Hex

Cerebral distractions of every kind, mostly but not exclusively Countdown-related.

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Re: Hex

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Doing some birthday quiz machining. Got recognised (via Pointles) whilst we were at the machine, so that was fun. Also, there was a round (Pints Win Prizes, I think), called 'scapegoats', and the answer was THE JEWS. I got to shout THE JEWS very loudly, and it was fun.

Edit: Despite the fact I was wasted when I posted this, this is entirely true. Seriously though, seems a bit weird to have THE JEWS as an answer like that on a quiz machine, felt like the N_GGGERS South Park joke.
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Re: Hex

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I would like people to talk to me about You Have Won £20. We've recently started playing this, it seems rock hard (we've got to <5 a few times, but never won), but it seems like good value if you're paying for the quizzing and not for the £££. The last time we went the same session featured two bonus rounds with £1 prizes, so that was pretty tasty (if you've never played the bonus is just follow the cards and find three of a kind in a big grid, and you get like 20 seconds to keep pressing if you mess up). Does anyone here have much experience with it? We found a new machine recently that has it and DoND so we tend to play a game or two of DoND to crack out a jackpot there if the machine is feeling ok, and then settle in for a long game of YHWTP.

There isn't really much of a point to this story. Well, except that we also played Hex Mex yesterday, £1 in, two wins (of £1) out. 8-)
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:I would like people to talk to me about You Have Won £20. We've recently started playing this, it seems rock hard (we've got to <5 a few times, but never won), but it seems like good value if you're paying for the quizzing and not for the £££. The last time we went the same session featured two bonus rounds with £1 prizes, so that was pretty tasty (if you've never played the bonus is just follow the cards and find three of a kind in a big grid, and you get like 20 seconds to keep pressing if you mess up). Does anyone here have much experience with it? We found a new machine recently that has it and DoND so we tend to play a game or two of DoND to crack out a jackpot there if the machine is feeling ok, and then settle in for a long game of YHWTP.

There isn't really much of a point to this story. Well, except that we also played Hex Mex yesterday, £1 in, two wins (of £1) out. 8-)
As you might have guessed I have quite a bit of experience with it. I have never actually won anything off of it and I think it is one of those games that will always be elusive.

OK so the least amount of questions I've been asked to answer was 27 questions. I've also had 28 questions to answer (and got down to the last question but failed (it was only for 50p though)). I have been asked to do as much as 41 questions though before and that was over less than halfway through. I don't know if others have played but I basically wanted to see what kind of range you get on the number of questions as an indicator to whether or not it will pay. Has anyone had to answer less than 27 questions?

Tactics for the game (which I'm sure you worked out) but for others are basically this. If you are offered a bunch of questions to "Level Up" (which means you go up a level if you get them right first time) then you must always pick this regardless of subject matter I would say. If you are faced with the option (where both are level ups) of 4Q's on a subject that you don't like or 2Q's on a subject that you do like then despite liking the category you should always go for the 4Q's because of the fact that it is 2 more level up questions than the other and you can't guarantee what you will be offered next. This sounds obvious but some people when I'm on it shout over my shoulder like "why have you gone with Music when yo ucould have picked Football?". Or something. Also vice versa if none of the categories have level ups then always pick the fewest questions so that you hopefully get to some level up questions quicker.

Regard level up questions. When we were maybe like 10 questions away from the prize (maybe a bit less) the level ups are removed completely and the number of questions for each category is reduced to just 2 and eventually just 1.

On the whole I'd agree that like you it is sort of worthy of the 50p (not like fucking Eggheads shittest game ever) but I can't see the big money being won. Please prove me wrong though! Also I've never seen the Instant Wins £1 on the BONUS. That is new to me, I thought the only thing you could get was Reveal, Try Agains or Passes so that's quite nice to know.
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Re: Hex

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Sounds vaguely similar to our experience. Lowest we've had is 25, up to 40 at the most, so a similar range at any rate. We've also been one away (to win 50p) and lost, although we once did get some level up sets very near the end (sub 10 certainly, maybe at sub-5, not sure). It's really good value in the fun stakes, I reckon - when you get to the final 10 questions the tension is awesome, every correct answer feels bitchin'. I reckon taking something from it might have to become mine and CF's goal - we make a pretty good team in terms of how our GK overlaps, although we need a celebrity/film buff I reckon.
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Re: Hex

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Made about £65 profit over 6 or 7 quiz machines in Devon over the weekend. So awesome.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:I would like people to talk to me about You Have Won £20.
We play this because, as you say, it's kinda fun to have a concrete goal, plus it's only 50p and it eats up some time. However, the thing more than anything that keeps is coming back is that it gave us £8 on about our second go at it. I forget how many questions we had to start with, but we definitely weren't that near the end - when it suddenly gave us a "take it or leave it" style offer. We could collect £8 or continue with the game. Considering that our cash column thing was down to £6 and, like I say, we still had at least a dozen questions (maybe more) to go, it wasn't the world's most difficult decision.

