Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

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Charlie Reams
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Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Charlie Reams »

To celebrate the arrival of yet another long-incubated feature, I welcome you all to the first Aptochallenge since the last one. Your mission is simple: get every skill to at least Level 3. The deadline is also simple, because there isn't one (since I have no idea how long it might take.)

"How many skills are there?" I hear you ask. "Figure it out yourself," you hear me reply.

That's all. Go skill up!
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Kai Laddiman
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Kai Laddiman »

How many skills are there?
16/10/2007 - Episode 4460
Dinos Sfyris 76 - 78 Dorian Lidell
Proof that even idiots can get well and truly mainwheeled.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Howard Somerset »

You didn't say that you hear people asking "What is Level 3", so is it worth asking "What is Level 3?"? And is there any point in me even finding out? :)
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Charlie Reams »

Howard Somerset wrote:You didn't say that you hear people asking "What is Level 3", so is it worth asking "What is Level 3?"? And is there any point in me even finding out? :)
Oh you have to figure that out too. No hints for this one, it's a deliberate puzzle.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Charlie Reams »

This might be useful.
Junaid Mubeen
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Junaid Mubeen »

Well, I've hit level 3 on the dog...and seem to be kicking everyones ass at it. Which makes me none the wiser as to what the heck it is.

Edit: I am conjecturing that it's the number of points scored in letters rounds...am about to test this theory out.

Edit: I am even more clueless now...I'll just wait for someone else to figure it out.

Edit: I get 80 points every time I beat Prime, who I'm playing lots at the moment.
Last edited by Junaid Mubeen on Tue Jun 09, 2009 11:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Andrew Feist »

Charlie Reams wrote:This might be useful.
This, not so much. (Yes, I am the sort of person who tries this sort of thing.)
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Ben Wilson »

Junaid Mubeen wrote:Well, I've hit level 3 on the dog...and seem to be kicking everyones ass at it. Which makes me none the wiser as to what the heck it is.

Edit: I am conjecturing that it's the number of points scored in letters rounds...am about to test this theory out.

Edit: I am even more clueless now...I'll just wait for someone else to figure it out.

Edit: I get 80 points every time I beat Prime, who I'm playing lots at the moment.
I'm pretty sure you're over-analysing it somewhat. It's no coincidence ratings were recently split by variant...
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Kai Laddiman »

This becomes a bit ridiculous when you bring Chat Points into it...
16/10/2007 - Episode 4460
Dinos Sfyris 76 - 78 Dorian Lidell
Proof that even idiots can get well and truly mainwheeled.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Andrew Feist »

This may have gotten a lot harder. (Unless someone already won and didn't post about it.)
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Ben Wilson »

3 months on from the last post, is anyone even close to this yet?
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Ben Wilson »

I've got them all to level 2 and I think I'm the only person to have done so thus far, if that gets me anything.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Matt Bayfield »

I'm fairly sure that I'm the only person who's been bothered to attempt this aptochallenge... but I can happily report that as of earlier today, I now have the following 12 skills all at level 3: Dog, Tadpole, Millipede, Giraffe, Centipede, Coyote, Wolf, Tanngrisnir, Parrot, Bat, Goat and Mole. Which I think is all the skills there are... unless, that is, Way of The Kid (Junior Goatdown), Way of the Hen (Omelette), or something else might be in the offing.

Virtual Fun Size Mars Bar or do I still have a way to go?
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Kai Laddiman »

Nice one!
16/10/2007 - Episode 4460
Dinos Sfyris 76 - 78 Dorian Lidell
Proof that even idiots can get well and truly mainwheeled.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Matt Bayfield »

Cheers Kai. I quite like the variants, especially Goat/Junior/Unlimited/HyperUnlimited, and play them more than Standard, so it seemed like a sensible challenge for me to have a go at. Having said that, 30-odd games of Goatblind against Prune was probably strictly more than I would normally have played... ;-)

Which is also a bit of a note to other apterous players: if anyone fancies a game of an unusual variant (unless it's Bullet, which I'm just not fast enough for), I'm usually up for that. Even Touchdown, which I'm spectacularly rubbish at, and often get beaten by Waldorf.
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Physical, Mental, or Mystery?

Post by Matt Bayfield »

In a late night moment of mathematical curiosity, I wondered what the formula was for the points total needed to bring a Skill to Level n, where n is a positive integer.

It appears that you need 50 n (n - 1) (2n -1) points to get a skill to Level n. To a layman like me, this seems to be a fairly arbitrarily-chosen formula. Of course I'm sure there was a little more thought behind it. Does anyone know whether it has any other particular significance?

And am I really the only person who cares about stuff like this?
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Re: Physical, Mental, or Mystery?

Post by Charlie Reams »

Matt Bayfield wrote:In a late night moment of mathematical curiosity, I wondered what the formula was for the points total needed to bring a Skill to Level n, where n is a positive integer.

It appears that you need 50 n (n - 1) (2n -1) points to get a skill to Level n. To a layman like me, this seems to be a fairly arbitrarily-chosen formula. Of course I'm sure there was a little more thought behind it. Does anyone know whether it has any other particular significance?

And am I really the only person who cares about stuff like this?
:) It was a long time ago, but I seem to remember that I basically decided that it should be a cubic function, and then I picked a few threshholds by hand and calculated the parameters from that.
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5 seconds in the Crystal Dome

Post by Matt Bayfield »

Nice one Charlie, ta.

Of course, I'm not even going to attempt to work out the math(s) behind the calculation of skill points awarded for a game which you win. I think it's a broadly similar algorithm to the one used for calculating ratings increases/decreases, which was all I needed to know when I was trying to "skill up". ;-)
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Matt Bayfield »

A mere 1168 days after bringing all my skills up to level 3, today I've become the first person to reach a minimum of level 4 for each of the 13 skills currently available (Dog, Tadpole, Millipede, Giraffe, Centipede, Coyote, Wolf, Tanngrisnir, Parrot, Bat, Goat, Mole and Kid).

Why did I set such a long-term goal? To see if I had the endurance to achieve it.

So I'm curiously proud to have got there. A few niche format PBs along the way have also been nice bonuses.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Adam Gillard »

Well done Matt! The Way of the Kid leaderboard is very odd; is that for Goat Jr?
Mike Brown: "Round 12: T N R S A E I G U

C1: SIGNATURE (18) ["9; not written down"]
C2: SEATING (7)
Score: 108–16 (max 113)

Another niner for Adam and yet another century. Well done, that man."
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Matt Bayfield »

Thanks Adam.

The Way of The Kid, is indeed for Goatdown Jnr, although skill points only began to be awarded for The Way of The Kid, around 2 months ago.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Mark James »

When I first read the title I thought this thread was about Charlie adding Polish as another language on apterous.
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Re: Aptochallenge 6: Polish Your Skills

Post by Adam Gillard »

Mark James wrote:When I first read the title I thought this thread was about Charlie adding Polish as another language on apterous.
Ha, me too!
Mike Brown: "Round 12: T N R S A E I G U

C1: SIGNATURE (18) ["9; not written down"]
C2: SEATING (7)
Score: 108–16 (max 113)

Another niner for Adam and yet another century. Well done, that man."
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