Conundrum vacancies

[Charlie Reams]

For arcane reasons, I want to add 6 new conundrums to apterous. Everyone has some pet word which they think everyone else should know, so now is your chance to educate the world by adding it to the apterous conundrum list. Make sure you check on Lexplorer that your conundrum of choice isn't already in the list and doesn't have an anagram. Best six responses win, no cash alternative, Kirk's decision is final.

[Ben Wilson]

JACKFRUIT. Think of the scramble possibilities (unless you're Kai, of course).

[Michael Wallace]

Disappointingly, neither BADICAL nor JAWSOME are long enough

[D Eadie]

I like CENTESIMO.

Firstly, its a form of currency in several countries, or at least was and several words found within the 9-letters relate to money and figures....monetise, centimos, centimes, seicento (600), semitone etc.

Not only that, at first glance when shuffled, it looks like loads of possible 9's, but is one of those that swallows up the 30-seconds while playing with your mind.

Definitely a killer to the untrained eye.

[Kai Laddiman]

Looking for an interesting one, why is PEDOPHILE not a word yet PEDOPHILES is?

[Kai Laddiman]

KRUMMHOLZ.

[Callum Laddiman]

SLIVOVITZ, XENOCRYST, XEROGRAPH, XERODERMA, QUADRATUS.

[samir pilica]

CHEONGSAM, HOSPODARS

[Phil Reynolds]

If I had to pick one it would be COCKAMAMY. Other missing favourites include PETHIDINE, BILLYCOCK, PETERSHAM, ABSCISSAE, ABREACTED and PHAGOCYTE.

[JimBentley]

A few that are only possible as conundrums, but haven't been used as conundrums yet; they must feel so unloved, languishing in the lexicon but never able to make an appearance (OK, except in Unlimited and suchlike but let's not split hairs):

FRIKKADEL (noun) (South African) a fried or baked meatball

SHAHTOOSH (mass noun) high-quality wool made from the neck hair of the Himalayan ibex, or a fabric woven from this, or (count noun) a shawl made from this fabric

CACHECTIC (adjective) relating to CACHEXIA, weakness and wasting of the body due to chronic illness

KALAMKARI (mass noun) a type of hand-printed cotton cloth originally made in southern India

HUCKABACK (mass noun) a strong linen or cotton fabric with a rough surface, used for towelling and glass cloths

FRIZZANTE (adjective) (of wine) semi-sparkling

POZZOLANA (mass noun) a type of volcanic ash used for mortar or for cement that sets under water

SKUNKWEED (mass noun) cannabis of a variety which has a high concentration of narcotic agents

BLACKCOCK (noun) the male of the black grouse

CROOKBACK (noun) (archaic) a person with a hunchback

SHAHTOOSH is my favourite, I think, it sounds quite decadent.

[Charlie Reams]

Some good suggestions so far, I might have to expand beyond my original six. I'm surprised CHEONGSAM is in (and that I didn't notice it the first time) given that QIPAO is not, but it's a nice word so I'll definitely use that one. FRIZZANTE is a nice one, I saw it on a bottle the other day and pondered adding it but thought it might be too obscure. But now it's received the internationally-recognised Stamp of Bentley, I'll definitely use it.

I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...

[Kirk Bevins]

I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...

Maybe but then it would be too much like the handheld game where the conundrums were either a) plurals or b) ridiculously hard. Obviously option 'a' wouldn't be used for apterous but I'm worried it'll turn out like option 'b'.

[Phil Reynolds]

BLACKCOCK (noun) the male of the black grouse

Haha. I originally had that in my list, but what with BILLYCOCK and COCKAMAMY already being there I didn't want people thinking I was going for a theme.

[Mark Harrison]

On a slight tangent, I have a question...

I love these conundrums, but to be honest I'd be enormously frustrated if one came up in one of my games, because (as a mere mortal 1200 player) I'd consider it completely unsolvable. Is there a way to scale the difficulty of conundrums to the skill of those playing?

[Charlie Reams]

On a slight tangent, I have a question...

I love these conundrums, but to be honest I'd be enormously frustrated if one came up in one of my games, because (as a mere mortal 1200 player) I'd consider it completely unsolvable. Is there a way to scale the difficulty of conundrums to the skill of those playing?

I've thought about this before and I think the answer is pretty much that it's not workable. I mean, imagine how unfair it would be if, every time Kirk tries to play a conundrum attack, he gets hit with 20 ridiculously hard ones just because he has a huge rating. With the current system, players who are not so good expect to get fewer points and that's, you know, exactly how the rest of the game works. Talking as someone who got knocked out of COMA this year thanks to CHOWKIDAR, it's annoying at the time, but you could equally lose because of an insoluble numbers game, a flat letters round or whatever. And on the rare occasions you do get a stupid-hard one, it's really really satisfying. So unless someone has a much better idea of how to do this, the current one-size-fits-all system is as good as it gets.

[Jon Corby]

I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...

I think that would be a terrible idea. I think it's a massive failing of most of the previous electronic versions (before my game, basically ) that they just plucked any nine out of the lexicon for use as a conundrum, it just isn't realistic and spoils it. You might as well forget about making the letter distributions/shuffling authentic (for example) if you're going to do this.

I don't like it.

[Mark Harrison]

On a slight tangent, I have a question...

I love these conundrums, but to be honest I'd be enormously frustrated if one came up in one of my games, because (as a mere mortal 1200 player) I'd consider it completely unsolvable. Is there a way to scale the difficulty of conundrums to the skill of those playing?

