Adios

[jbud1980]

lalatan, I don't think we have ever chatted on this forum, but I want you to know that when I first started playing (mainly 4X4), my goal was to to excel at finding 16-letter, unique words like you. I am by no means at your level, but you inspired me to try and seek out those obscure, unique words, and I want to thank you for that. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

-Jbud

[jbud1980]

We will all miss Lalatan -- a worthy opponent, a spirited game-player, an electronically-linked friend, and a companion (perhaps of many years standing). And yet it strikes me that not one person has failed to accept his reason for retirement -- that it was getting just too hard to find boards to play. I remarked, not too long ago, on the extreme difficulty of finding boards that had not been previously played. Let me say it again: if a board is just too good (too many words on it, too many long words, TOO MUCH FUN) then that board will be played once or twice and retired. Sure, it will be recycled. Perhaps it will appear again in a year. The more dreary boards will hang around forever until their max-plays is reached. And thus we will reach a state where most boards remaining will be ones no one wants to play. Good boards that everyone wants to see will appear and quickly disappear again for another year.

So let me propose a solution, one that might allow us the pleasure of the company of our friend lalatan, and others who might also become tired of wading through dozens or hundreds of boards hoping to find a good one (by our own criteria). I propose that all retired boards be stamped with the number of plays they had had before being retired. A board that was played once by fasteddieb and retired after he posted 2000+ on it would be INSTANTLY returned to play. Other boards, played twice or whatever, would be returned more quickly if their number of plays was lower. Boards that lasted the full max-plays number would sit in board purgatory for a year or more, or would be permanently retired and replaced by new and more appealing boards.

To state my suggestion more succinctly: retired boards should be resurrected faster the fewer number of times they have been played before retirement. Boards retired after one (or perhaps just fewer than five) plays should be put back in play immediately -- that was a GOOD board and should be seen again and again. Boards retired after 40 plays should be removed from the pool permanently; no one found them very much fun to play.

I don't know if doing this would bring lalatan back and playing again. I hope it would. But it would really improve the game, and there's no question about it.

I wonder if this could be accomplished by recycling the boards more often. It has been over four years since the boards have been recycled. Is this standard?