(BTW it's quite lolsome to see people dispensing "how to play" tips on games that they've won fuck all on :mrgreen: I don't mean that to be particularly nasty but it reminds of my halcyon days on the fruity, when in certain venues there'd always be some resident chavs on your shoulder while you play giving you the worst possible advice.)
Last edited by Jon Corby on Tue Jul 26, 2011 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hex

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Jon Corby wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:I would like people to talk to me about You Have Won £20.
the thing more than anything that keeps is coming back is that it gave us £8 on about our second go at it. I forget how many questions we had to start with, but we definitely weren't that near the end - when it suddenly gave us a "take it or leave it" style offer. We could collect £8 or continue with the game. Considering that our cash column thing was down to £6 and, like I say, we still had at least a dozen questions (maybe more) to go, it wasn't the world's most difficult decision.
Wow, that's pretty badass. We've had a couple of bonus games were we've taken £1, which is really sweet when it happens since it's a lovely bonus "that's safe" sort of thing. An £8 freebie is pretty crazy, maybe it sensed your quiz-machine-fu.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:Wow, that's pretty badass. We've had a couple of bonus games were we've taken £1, which is really sweet when it happens since it's a lovely bonus "that's safe" sort of thing. An £8 freebie is pretty crazy, maybe it sensed your quiz-machine-fu.
Never had the £1 bonus, just Reveal and Try Again I think. While the £8 thing was nice, it's also the kind of thing that pisses me off about quizzers in that it could throw that at any old retard rather than rewarding our sqilz.
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Re: Hex

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Jon Corby wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:I would like people to talk to me about You Have Won £20.
We play this because, as you say, it's kinda fun to have a concrete goal, plus it's only 50p and it eats up some time. However, the thing more than anything that keeps is coming back is that it gave us £8 on about our second go at it. I forget how many questions we had to start with, but we definitely weren't that near the end - when it suddenly gave us a "take it or leave it" style offer. We could collect £8 or continue with the game. Considering that our cash column thing was down to £6 and, like I say, we still had at least a dozen questions (maybe more) to go, it wasn't the world's most difficult decision.
That's awesome.
Jon Corby wrote:(BTW it's quite lolsome to see people dispensing "how to play" tips on gamesthat they've won fuck all on :mrgreen: I don't mean that to be particularly nasty but it reminds of my halcyon days on the fruity, when in certain venues that always be some resident chavs on your shoulder while you play giving you the worst possible advice.)
Fuck you Corby. I knew it sounded really stupid giving little tips when I've never won a penny on it, but I think that it's still the best way to go about it.
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:Fuck you Corby. I knew it sounded really stupid giving little tips when I've never won a penny on it, but I think that it's still the best way to go about it.
Hehe. You are Clare Sudbery.
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Re: Hex

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Oh yeah, so what's the deal with £1 Hex (as opposed to 50p play). Is it just the same but with all the prizes doubled?
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:Oh yeah, so what's the deal with £1 Hex (as opposed to 50p play). Is it just the same but with all the prizes doubled?
Yeah, seems to be. Although the JP only goes up to £30 instead of £20. I'm basing this on what it says on the "select stake" screen obviously, as I don't think I've never seen any money square above £6.
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Re: Hex

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Yeah £1 play just doubles everything and here is leangem's videos of them raping Hex for those that haven't seen.
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Re: Hex

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Update on You Have Won £20. Played it last night and had lowest of 26 questions and for the first time we won...50p. This was after still having £20 with 6 questions to go but then something like Sean Bean's third wife came up (which isn't that unreasonable) but we just happened to guess the 3 it wasn't (so annoying) and then we were screwed over by needing to know how fast some train went in 1930. Played it again afterwards and also got down to the last question but failed it. It was exciting though.
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Re: Hex

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So we tried out a new game - the colour of money. Terrible gameshow, but actually a pretty sweet quizzer game. It's one of the more complicated games though, so here's a rundown. You pick a target score (a la DoND), and then for the points builder you pick 'machines' (colours) which you have to answer a number of questions for (so far, so DoND). Get through the questions and you play the bong game, so the points count up and you have to hit stop to bank the points you've got - if you're too greedy and go higher than what's in the machine you don't get any points for it. A nice touch is that if you get spot on the points in the box you get a free try again, so that's nice.

So anyway, you're trying to build up enough points to reach your target, and if you manage that you go through to the cash round, which is exactly the same but with money instead of points. Every machine you get through the questions on gives you another chance to get some cash, and the questions seem to reset in difficulty at this stage, so it's pretty easy to get a reasonable amount. On our first go we got £2.50, despite playing overly cautiously with our banking (since we didn't really know wtf was going on). Got to the money round a couple of times after that too, won 90p once and nothing the third time (boo).

So yeah, well worth a squirt I reckon. I'm going to sit down at some point and try and derive some strategies, since it would be nice to know a sensible method for maximising winnings (and because it'll be fun to mess around with).
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:A nice touch is that if you get spot on the points in the box you get a free try again, so that's nice.
Also I think you can get double the points whatever it stops on. Don't know how it determines whether you get that or try again.

I do quite like this game but don't win on it but I just like the whole banter that goes with saying where you should stop and stuff. Hard to explain but with a group of you it is fun. Also I like how even when it freezes out you still try and press the screen as if it might somehow register that you clicked stop.
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:A nice touch is that if you get spot on the points in the box you get a free try again, so that's nice.
Also I think you can get double the points whatever it stops on. Don't know how it determines whether you get that or try again.
Hmm, not had that yet (although only got spot on a couple of times), but on the menu screen it only mentions a free try again. Double points would be tasty.