I've thought about this before and I think the answer is pretty much that it's not workable. I mean, imagine how unfair it would be if, every time Kirk tries to play a conundrum attack, he gets hit with 20 ridiculously hard ones just because he has a huge rating. With the current system, players who are not so good expect to get fewer points and that's, you know, exactly how the rest of the game works. Talking as someone who got knocked out of COMA this year thanks to CHOWKIDAR, it's annoying at the time, but you could equally lose because of an insoluble numbers game, a flat letters round or whatever. And on the rare occasions you do get a stupid-hard one, it's really really satisfying. So unless someone has a much better idea of how to do this, the current one-size-fits-all system is as good as it gets.

Yeah, I guess so. Conundrum attacks do throw a bit of a spanner into the works. Was just a thought

[Charlie Reams]

I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...

I think that would be a terrible idea. I think it's a massive failing of most of the previous electronic versions (before my game, basically ) that they just plucked any nine out of the lexicon for use as a conundrum, it just isn't realistic and spoils it. You might as well forget about making the letter distributions/shuffling authentic (for example) if you're going to do this.

I don't like it.

I didn't mean I was planning to do this, I just meant that if I continue adding a few new conundrums occasionally then eventually virtually everything will be allowed.

[Michael Wallace]

Didn't realise UNIPOTENT and NILPOTENT weren't in the list, they are awesome.

[Neil Zussman]

Didn't realise UNIPOTENT and NILPOTENT weren't in the list, they are awesome.

Nilpotent isn't on the list?! Get it on now!

[Kai Laddiman]

Didn't realise UNIPOTENT and NILPOTENT weren't in the list, they are awesome.

Nilpotent isn't on the list?! Get it on now!

TPOTNNEIL

[Adam Dexter]

BLACKCOCK (noun) the male of the black grouse

Haha. I originally had that in my list, but what with BILLYCOCK and COCKAMAMY already being there I didn't want people thinking I was going for a theme.

PHAGOCYTE

[Gavin Chipper]

I didn't mean I was planning to do this, I just meant that if I continue adding a few new conundrums occasionally then eventually virtually everything will be allowed.

So all the current ones were individually decided? Maybe you could allow any of them but have different probabilities of them coming up or would that be going a bit far?

[Neil Zussman]

I didn't mean I was planning to do this, I just meant that if I continue adding a few new conundrums occasionally then eventually virtually everything will be allowed.

So all the current ones were individually decided? Maybe you could allow any of them but have different probabilities of them coming up or would that be going a bit far?

Well the best thing to do (thinking about aptobashes and the like) would be to give each conundrum a difficulty rating, and then have harder conundrums when the match is closer or the scores are higher (as happens in the finals of the show, for example, when they assume the standard will be higher). But there are several problems, in that it's probably totally unfeasible (I don't volunteer to manually type out the ratings) and it would make it pretty easy to max a conundrum attack against Prune (so for things like that, you'd still have to just have a random difficulty conundrum in each round). Also, if two people are on a max game right up to the conundrum, it would be ridiculously hard. Which would be pretty unfair.
I also wish to reiterate my desire to see nilpotent make the cut.

[Charlie Reams]

I didn't mean I was planning to do this, I just meant that if I continue adding a few new conundrums occasionally then eventually virtually everything will be allowed.

So all the current ones were individually decided? Maybe you could allow any of them but have different probabilities of them coming up or would that be going a bit far?

Yes, I sat and read the list of 15,000 or so valid conundrums and filtered out the ones that I thought were too obscure. Doing something like really puts Jimdic (100K words) in perspective, I can tell you.

[Matt Morrison]

ISOGAMETE and PHOTOGRAM were the two I found. Didn't mention them as they had no personal relevance, I just looked around Lexplorer til I found a couple.
But I think they'd be a lot more reasonable difficulty-wise than most of the suggestions here.

[Simon Myers]

BITSTREAM remains my favourite for inclusion. Worthy learn for general play too, BARMIEST+T.

[Oliver Garner]

SEALPOINT is quite a likely 9 for general play.

[Oliver Garner]

I didn't mean I was planning to do this, I just meant that if I continue adding a few new conundrums occasionally then eventually virtually everything will be allowed.

So all the current ones were individually decided? Maybe you could allow any of them but have different probabilities of them coming up or would that be going a bit far?

Yes, I sat and read the list of 15,000 or so valid conundrums and filtered out the ones that I thought were too obscure. Doing something like really puts Jimdic (100K words) in perspective, I can tell you.

Wasn't at my best, but that does not really explain the difficulty in some of these conundrums
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58068
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58069

[Charlie Reams]

Wasn't at my best, but that does not really explain the difficulty in some of these conundrums
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58068
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58069

What explanation are you hoping for? Some conundrums are difficult, that's how it goes.

[Oliver Garner]

Wasn't at my best, but that does not really explain the difficulty in some of these conundrums
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58068
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=58069

What explanation are you hoping for? Some conundrums are difficult, that's how it goes.

No, it just seemed like there were more difficult conundrums in those two games that what I had been used to. I will play a few more to see if this difficulty of conundrum has now become the norm.

[James Hall]

I'd like to see XYLOGRAPH.

Just because it's an impressive looking set of letters.

[Kirk Bevins]

I'd like to see XYLOGRAPH.

Just because it's an impressive looking set of letters.

As is the Central London sorting office.