Conundrum scramble algorithm

[Johnny Canuck]

I've lately been wondering what algorithm is used on Apterous to generate and set conundrum scrambles. I have a couple of suggestions as to how they could be made more similar to the ones on the show, because a common complaint is that conundrums set by computers aren't always as good as human-created ones.

A quick search through the forum revealed this explanation for an algorithm:

I don't know if this has been explained elsewhere, but broadly speaking, how are conundrums set?

It picks an answer at random from a list of all the valid 9s in the dictionary (somewhat hand-filtered to eliminate anything ultra-obscure.) Then, it tries to split the word into two subwords (of length 3/6 or 4/5), and if successful sets that as the conundrum. If that doesn't work, it tries to extract one subword and appends the rest of the letters as shuffled junk (this works quite well because you can normally find a subword of 7 or 8 and no one asks many questions about some junk on the end.) If even that proves impossible, it just shuffles them at random. Oh, and any candidate shuffle is filtered to make sure it doesn't look too much like the answer (otherwise the process of extracting subwords tends to give you stuff like COMBHONEY.) There might be some other black magic involved that I don't remember, but that's the essence of it.

However, this was from 2008 and may be out of date. Is this still the method used?

While I was on Apterous in 2010, I tended to get stuff like DELWSIONS, RESIDEXCE and DNESCENDO, which appear to be based on 9-letter dictionary words but have one or two random letters swapped in.

IMO, the random-swap scrambles just aren't quite as appealing as the ones on the show, which generally consist of subwords (NICEROOTS) or a proper name and a subword (NOELSNICE = NOEL'S NICE).

I realise that the subword method is often used on Apterous too, and that there isn't always a way to break a word nicely into readable subwords, but maybe the conundrum-setting algorithm could be revised to generate more memorable scrambles. One idea would be to revise the list of usable 3- to 6-letter subwords (if there is one -- do you just use the dictionary?) to include some common personal names (for instance, ANDIE[S] would allow the scramble ANDIESEGG [ANDIE'S EGG]). I can elucidate these ideas further or post more if necessary.

Finally, is there a way for moderators/players to just set conundrum scrambles manually?

I'm posting this in light of the Apterous Supreme Championship proposal. It may sound like trivial nonsense, but the scrambles from the last CoC were great, and part of what we all remember from it. If we're going to have anything similar on here, we'll want them to be as good as possible.

- Johnny Canuck

[Graeme Cole]

Finally, is there a way for moderators/players to just set conundrum scrambles manually?

I really like this idea, and specifically the idea of a page where you can contribute scrambles to be used in future games. I've put it in a feature request ticket, which is the done thing for feature requests now.