I did some maths on this earlier to try and work out a strategy, and we went and had another play this evening to gather data. Pretty tasty run. Got a money round pretty early where I'd decided we should stop at £4, the first machine went for 50p, but then the next went to £4 dead on, so pretty chuffed. After that our next 6(!) screens all went for £1 or under, which possibly suggests my hypothesis that it is genuinely random which amounts you can get might be false. Although I think it's a bit cheeky if it's not genuinely random (it'd be a bit like if DoND was rigged to give you high amounts more often), but maybe I'm just being naive.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:
Ryan Taylor wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:A nice touch is that if you get spot on the points in the box you get a free try again, so that's nice.
Also I think you can get double the points whatever it stops on. Don't know how it determines whether you get that or try again.
Hmm, not had that yet (although only got spot on a couple of times), but on the menu screen it only mentions a free try again. Double points would be tasty.
Yeah, I should point out that I haven't actually seen this happen, just what I heard from someone else. So it's probably false!
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:Yeah, I should point out that I haven't actually seen this happen, just what I heard from someone else. So it's probably false!
Clearly colour of money agents trying to spread misinformation.

I've done some modelling of the game now, and so far haven't found any particularly exciting strategies. The best one I've tested involves assuming you'll bank a certain number of times, and then dividing the target by that number. So for instance, for 39000 you should assume you'll bank 3 times, and only stop the bong game when it gets to 13000. Broadly speaking you should divide by 3 for up to 40,000, 4 for 41,000 up to 53,000, and 5 for anything bigger. This depends on your own personal rate at which you lose lives of course, and we're going to have to gather some more datums before we can be a bit more certain.

Early indication is that the points round at least is totally fair (machine values are uniformly distributed), so that's good at least.
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Re: Hex

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Gathered some more colour of money datodes tonight. Points round definitely seems fairly distributed, but it looks a lot like the money round is biased towards low values near the start. We've now seen 21 money round prizes, with only 5 coming from the top half of the money ladder.

It still seems pretty good value though, we broke even with £5 in and £5 out (although it would have been £8 if I hadn't got greedy and just Stuck With The Plan :evil: ). Good number of repeated questions, around half a dozen tonight I reckon, half of which saved us some lives, so that was tasty.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:felt like the N_GGGERS South Park joke.
LMAO love that episode. From now on your name is Jew guy.
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Re: Hex

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Only ever play Hex on a £1 now since it's gotten so harsh. Took us a long time to upgrade but Ryan and Kirk saying they only ever play on a £1 convinced us and we've never looked back.

Our first quiz machining at the Canary Wharf Wetherspoons this afternoon and it turned out a £16 profit, won on DOND then Battleships then jacker on Hexagrams all on the first go of each which made it a pretty quick session. Unexpected after Secret Letter was only offering £1 jackpot (surely all the proof that is needed that the games operate individually?).

When we got back we counted out our quiz machine profit stack - exactly £150. Pretty cool. Not exactly sure how long that goes back, maybe since April or May. We just hired a car and bought some train tickets and left £25 in the float.
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Re: Hex

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I have a general question about quizzers - I vaguely remember someone saying that individual pubs can set the 'tightness' of their machine, and we've recently found a machine that seems a lot looser than our regular haunt (took £5 out of Colour of Money and £2 out of Hex in one session, whereas we've probably won about that much on Hex across all of our goes in our local). So yeah, is it true that different machines will have some global payout setting, or is it just perceptual salience, or that we've visited this 'looser' machine just when it's been kinder because it's full of squids?
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Re: Hex

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I've not really investigated or even bothered to think about this much. As far as stats, I do know quiz machines are on average set to about 30% (compared to 70-80% on fruit machines).

My experience of bar staff and even managers when it comes to quiz machines is that they generally don't know shit about how they work in a managerial sense (or they're all just very good at playing dumb) and they are pretty clueless if you ever have to ask them any questions about their operation. This points to the likelihood (and in some cases I know this for sure) being that they just get put into pubs 'vanilla' with no fiddling at all. Going to the manufacturers would probably reveal more than the pub people.
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Re: Hex

