 points with one keystroke, that seem like legitimately typed words selections....

If you look at the read outs of the games where I got Red Boards, you'll see a lot of similarities. If the entirety of any of those readouts were grouped, you could get hundreds of points within a few seconds. I was shocked by how fast points accumulated in seconds. It made Megaword seem like he was typing in slow motion.

We only did 3 groupings--all from my memory, but it got me over 900 points in a minute and a halfish.

And I have little skill in this. The brother in law had extra boosts from lists he'd downloaded that he was getting over a thousand points in a minute. I was only using those 3 groupings I'd developed for him--but that after clicking through and rejecting opened games until I found a couple that had promise.

There were other things we did, but giving away too much merely makes the Golums get ideas about how to Precious their own.

Oh, so shiny. So precious.

Even now, I feel it calling.

Oh, my precious...

[Naboka]

Kudos to you for 'fessing up before giving in to the temptation.

If I ever succumbed, I'd have to do it on another account so I could remember what was mine and what was the computer's.

I'd probably open two extra accounts: one for thousand point games, one for the rest so I could beat Megaword, ThunderRock, boysmoms, Mackers and the other top dogs when they wade into the shallows and play 300 pointers.

Every game would be a winner.

So tempting.

If you see a username, Golum, beware....



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ps: I think someone without sufficient Wordtwist vocabulary would probably have to take the effort to find the Wordtwist words to fill out their scheme, because beating people who have played this for years and have huge Wordtwist vocabularies would be tough to beat initially without throwing up red flags. But, a little diligence and ... We'd see superhuman ability in no time..

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all that gold.

so precious.

so very very precious.

[bwt1213]

Actually, no special talent or time would be required. You wouldn't want to throw up scores where every single 3-letter or 4-letter word were included -- that would look suspicious. Just take all the rare ones and throw the rest away. Then throw a few rare ones away so it would look more "real". So: one short-cut key for the 3-letter words, 1 for the 4. For the 5 letter words, one short-cut for all the ones including a Q, one for the J, one for the X, etc. Those could be invoked if the board included those letters and not otherwise. Or maybe just all the Q words without regard for length (16 letters or less for the 4x4 game), and so on. After that, just type in words you found by normal play. The result wouldn't include a superhuman number of words and wouldn't include nearly all of the words, or even nearly all the ultra-rare ones. But the score would be ridiculously high. And there'd be no need to look for special letter groupings, just a few high-point letters -- does the board contain an X? And so on. I'm not going to post a how-to on all this; that's not the point and I don't want to encourage the vermin anyway. But I'm sure some people have done this already, and those who are doing it already know they're cheating. To what effect? I'd think that after they'd cheated a few times, they'd leave the site and not play any more, or at least stop cheating.

It would be as if one of the players for high average points per word installed a short-cut key for the top 50 highest-point words, then for the next highest 50 point words, and so on, and then just played likely-looking boards by pressing all his short-cut keys one after the other. Where's the fun? What would be the use? Once programmed, a pigeon could do the same and probably faster. The game would pall quickly, so I don't think any of our current APPW players are doing this.

If there were a way to speedily input all the words I found by using just my voice, and with software that rarely or never made a mistake, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The score would be all mine. That's not cheating in any sense of the term. And I probably still would never beat Megaword or any of the other upper-echelon players. But I'd do a whole lot better than I am now.

[JJBeanie]

I've never understood the draw of cheating. It's not your score. What satisfaction would you derive from scoring 1,000,000 points and blowing everyone out of the water? You didn't do it. It wasn't by the sweat of your brow. Deep down, all you can really say is that you cheated your way to the top ***insert slow clapping here***

Note: all you/your references are general, not aimed at Naboka or anyone else

[bwt1213]

Once in a while (though not recently) I played a game on the AARP website, where you find words and make the puzzle's letters come down from the top of the grid (collapsing because of the letters you removed). The highest I'd ever gotten was X, and I can tell you quite honestly that I don't remember what X was. But the record was 10X, and there were a bunch of players around 9X and then more at 8X and so on. And then one day, someone had 500X. And they played every day for a while. Maybe they're still playing. But I'm not.

[Naboka]

I've never understood the draw of cheating. It's not your score. What satisfaction would you derive from scoring 1,000,000 points and blowing everyone out of the water? You didn't do it. It wasn't by the sweat of your brow. Deep down, all you can really say is that you cheated your way to the top ***insert slow clapping here***

Note: all you/your references are general, not aimed at Naboka or anyone else

The entire subject has fascinated me since high school.

