remember when

[Naboka]

The monthly average-points-per-word competition used to raise a lot of eyebrows.

And some protests.

Remember when some players would find that one really long word, then establish that as their average by submitting a bunch of games with zero words played?

Admin finally put an end to that by making those games not count so you had to play at least one word.

Since I haven 't really played high average points per word until recently, I hadn't paid much attention to the mechanics and methods players used to reach high averages. It seems that all you have to do is scan through games until you discover one with a very high scoring word. then play that single word on that game. Then repeat.

Since in 4x4 most of the 33 point plus words are really easy to find if you already know it exists on the pregame stats , it's not much of a challenge to find those words and get a high average. Just the tedium of scanning games. But then...it often takes less than ten seconds to get that word once the game is opened if that's all you're looking for and you already know it's there.

But, these aren't really words the person found, they've just piggy-backed off someone else's efforts. They didn't have to start from scratch and solve the puzzle. They're just using a loophole rather than skill.

I'm not sure of the merits of a competition where players can simply use the efforts of other players as a springboard for their own "success."

An argument can be made that for one to qualify for highest average points per word, the player must also have established a certain number of their own best word records during that month. Say 50 since the contest requires that 50 games be played. Doesn't mean you can't play a thousand games that month, only that you have to have played at least 50 games where you set the best word record for that game. You could also play those opportunistic boards, but your average would have more validity rather than simply reflecting a successful exploitation of a loophole.

Maybe, I'm just being picky from dealing with students who want to slide by using other people's work. I'm just growing weary of seeing a picture of someone and finding out it isn't even a real person. Discolored teeth have started to seem more attractive because they're real, not fake. Mediocre accomplishments that are real have started to have more and more value.

It's just harder and harder to admire loopholes. I want my heroes to deserve the admiration.

[2cute]

"you have to have played at least 50 games where you set the best word record for that game" If this were the case my scores would never count as I maybe set 2 or 3 per month. I think this standard is much too high for those of us who just play for fun. If my score could never be counted I'd probably leave the site as what's the point to continue trying to compete with people like yourself who spend far more time playing than myself. I want my effort to be at least recorded.

"I want my heroes to deserve the admiration." I agree with you on this point.

[Naboka]

"you have to have played at least 50 games where you set the best word record for that game" If this were the case my scores would never count as I maybe set 2 or 3 per month. I think this standard is much too high for those of us who just play for fun. If my score could never be counted I'd probably leave the site as what's the point to continue trying to compete with people like yourself who spend far more time playing than myself. I want my effort to be at least recorded.

"I want my heroes to deserve the admiration." I agree with you on this point.

You make a valid point. All of a person's games should count.

I suppose what I was suggesting was finding a way to make the competition as fair as possible, in a way that reflects an individual's honest efforts. A kid that turns in a Pulitzer-prize caliber term paper that he got from AI certainly isn't showing his ability. It wasn't his efforts. It wasn't his ideas. He just copied something.

There has to be some way to eliminate the piggyback loophole where a player makes no effort to do anything other than use the efforts of other players to enhance their own scores. I think neither of us uses that loophole. If a person averages 33 points a word for the month, having played 50 games and not having earned a single additional best word record, it's a fair indication that something's amiss.

I think that finding a word no one else has is a rewarding accomplishment. Finding a word that you know someone else has found and how much it's worth is sort of solving a puzzle that's 3/4ths done. Nice, but not quite the same.

Surely, there's a solution to the piggybacking being more highly rewarded than the efforts of individuals who actually solve the puzzle from scratch.

I drive my wife crazy testing ideas to solve problems. Sometimes hundreds of ideas, many of them contradictory, before I either figure it out or set it aside for future examination. I have no solution for this. And I apologize for clawing this rotting bone from Wordtwist's flowerbeds. The flowers were so pretty. The hole an eyesore.

Maybe the solution is to just climb on board the clickbait train driven by "likes," and pretend that all the pretense is reality. To watch those videos of eagles swooping down to grab a baby from his carriage only to be thwarted by the family dog who leaps 30 feet into the air to knock the predator senseless.

So impressive.

And so false.

[JJBeanie]

I've often wondered what it would be like if there were no puzzle stats displayed before the game. You'd have no idea of word category breakdowns nor who achieved the records. You'd have to do the legwork yourself. It would be interesting to see the impact it had on the monthly competition stats.

This is coming from someone who almost exclusively plays 6x6 these days, who plays and finishes every board presented, and who is happy just to be somewhere on the top 10 leaderboards

[crazykate]

I remember the APPW controversy and was one of the complaining voices.
However, I also remember the discussions it sparked about different goals and playing styles, and that the existing scoreboards don't really fit all styles.
Some quirks of the game only show up as problems when viewed through the lens of one particular playing style. And some playing styles don't have scoreboards that properly show off their efforts and successes. Lalatan's quest for best word records is an example of this. There is no scoreboard tracking the number of best or longest word records per month, so there is no way to directly compete with him in this category. However, the game we jokingly dubbed "what word did lalatan find" essentially does exactly what you're complaining about: raising the APPW average by looking for a word you know must be there.

To me, "what word did lalatan find" is still difficult. I have devolved into a very casual player who doesn't play every day, and I sometimes struggle to hit the 51 games minimum at the end of the month. I haven't memorised all of the long words, and while I prioritise long and high-scoring words, I also want to raise my total word and score average, so I don't just look for the best word but keep an eye out for it while playing a regular game. If I happen to find a 33 point word while swiping in "eat ate tea tae eta", I count that as a success, not a cheat. And my PPW average will be a lot lower than the hypothetical player from your scenario, who's only playing games with high-scoring words. But we'll end up in the same scoreboard. If you introduced a records baseline as a requirement to get on the APPW scoreboard, some players who are just aiming for the top 50 might not have their scores counted at all. Not all of us are aiming for a top 10 or top 3 placement, and to exclude us from the scores entirely would be an unfair solution to a problem that only affects a handful of players.

To me, the easiest solution would be to add a new category to track best word records per month. However, I'm not sure how that would work, as a 5 letter word may be counted the same as a 12 or 16 letter word. Oh well

[bwt1213]

The games would be much less entertaining. You'd run into games you wouldn't have picked -- games with few words; with many, many words that would reward typing speed and little else; with no long words; with no one to measure yourself against; and games that seemed like they had to have some very long high-point words that you either couldn't find or were never there in the first place (and were the latter, almost every time).