c4countdown

This is the thread to discuss the Daily Duel. You probably don't want to discuss today's one, because it might give hints to anyone who hasn't done it yet, but I'll leave that to your discretion.

I'll start by saying that yesterday's duel was bloody hard and Jono's score of 124 out of 148 was pretty impressive. Steven Briers, Damian and Gevin were the only people to get SUBLIMATE (well done chaps), and Scrabble expert Andrew Fisher was the only person to get TITANATES. Where are all the 3 T specialists when you need them?

Also, each day's Duel now gets a full round-by-round breakdown so you can see how everyone did at a glance: e.g. see http://www.apterous.org/duelresults.php?duel=80 for yesterday's breakdown.

re the new scoring system, its a bit of a bugger if, just hypothetically, you can't play for a couple of days and then come back and realise that everyone's been awarded a big pile of points and you've gone from top of the league to miles behind and realistically you're never going to be able to catch up

Paul Howe wrote:re the new scoring system, its a bit of a bugger if, just hypothetically, you can't play for a couple of days and then come back and realise that everyone's been awarded a big pile of points and you've gone from top of the league to miles behind and realistically you're never going to be able to catch up

You're right, that does sound annoying. What I intended to do was recompute all the scores from September. But I forgot, so I'll do that now. Obviously you'll still drop back a bit just from not playing, but it shouldn't be insurmountable.

I still think you under-represent the numbers, Charlie. I know there was that one that you commented on, but often there's no numbers and even where there are, it often seems to follow the general pattern of group of letters, numbers game, conundrum, repeat except that in the last group of games it often jumps from letters to conundrum. Since there is a lot of variety in duels generally, I think it would be good to have heavily numbers-based ones (or even all numbers) to go with all the other variations.

Gavin Chipper wrote:I still think you under-represent the numbers, Charlie. I know there was that one that you commented on, but often there's no numbers and even where there are, it often seems to follow the general pattern of group of letters, numbers game, conundrum, repeat except that in the last group of games it often jumps from letters to conundrum. Since there is a lot of variety in duels generally, I think it would be good to have heavily numbers-based ones (or even all numbers) to go with all the other variations.

You might make a valid point, I don't gather any meaningful statistics on how many of each round type is set or indeed what balance people would like. There's only one solution to this...

... FIGHT!!!

Charlie Reams wrote:You might make a valid point, I don't gather any meaningful statistics on how many of each round type is set

Don't you set the duels (what rounds there are - obviously not the actual letters and numbers)?

Gavin Chipper wrote:Don't you set the duels (what rounds there are - obviously not the actual letters and numbers)?

I can set them, but generally I let an automatic script do them, which is programmed to create LLLN- or LLLC-style blocks. The more exotic constructs are done by hand.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Don't you set the duels (what rounds there are - obviously not the actual letters and numbers)?

I can set them, but generally I let an automatic script do them, which is programmed to create LLLN- or LLLC-style blocks. The more exotic constructs are done by hand.

Maybe it's because you have LLLC blocks rather than LLLNC or whatever that the numbers often lack at the end of a game.

I don't suppose you could ever do a one-round conundrum duel, but you get scored on how quickly you solved it (compared to everyone else)?

Joseph Bolas wrote:I don't suppose you could ever do a one-round conundrum duel, but you get scored on how quickly you solved it (compared to everyone else)?

I don't either.

Joseph Bolas wrote:I don't suppose you could ever do a one-round conundrum duel, but you get scored on how quickly you solved it (compared to everyone else)?

That would actually be kinda cool... I have wondered for a while whether conundrum speed should be a tie-breaker between people with equal scores, at which point a one-conundrum duel would work just like you suggested.

With a one-conundrum duel, the might be a lot of random guesses at the first letter so it might ruin it.

Gavin Chipper wrote:With a one-conundrum duel, the might be a lot of random guesses at the first letter so it might ruin it.

Only from people with a poor grasp of game theory.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:With a one-conundrum duel, the might be a lot of random guesses at the first letter so it might ruin it.

Only from people with a poor grasp of game theory.

Besides, it wouldn't hurt to try it once, to see what happens

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:With a one-conundrum duel, the might be a lot of random guesses at the first letter so it might ruin it.

Only from people with a poor grasp of game theory.

I don't think so. You can click on the letters of the conundrum, so it wouldn't be a 1 in 26 guess (not that you'd pick the letter at random anyway), but at least 1 in 9 (repeated letters make the odds even better). It would benefit the players who are not brilliant at conundrums but might still have a chance in the amount of time it allows you after the first letter. People who are very good at conundrums and have a good grasp of game theory might still find they would have a better chance of doing it properly, but those who aren't quite as brilliant might be better off Hansfording it. Also if the duel became even more popular, you might have to Hansford it to have any real chance. But before you talk about points scored in the duel, some people are more interested in getting the victory. Like in F1, while drivers like to win the championship, any other position isn't as good as geting more wins. 2nd in the championship with two wins is probably not normally considered as good as fourth with three.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:With a one-conundrum duel, the might be a lot of random guesses at the first letter so it might ruin it.

Only from people with a poor grasp of game theory.

I don't think so. You can click on the letters of the conundrum, so it wouldn't be a 1 in 26 guess (not that you'd pick the letter at random anyway), but at least 1 in 9 (repeated letters make the odds even better). It would benefit the players who are not brilliant at conundrums but might still have a chance in the amount of time it allows you after the first letter. People who are very good at conundrums and have a good grasp of game theory might still find they would have a better chance of doing it properly, but those who aren't quite as brilliant might be better off Hansfording it. Also if the duel became even more popular, you might have to Hansford it to have any real chance. But before you talk about points scored in the duel, some people are more interested in getting the victory. Like in F1, while drivers like to win the championship, any other position isn't as good as geting more wins. 2nd in the championship with two wins is probably not normally considered as good as fourth with three.

You're implying that people really really really give that much of a toss. I'm really not sure we're actually that sad. Which is something, coming from me.