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Matt Morrison wrote:Hex Factor is the newest incarnation of Hex. It's a fucking tournament game, can you believe it? Basically there is nothing to win, not instantly anyway. You play the game, register your score with your name and mobile number, there's a high score list on the machine itself, and you can win from being the top scorer on the machine at the end of the tournament (though I might have got that wrong), more important prize is of course the Top 10 (or maybe 5) scores from around the country at the end of the tournament, and also by just registering your name and mobile on ANY game you play regardless of score and being chosen as one of a few random winners at the end. Can't remember what the prizes were but I recall cash for the main tournament prizes. So you're just going for score. You have 6 minutes total play time, so speed is of the essence. You get awarded random bonuses from the usual five at the start, and (from what I saw on my one go), no further bonuses to collect as you go. Each round starts with 100 on the clock and ticks down for points, I think I completed two short words in about two seconds and got 94 points for each of these. Your score builds up, and every so often, where you'd usually see the bonus or the prizes marked above the board, you get x2 squares. These just multiply your accumulated score so far by two. Maybe you get x3 or something if you get real far, I dunno. I think they were every 3 or 4 squares, but only played once so can't say how random they are. You get 6 lives as per normal. The most exciting thing is there is shit loads of new categories. Like a cunt, and because you lot are cunts that didn't want to know about Hex Factor, I've forgotten them all. So go fuck off and find your own Hex Factor machine and check them out. Obviously it's not going to be much fun for more than a couple of games when you know you can't win anything really, but some of the new categories were really cool. Good fun. And of course, slightly updated and better graphics, just slightly. Well, that's about it. I can't remember what I scored on my one game (by the way, it doesn't say anywhere how much it costs, but it IS 50p, trust! - was well scared it was going to take my whole quid but had to try it) but it got me 2nd on the machine, so is definitely a fresh-as game. Also I didn't do very well, I lost my 6 lives after about 8 successful squares, with 3 and a half minutes still on the clock.
So popped into the Canary Wharf Wetherspoon yesterday and lo and behold, another new Hex. This time it's called Hexwords.

It's a £1 play and £100 prize after 250 games. So you set a password if you get the top score, then come back and check the machine every so often and once the 250 games have been played the winner has three months to claim the £100.

Now, it's Hex-branded and Hex-named but doesn't seem to take the normal Hex formula. It is definitely Hangman-style word guessing, and you definitely get 3 minutes but it sounds like (from the rules) the board is made up differently and you progress through it differently. There are also some different-sounded bonus things.

That's all I have to offer at the moment - it was brand new, no one had played (still "250 games remaining") and it was a quid play so we didn't have the balls to play til I'd looked it up on YouTube. If any of you lot see it and are braver, let me know.
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Re: Hex

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Interesting (both posts). £1 play is too rich for us at the moment, until we get a bit better at Hex we're sticking to 50p. That said, we are starting to feel like we're improving, which is nice.

The thing about the machine 'difficulty' is intriguing. The more we play the more it feels like our most local machine is tight and the one a bit further away is nicer, but I doubt I have enough data for anything concrete. I think a bigger factor is how nice the pub is and where the machine is. (Our most local one has the machine right next to a table which is always occupied by unpleasantly drunk people (highlights include "if that makes me a racist, then I'm a racist!" after a dude said something that definitely made him a racist).)
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Re: Hex

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The new games:
Cash for Questions - this one is really good. Starts with a Hex-style round where you have to fill in the letters of a question which matches one of four answers already on screen. How quick you fill the letters in for the question determines how many proper 3-choice questions you have to answer to move to the next round. You have a choice of three categories for each round, each time you fuck a round up you lose one of those options/lives. Pretty cool, pretty different.
Quiz Master - styled like Mastermind. Seemed quite shit. 5 questions per round every time, 3 rounds for £1 and then prizes rise to £3 or so and so on. Bit like an updated Pub Quiz actually in terms of structure.

But how about this.
Tons of new Hex categories
Super vixens
Super heros
Stripey stuff
Spotty stuff
Poets
Latin
Horse trainers
Formula 1 drivers

(these are the ones I remember, there's definitely at least three more new categories and pretty cool ones too... will report back again soon)
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Re: Hex

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Matt Morrison wrote:But how about this.
Tons of new Hex categories
Latin
Dinos sursum et deorsum salit ludere Hexum tecum in Londinio, Mattus Morrisextus!
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Re: Hex

Post by Lesley Hines »

I played Hex for the first time last night, and thus popped my cherry. After my initial £1 investment for 2 games I walked away with a handsome £1 profit. You'll be interested to know I then invested this in 1/3 pint of cola (i.e. I spent it all at once and it still didn't buy me a full drink) so I reckon I done good for the economy too.

Happy days :D
Lowering the averages since 2009
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Re: Hex

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We also had a good night on the quizzer yesterday. Slow start but then whilst we were getting a pint a bunch of people took over the machine :evil: but then all they did was put £7 in and lose it all :) and when we went back to play we took £6 from one game of Pints :twisted:
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Re: Hex

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We're getting a ridiculously good return from Million Pound Drop Live at the moment. We play it about once a week, and get the £10 JP on our first couple of goes. We're on 4 JPs out of about a dozen plays at the moment. (Today's lunchtime was £2 in, £24 out on all games, shared between two of us)
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Re: Hex

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Jon Corby wrote:We're getting a ridiculously good return from Million Pound Drop Live at the moment. We play it about once a week, and get the £10 JP on our first couple of goes. We're on 4 JPs out of about a dozen plays at the moment. (Today's lunchtime was £2 in, £24 out on all games, shared between two of us)
Awesome. I haven't seen a MPDL game yet, how does it work?
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:We're getting a ridiculously good return from Million Pound Drop Live at the moment. We play it about once a week, and get the £10 JP on our first couple of goes. We're on 4 JPs out of about a dozen plays at the moment. (Today's lunchtime was £2 in, £24 out on all games, shared between two of us)
Awesome. I haven't seen a MPDL game yet, how does it work?
You basically start with 1,000,000 (=£10) which you can bet on answers in lumps of 50,000 (=50p). You go through eight "rounds", where each can be 0,1,2,3 or 4 questions. Unlike the TV show, you can cover ALL the answers, you don't have to leave one blank. I'm not quite sure why/how we manage to JP it so regularly, as we haven't had to be particularly brilliant with obscure knowledge - our JP question today was "Aliens actress Ms. Weaver's first name" for fuck's sake!
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Re: Hex

Post by Michael Wallace »

Matt Morrison wrote:So popped into the Canary Wharf Wetherspoon yesterday and lo and behold, another new Hex. This time it's called Hexwords.