Your personal understanding is probably based on having a normal sense of fairness. And that normal sense of fairness includes a regard for others. Empathy. The Golden Rule. You seem to have a high sense of honesty. Dishonesty just seems wrong. All of those ideas are regarded as admirable by most of us.

Our reasoning always centers on principles that we've accepted. On what foundation does our logic and reasoning build?

Not everyone bases their reasoning on the same principles. I remember sitting in a class of bored juniors fascinated by lectures on various systems of government. How does a society divy up the resources? What principles are necessary for society to function best?

Part comes down to fair distribution of resources. But "fair" is a slippery slope. Is it "equitable" for some lazy jerk to get the same distribution as me when I've worked my butt off and they take while contributing nothing?

Just who benefits from the laws and rules? And why aren't laws and rules applied equally to everyone?

Life isn't fair. Period. People are just born with different degrees of strength, drive, intelligence, family resources, etc. We're also either born with or develop different regards for how much we deserve. And how much we want. (Some of my treasures are considered mere clutter by the wife.)

Highly competitive people believe they have the right to win. Degrees of competition are part of our DNA. Darwin and Smith (capitalism) believed competition was essential.

But what if you have an inflated sense of your right to win vs the resources you have to accomplish this? What if the rules were just for the benefit of others and holding you back? Take Al Capone.

"Cheating" is all about rules and fairness. But who makes the rules? For some, rules are the bedrock of civilization. For others, rules are no more meaningful than a Sears catalogue in an Ozark outhouse.

None of us has an accurate picture of who we are.

One of the guys at a gym I used in the early 70's had 20" ripped upper arms. They were huge!!! The rest of him was equally inflated. Yet he considered himself "too small." He actually thought he was skinny. I thought he had the body builder's version of reverse anorexia--but that concept hadn't arrived at that time. So, even though the rules said no steroids for competitive bodybuilders, he was flooding his system. More is better, right? Except it ended up killing him with complications.

Some of what we see on Wordtwist are the pranksters. They tend to be individuals with an immature sense of "fun." They're smart enough to use programs to get every word of every puzzle--at least back when asdf and unbeatable could access the word data base being used. But they're mostly just messing with us.

Another thing we occaisionally see are individuals with an inflated sense of what they deserve. They might be very good typists with very large vocabularies, but not nearly good enough to compete with MegaWord. They want to be the best. They feel they deserve to be the best. Every thought tells them they are the best. Not being the best is frustrating and UNFAIR.

Plus, beating others provides pleasurable feedback. Endorphins and the like. Win a game and get positive feedback. Like a drug.

Which can become addictive.

So how can such a person remedy this" ridiculous unfairness?" How can they get their high? Do they steal their mother's jewelry to make a score? Do they sell their bodies?

Barry Bonds, McGuire, Sousa, Armstrong were all gifted athletes. But they all believed they deserved more. It wasn't fair that they weren't the best. So they sought remedies.

Individuals who enhance their performance, be it steroids or computer assists, really believe they aren't doing anything wrong. They are solving a problem. A problem of their inablities vs their resources to to reach goals they feel they deserve. But, oddly, "their inabilities" isn't part of the problems solving. That would be an unallowed self admission. A bit of humility that has no home.

"Blowing people out of the water" is one of their rewards. Not just winning but destroying. That kind of success verifies their superiority. Their delusional grandeur is validated. And in their minds "they" actually did it. They didn't cheat. They solved a problem. And who needs brow sweat when you can fly to the top effortlessly?

It's all a mealy-minded justification.

If the top is where your self delusion says you belong? Only an idiot would let someone else's rules hold them back. Or so they think.

Fairness is a pipe dream. It's tooth and claw. Survival of the fittest. Winner take all. Blah, blah, blah. No one else matters.

Fairness and rewards made me think of military experience. The conventional wisdom is that bullies are cowards and standing up to them will make them afraid of you. The military attracts sociopaths who are both bullies and fearless. They don't have the same fear of battle most of us do. Thye sure aren't afraid of people who stand up to them. And a lot of them derive a great deal of satisfaction from harming others, from watching others suffer, from humiliating others.