It's a £1 play and £100 prize after 250 games. So you set a password if you get the top score, then come back and check the machine every so often and once the 250 games have been played the winner has three months to claim the £100.

Now, it's Hex-branded and Hex-named but doesn't seem to take the normal Hex formula. It is definitely Hangman-style word guessing, and you definitely get 3 minutes but it sounds like (from the rules) the board is made up differently and you progress through it differently. There are also some different-sounded bonus things.

That's all I have to offer at the moment - it was brand new, no one had played (still "250 games remaining") and it was a quid play so we didn't have the balls to play til I'd looked it up on YouTube. If any of you lot see it and are braver, let me know.
Finally seen this on one of our local machines (only just updated with all the new games, and no Pints :(). Interestingly, the machine we were on was a £25 jackpot after 50 games, rather than the £100/250 structure you saw. So a less good ratio, but on the other hand can you imagine taking £100 in pound coins out of a machine?

We were drunk so decided to have a crack, and are currently number 1 with 34 games left. Will be interesting to see what happens. From looking at the leader board I think a lot of people have stuck a quid in and then not really understood how it works, will be fun to see if that holds out until it gets a bit closer to the money.

Something this does raise is what to do if, say, you come back and find you're still top, and there are <25 games left. You can in theory just shove a load of quids in and guarantee yourself a profit. But then you have the trade-off with whether you expect anyone else is going to come along and beat you. I think a potentially good strategy with this style of game is to only play when there are a few games left, so you're not setting a target for other people to beat.
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Re: Hex

Post by Matt Morrison »

Awesome news MW. First of all please tell me how the game works, was I correct in thinking it was not exactly like Hex?

Secondly, ratio - I actually saw this on another machine recently, and though I didn't think much of it at the time, now you've said it, this one was £25/50 games too. I think overall it's better, when you see that there is a couple of hundred games still to go it really would put you off playing, even if you know what you're doing. 50 games seems a much more sensible turnover, and it wouldn't surprise me if this had been rolled out to all Hexwords, including at the C-Wharf.

I would definitely be willing, on the £25/50 ratio, to stick in up to the last £10 if I was guaranteed to pull the £25 out after it. Another factor of course is that it would be quite possible to forget to come back and claim it within three months if you didn't. Even more likely you'd go "I can't forget that password, it's obvious" and then promptly forget it.

But yeah, keep talking you Hextease.
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Re: Hex

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Another thing I've always thought about these "jackpot"-style games on quiz machines - they're so rare and in general everything is just "win as you play". Even then, if you take out anything upwards of £10, £15, £20 from a machine, you're liable to get funny looks from punters and staff, or even thrown out the pub (see: Chris Davies). The jackpot games absolutely force someone to go through that. On one hand I feel like they're going to turn people against regular quizzers even more than what you sometimes get now, on the other hand it could educate bar staff a bit more to the point of going "ok, so those things do give out decent prizes, you don't have to be a scammer cheaty cunt to win them"
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Re: Hex

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When did Chris Davies get thrown out for quizzing? I must've missed that.

Also, I don't know how I thought £25/50 was a worse ratio than £100/250, obviously it's a better return so I am an idoit.

The game itself is nothing like Hex. You have a grid of hexagons each with a letter on, of various colours. You just have to make words of 3 letters or more from those available. You get bonus points if you use only words of one colour, if you use special 'double points' tiles that appear occasionally, and if you clear a colour (get rid of all that colour of letters) you get bonus points for that. Once you finish a grid (either by clearing it or by there being no words left) you get a fresh grid. I think you get a massive bonus if you perfectly clear a grid (we didn't manage that, but we've only played twice), so I reckon that'll be the key to ensuring victory. Oh, there's also a 'time freeze' bonus, where a letter will go kinda white, and if you use it in a word the clock stops for a bit.

You get 3 minutes for all of this, and at the end you're given the option to put an extra 50p in for another minute. This is another reason why I think only playing when there are a few games left is a good idea - that extra 50p for another minute could come in super useful for you (or your competitors) when the game limit is nearly up.

I find this 'come back in n months' style of jackpot really peculiar. Presumably the idea is "your punters will keep coming back to check how they've done!" but surely it's only saddos like us (who will presumably have a regular haunt anyway) who are going to do this? I almost never see people playing quizzers as it is.
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Re: Hex

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So about 6 weeks after my last post on the subject, an update on Hexwords.

We'd been checking he machine at our (current) local haunt, where the rate of play was ridiculously slow. We'd typically go once a week, and it would rarely have dropped by more than 2 or 3 games in a week. Still, before Christmas it had got down to 20 games with no-one coming close to our high score (ours was about 50% higher than second, with a not particularly good performance from us). We'd taken a break over Christmas, so excitedly went back to see how many games had been played, only to find that the game had clearly been reset. There were 50 games left to play, and no past winners on the 'claim' screens. Pretty annoying, and makes me wonder what you're supposed to do about it - the machine essentially owed us at least £5, but obviously there's no way of proving that. Seems a pretty big fail if the machines can just reset the game and lose all those scores (and thus never pay out).

Bonus fun, though. Whilst we were playing the machine crashed, so we cheekily flicked it off and on at the power switch on the wall, only for when it finally booted back up the screen went bright red, a siren went off and in very large letters it said REBOOT ALARM CALL LANDLORD. Fortunately the landlord was apologetic rather than "wtf are you doing to my machine?" but still, has anyone else encountered this? The siren was a bit scary.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:Whilst we were playing the machine crashed, so we cheekily flicked it off and on at the power switch on the wall, only for when it finally booted back up the screen went bright red, a siren went off and in very large letters it said REBOOT ALARM CALL LANDLORD. Fortunately the landlord was apologetic rather than "wtf are you doing to my machine?" but still, has anyone else encountered this? The siren was a bit scary.
Yeah, I reported on that six months or so back in this thread! The siren is FUCKING loud, at least it was in the Wetherspoons in Stepney Green. Everybody in the whole pub looked at us. Thankfully, the landlord himself had given us permission before that to do the turn off and on thing as it had crashed whilst we were mid-game (with £4 in the bank and about to win a minimum of £2 but likely at least £4 on Hex), so he was still nearby and quickly switched it right off and apologised to us.

This was the same time where we'd had to turn off and on the machine (again with his permission) as soon as we arrived in the pub as it had frozen. That time, we'd had to wait for the normal 15 minute Countdown, and then had got about 10-15 mins of play in before the 2nd reset and the siren episode. At the time I figured the siren was due to "too many resets" as it had been reset twice in about 15 mins, but your story seems to suggest something else must cause it. But yeah, bloody scary and more than a touch embarrassing.
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Re: Hex

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p.s. forgot to say - that fucking sucks about the Hexwords thing. I think at the very least you should at least send them a sternly worded letter or email. Not sure in what form they'd be able to credit you compensation, but yeah, I'd definitely make sure you get some!
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Re: Hex

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Matt Morrison wrote:I figured the siren was due to "too many resets" as it had been reset twice in about 15 mins, but your story seems to suggest something else must cause it. But yeah, bloody scary and more than a touch embarrassing.
Nah, we'd done pretty much the same thing. It was frozen when we showed up, we reset it, and then it froze again, so sounds like it must be too many resets in a certain period of time. (I just cut out some detail to make the story more EXCITING.)

Shall see if I can find a suitable contact address for Gameswarehouse. In my experience the pub always claim that the machine's money is nothing to do with them (which could just be an excuse for them not giving us money when the machine has broken with us in credit). It just seems really crap/sneaky/dodgy if you have a game like this which can get wiped by accident.
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Re: Hex

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It's pretty much per-pub. In the Stepney Green Wetherspoons the manager was really apologetic, plus a bit like "fucks sake these machines are so dodgy, we only got this new one three weeks ago" and gave us £4 (not the full amount we were going to win but still profit so couldn't argue with it). And we've twice had problems with one particular machine in Teignmouth, and the dude has twice given us our money back. In general though I would assume it isn't the pub person's problem. Most of the machines seem to have a sticker mentioning how the machine was supplied by whatever local games machine supplying company, I reckon they are the shits that are supposed to keep the maintenance up.
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Re: Hex

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I played on a machine (hexagrams) in Flares. I played it twice and won the jackpot of £1 both times so I had £2 in the bank. I'd already missed out on dancing to the YMCA etc so I stopped there and went to collect. Upon pressing collect the screen went white and said "hopper error, call engineer". I spoke to the bar staff and they said it was nothing to do with them, so I went to the machine, put the email address into my phone and carried on with my night out. At 4am, came home, pissed and emailed them saying it had got my £2. Next day (a Sunday no less) I got an email back asking for my address and they would send me £2 out. They certainly did...an envelope consisting of a blank piece of paper with two pound coins attached to it with sellotape. Classy.
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Re: Hex

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Kirk Bevins wrote:I played on a machine (hexagrams) in Flares. I played it twice and won the jackpot of £1 both times so I had £2 in the bank. I'd already missed out on dancing to the YMCA etc so I stopped there and went to collect. Upon pressing collect the screen went white and said "hopper error, call engineer". I spoke to the bar staff and they said it was nothing to do with them, so I went to the machine, put the email address into my phone and carried on with my night out. At 4am, came home, pissed and emailed them saying it had got my £2. Next day (a Sunday no less) I got an email back asking for my address and they would send me £2 out. They certainly did...an envelope consisting of a blank piece of paper with two pound coins attached to it with sellotape. Classy.
:shock:
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Re: Hex

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That's awesome stuff Kirk, makes me more inclined to contact them myself.