For some, others have absolutely no rights at all. Rules are a set of ideas to make games equitable. But for some, the ONLY rule is winning. To follow rules someone else imposed to prevent you from winning forces you to break the senior rule. To not follow that supreme dictum would be cheating yourself. WIN AT ALL COSTS. LOSING IS FOR LOSERS.

You can never, ever, ever get such a person to admit to themselves or others that they've done anything wrong. Others be damned. They don't count. Outside of being a source of giving feedback to one's superiority or providing entertainment by making them suffer, others are irrelevant.

The thing such a person refuses to consider is what if others were doing that to them? A golfer who moves his ball to more favorable positions while tossing his opponents to something far more difficult would become infuriated by that scumbag did the same thing. The opponent has broken the only rule in the self aborbed players rulebook: WIN AT ALL COSTS.

But that rule only applies to one person. Anyone else trying to use it isn't playing "fairly."

Ridiculous? You bet.

But, as in all things, there are degrees to all of this. Just like having a high regard for yourself is good--until it becomes malignant narcissism. Taking pride in one's success is a good thing--until it becomes malignant. Accomplishing great things is admirable--until we discover it's all based on lies.

[Naboka]

It was hard...

erasing that temptation

knowing I could add to it and become UNBEATABLE.

But the primitive brain is ignorant. I tricked it into letting go of that seductive urge for power. Those little program boosts that would let me score 2,000 points or more in 4x4.

I promised it a bag of Brookside dark chocolate acai & blueberry flavor from Costco.

And it fell for it.

Golum is simply incapable of seeing how pathetic he is. To wallow in the worst of oneself just for a shiny reward.

So precious.

Yet...

As was said, "what good does it do you to gain the entire world and lose you soul?" Or something like that.

I suppose a corollary is what good does it do you to become the "best" when you really aren't? Just living a lie. Trying to sell others that lie.

Golum would never understand.

Poor pathetic Golum, simmering in his swamp of self delusion.

A little power to a small mind seems like a lot.

Now Golum is angry again.

Chocolate for greatness?!!!!!

Outrageous!

He doesn't quite get it.

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Imagine looking in the mirror and finding that face behind your pretense?

[dannyb]

The dark side is greed and the fear of change and the inability of letting go. You HAVE touched the ring. Now what will you do? (A little Star Wars and Tolkien mash up)

[Naboka]

[QUOTE=dannyb;n34826]The dark side is greed and the fear of change and the inability of letting go. You HAVE touched the ring. Now what will you do? (A little Star Wars and Tolkien mash up)[/QUOTE Screen Shot 2024-04-20 at 10.43.36 AM.png

[dannyb]

Will you cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom?

[Naboka]

Will you cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom?

Yep. Cast it right in.

Not that it would do any good.

If a computer ignoramus like me can get hold of such a simple program that would allow 2,000 point games on 4x4, any schmuck with the inclination could also.

It's sort of like Middle-earth having 3D printers that could make as many rings as you want. Every Hobbit could have a chestful. The entire village could make a pilgrimage up the mountain once a month to throw in their rings...

and still have all they wanted.

So what would Wordtwist be like with hundreds of Golums thrashing around desperately trying to outdo one another for 1,500 point averages?

Anyone who's played games on the internet knows that players with "Rings" are a whack-a-mole problem. Get rid of one and another pops up. Sometimes I suppose the same desperate individuals are reincarnating their Golum selves as "new" players just for the thrill of holding the ring.

Sort of feel sorry for someone who needs a ring to feel valued. The "worst" players here have all sorts of value that we often don't consider. I hope they recognise what value they bring to the world.

I'm never going to be scoring 1,000 points a game, so it's not my battle about ultra-high scores. It's for someone else to care.

Nor do I care if some ringholder "beats" my games. Welcome to everyone's club. Even Megaword gets beaten at times. Saw a game today where boysmom had high-score/most-words with Megaword having best/longest word.

That someone wipes out my games actually benefits all of us. Those games almost always go right back into circulation so all 4 best categories are again available rather than gathering dust for months. If lalatan grabs the best/longest word in the first few plays and that game doesn't recycle for 40 plays.... it could be over a year before that best/longest word is up for grabs again!
,
Playing "unplayed" games always seems a little more thrilling.

Termites have a definite purpose in nature. We may not like what they do to our houses, but they sure help forests. There are all sorts of disgusting creatures in nature, but...

that's the nature of the beast.

Think I'd rather be an architect than a termite, but...

maybe the termite would disagree.