I just remember a great 'no right answer' question from that night as well. The question was "Which of these gives ten in scrabble?", with the options X J Q Z. I assume it meant "which is worth 10?", but obviously two of them do and two of them don't, and obviously we picked the 'wrong' one of the two that do, so unless I've missed some sort of trick it's just an impressive impossible question. Maybe one that should only have been on a 3-option game getting in the wrong pile?
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Re: Hex

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£10 JP again on first go on Million Pound Drop Live (to follow the one on Sunday!). Can't figure out why this pays so much.
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Re: Hex

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Jon Corby wrote:£10 JP again on first go on Million Pound Drop Live (to follow the one on Sunday!). Can't figure out why this pays so much.
I think it's 'cos if you're ballsy you are rewarded. Say, if you know it's between two answers then I'd go all on one which I thought it might be more in order to try and get the 10 (rather than split it 50/50). If you lose, you only lose 50p but more often than not, instinct is right. It's all about the balls.
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:£10 JP again on first go on Million Pound Drop Live (to follow the one on Sunday!). Can't figure out why this pays so much.
I think it's 'cos if you're ballsy you are rewarded. Say, if you know it's between two answers then I'd go all on one which I thought it might be more in order to try and get the 10 (rather than split it 50/50). If you lose, you only lose 50p but more often than not, instinct is right. It's all about the balls.
Yeah, that doesn't really satisfy me. It isn't a case of being ballsy, we knew every single answer today, not even one was in the slightest way guessed. No other game does this - in every other game you can't hedge your bets anyway, and it screws you over by giving you ridiculous questions that you're forced to guess to block you so much as winning 50p or £1. MPDL does this too of course when it doesn't want to pay, but it seems ready to pay the £10 with alarming regularity. I can't fathom it.
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Re: Hex

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Jon Corby wrote:we knew every single answer today, not even one was in the slightest way guessed. No other game does this
Have you never been on Pub Quiz and it gives you silly questions and silly answers for like 3 rounds and then maybe increases only slightly to still simple questions but with at least sensible answers. Happened to me before but rather embarrassingly on the last question for the £10 I was stumped by a basic cricket question (with 2 lives left as well!). Fucking Michael Vaughan.
Jon Corby wrote:MPDL does this too of course when it doesn't want to pay
Do you ever get it where two of the answers are the same. And these two answers are the right one so you have to guess which one it's gonna drop? This happened like 3 times on one machine. Not funny.
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Re: Hex

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For what it's worth, CF and I have only won on MPDL once, I think, although that time it was as Corby described, with every question being super easy. Usually we get destroyed by it though.
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Re: Hex

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I think we've won twice (other than weekend) and had a "probably should have won" messing up a question we misread on the penultimate round.
In general it's horrible though, hitting us with a couple of questions we have very little choice not to spread over three or four answers at around round 6.

Multiple questions - I have seen this a few times on a variety of games, but only once have I ever suspected it to be the right answer, and that was on Battleships, and even then I couldn't prove it definitely as we used our last life on answer C, and although we 'knew' it 100% wasn't B, it could still have been B rather than A or A. Mental though.
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:Have you never been on Pub Quiz and it gives you silly questions and silly answers for like 3 rounds and then maybe increases only slightly to still simple questions but with at least sensible answers.
Yeah, fair enough - I should have said "other games hardly ever do this". I mean, I couldn't even estimate the number of games of Pub Quiz I've played, and I've seen this once or possibly twice. The old Deal Or No Deal used to occasionally chuck the cash round at you, but again, it's really rare. Being careful not to exaggerate, we've probably played MPDL 30-40 times, and had the tenner first time around 2/3 of the time. Another handful it's taken a go or two more, and the rest we've given up after maybe 3 or 4 goes.
Ryan Taylor wrote:I was stumped by a basic cricket question
Puntastic!

Kinda similarly, we had a Welsh geography question for the tenner on Pub Quiz and, handily, one of our number was Welsh. He confidently ruled out Barry as NOT being the answer and we still had our Try Again, so Jackpot here we come. And he was right, it wasn't Barry, as confirmed when a big red X appeared next to it, despite him claiming he didn't press it (and tbf he didn't appear to press anywhere near it). We won £5.
Ryan Taylor wrote:Do you ever get it where two of the answers are the same.
No, have to say I've never seen that.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:For what it's worth, CF and I have only won on MPDL once, I think, although that time it was as Corby described, with every question being super easy. Usually we get destroyed by it though.
I've never won the £10 jackpot on MPDL (I've taken £8 before - which doesn't add up with my rule of putting all money on, but this is when I had a more conservative strategy). And I reckon I've maybe won on it 3 times (50p once and like the other times couple of quid tops). I haven't been on a quizzer for ages but MPDL is one I always go on and have probably played it more than 30-40 times. So in summary...Jon is better at it than us. I love it when it skips on two rounds in a row! And also love just seeing one big fat Q in the box thing as opposed to the dreaded 4Q's. Fuck off 4 Q's!!!
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Re: Hex

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Ryan Taylor wrote:I love it when it skips on two rounds in a row! And also love just seeing one big fat Q in the box thing as opposed to the dreaded 4Q's.
We should definitely start a new thread, Favourite Moments on Quiz Machines. Well, you should start it.
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Re: Hex

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Matt Morrison wrote:
Ryan Taylor wrote:I love it when it skips on two rounds in a row! And also love just seeing one big fat Q in the box thing as opposed to the dreaded 4Q's.
We should definitely start a new thread, Favourite Moments on Quiz Machines. Well, you should start it.
Haha yep. There are so many moments that are awesome on quizzers brought about by synaesthesia(?). Sub-thread request for the secon time in two days!

A few of mine off top of my head:
- Just seeing that big fat juicy blue tick come up when you have to guess a 1 in 3 on Pub Quiz after the machine has screwed you with a solid question.
- The opening titles to the Deal Or No Deal game and then the box opening and the target being <24,000. *GTFI*
- Striking a ship on Battleships and seeing that wonderful reddy colour combined with a boom.
- Starting a game of Hex and seeing a little bit of a red colour just out of view but knowing that it is the cash prize after just 5 steps.
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Re: Hex

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This reminds me, how do people play the Battleships money round? We've become a bit battleships-obsessed lately, but we don't really have a strategy for when to stop. Do people just play until they strike out (which is usually what we do, you tend to hit a lifeboat or two along the way) or do you have a money limit which you'll always bank at?

Also, any stats on numbers of lifeboats/mines and money distribution? I can never read the screen fast enough when it's game over, but there seem to usually be plenty of lifeboats.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:This reminds me, how do people play the Battleships money round? We've become a bit battleships-obsessed lately, but we don't really have a strategy for when to stop. Do people just play until they strike out (which is usually what we do, you tend to hit a lifeboat or two along the way) or do you have a money limit which you'll always bank at?

Also, any stats on numbers of lifeboats/mines and money distribution? I can never read the screen fast enough when it's game over, but there seem to usually be plenty of lifeboats.
Remind us of the cash round? There's like 3 versions of Battleships I think around and I'm crap at all of them. Think I reached money round once and it was like concentric squares of money values (like 5p on the outside) then you can get a Move In thing to build up the money. Is this what it is?
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Re: Hex

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Oh, weird, I've only ever seen the one type. Just a grid of squares behind which are monetary values (10/20/30/40/50p and £1, I think), some x2s (double your money), some lifeboats (which banks what you've already got) and mines. You can quit whenever and take your money, but if you hit a mine you lose all your money (except any saved by lifeboats). So you get into a "ooh, shall we do one more?".

At one point we adopted a rule of just doing one row of the grid, and then one time CF deliberately skipped one just to wind me up, which I then pressed only for it to be a mine. We're wild.
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Re: Hex

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Michael Wallace wrote:Oh, weird, I've only ever seen the one type. Just a grid of squares behind which are monetary values (10/20/30/40/50p and £1, I think), some x2s (double your money), some lifeboats (which banks what you've already got) and mines. You can quit whenever and take your money, but if you hit a mine you lose all your money (except any saved by lifeboats). So you get into a "ooh, shall we do one more?".
I've never got to this one :(
Raccoon wrote:At one point we adopted a rule of just doing one row of the grid, and then one time CF deliberately skipped one just to wind me up, which I then pressed only for it to be a mine. We're wild.
Ha I love stuff like that!
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Re: Hex

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Morrison knows all.

There are three versions of Battleships (still in circulation). I have to apologise that a) I can't be absolutely sure of the names of each variant, and b) it's fucking hard to find quiz machine pics on Google to illustrate my point.

The oldest of all is the Battleships that we played last year at Colin, and the one with the money game that Ryan refers to.
The regular game is the one where each row of grid squares represents a different question category.
To get to the money game you have to reach a certain number of points specified at the top of the game.
The money game is made up of three (I think) concentric stages of squares that it jumbles up and you have to memorise the positions, cash amounts as well as "move in" squares and forced "collect" squares.

Then there is Battleships 2 that is most prominent and found on the normal (itbox?) machines.
This is the one MW refers to, the one I nearly always refer to, and the one we played at Colon.
You get to the money round by finding all the ships on the grid, the number and size of ships will always vary.
The money game is a completely blank grid with cash amounts, mines (reset accumulated money to 30p or the most recent lifeboat and then throws you back to fresh grid) and lifeboats (safe points for money).

Then finally is the most modern version, Battleships: Superior Command (or something) which is found on the 'other' machines, e.g. the one from this year's Colin.
This is a much smaller grid with much newer graphics.
Money is marked out along the top of the grid, so you have to find x squares worth of ship to reach marked-out cash amounts. You can only see 8 or so squares when you start so it's a bit like Hex in that you don't at first know how many ships you'll have to destroy to reach £1 or beyond. Often you will run out of ships without reaching the £1, then you get a fresh grid and an extra bonus.

Hope that helps.

As far as your questioning on the 'normal' game MW, depends obviously how many times have played the game and all that stuff, we have taken over £12 out of it before, but that was getting to around £6 and then taking a (probably stupid) risk and hitting an X2. There are definitely 5 mines (it shows as much on screen) and I'd say about 8 each or so of both lifeboats and X2 squares. As mentioned above, you seem to always go down to 30p if you hit a mine when you haven't lifeboated.
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