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Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:15 am
by Martin Gardner
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=35368

If this isn't strange I don't know what is...

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:21 am
by Kai Laddiman
Martin Gardner wrote:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=35368

If this isn't strange I don't know what is...
This?

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:49 am
by Martin Gardner
Kai Laddiman wrote:
Martin Gardner wrote:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=35368

If this isn't strange I don't know what is...
This?
Yeah it gives you ten seconds if you want them or not, oh by the way:
Kai Laddiman wrote:These days, can a chicken not cross a road without a joke being made out of it? Seriously. Some people.
Excellent!

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:29 am
by JimBentley
Martin Gardner wrote:
Ben Wilson wrote:Deliberate server breakage attempt? Certainly I can pick out at least one round there I could do within the time limit but the computer couldn't.
Interesting round 9. I'm pretty sure it is possible, although the computer says you can't get within 10.
It is: (((6x5x5)+4)x9x2)-3, although I don't think I'd have managed it in 3 seconds either!

Or 30, for that matter.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:58 am
by Martin Gardner
But in a maximums only game, what if the numbers are 1,1,2,2,3,3 for a target of 999. How do you score a max?

Rex's revenge!

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:55 pm
by Martin Gardner

Re: Rex's revenge!

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:32 pm
by Charlie Reams
Classic.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:39 pm
by Kirk Bevins
How many maxes did I get here and look how many non-words Damo offered and I still lose. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Well played mate.

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=35495

(Could be a GotW candidate?)

Edit: Oh, and the background colours are wrong for speedgoat.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 9:23 pm
by Ben Wilson
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=38449

Fellow birthday boy Bill Shatner in dictionary corner, and in the other room Mum's watching BBC1 and what should come on but the main characters singing 'Happy Birthday'. :?

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:24 pm
by Michael Wallace
Not quite good enough for brag or GOTW, but pretty epic speedgoat between me and Matthew.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:45 pm
by Kirk Bevins
It's good to see words I offer on the show appearing on apterous time and time again and it's also good to see other people learning them (as long as it's not any of my future opponents on the show):

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=39154

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:50 am
by Phil Reynolds
Sometimes, how well (or badly) you play seems to have little impact on the final scoreline. In this game, Matt and I plodded along with 6s and 7s, both missing the max on practically every round (probably because we were too busy talking dirty to each other in the chat pane to concentrate on spotting words), and neither of us got the conundrum. Yet some easy numbers and a good 9 spot by both of us resulted in a highly respectable 89-104.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:00 pm
by Charlie Reams
Phil Reynolds wrote:Sometimes, how well (or badly) you play seems to have little impact on the final scoreline. In this game, Matt and I plodded along with 6s and 7s, both missing the max on practically every round (probably because we were too busy talking dirty to each other in the chat pane to concentrate on spotting words), and neither of us got the conundrum. Yet some easy numbers and a good 9 spot by both of us resulted in a highly respectable 89-104.
A bit like this game, which is (apart from Kirk's various astronomical scores) the highest-scoring 15 rounder on Apterous. Yet I only got 8 maxes. You just have to pick the right rounds to concentrate in, I guess.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:31 pm
by Michael Wallace
As I (repeatedly) explain to people who are not hardcore Countdown dudes, if you assume you get the numbers and the conundrum (not that unreasonable if they're all one larges) then you only need 60 points from 11 letter rounds to hit the century. Are there any games where someone has scored in every round and *not* managed it?

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:44 pm
by Charlie Reams
Michael Wallace wrote:As I (repeatedly) explain to people who are not hardcore Countdown dudes, if you assume you get the numbers and the conundrum (not that unreasonable if they're all one larges) then you only need 60 points from 11 letter rounds to hit the century. Are there any games where someone has scored in every round and *not* managed it?
Obviously I can't say for certain, but it seems pretty unlikely that you could score in 15 rounds and not make 100. But it would be interesting to know the lowest scoring all-rounds-scoring game.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:51 pm
by Matt Morrison
Charlie Reams wrote:it seems pretty unlikely that you could score in 15 rounds and not make 100. But it would be interesting to know the lowest scoring all-rounds-scoring game.
This seems like an Aptochallenge suitable for me.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 2:20 pm
by Ian Dent
It does seem unlikely. I'm a fairly weak player but managed to score 95 by scoring in all previous 14 rounds a few days ago. Missed the conundrum though, obviously.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:27 pm
by Kirk Bevins
11 6 letter words, 3 7s on the numbers and the conundrum gives 97 points. A cracking total for quite a poor game.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:12 am
by Kirk Bevins
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=40561

Check out the closest you can get on round 79. Brilliant. Rachel sucks.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:35 am
by Daniel O'Dowd
Rofl. Only 5621 away? That isn't bad for a newcomer! :lol

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:54 am
by Charlie Reams
Charlie Reams wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:As I (repeatedly) explain to people who are not hardcore Countdown dudes, if you assume you get the numbers and the conundrum (not that unreasonable if they're all one larges) then you only need 60 points from 11 letter rounds to hit the century. Are there any games where someone has scored in every round and *not* managed it?
Obviously I can't say for certain, but it seems pretty unlikely that you could score in 15 rounds and not make 100. But it would be interesting to know the lowest scoring all-rounds-scoring game.
I was right... just. Here's the record, wherein Rob Thomas makes 100... just. Impressive that it's against an actual human, too.

Edit: Having bothered to write this query, I've made a page of it.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:04 pm
by Matt Morrison
Charlie Reams wrote:I've made a page of it.
Does that only take into account regular 15 rounders?
Obviously with flat scoring you could abuse it pretty hard.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:44 pm
by Charlie Reams
Matt Morrison wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:I've made a page of it.
Does that only take into account regular 15 rounders?
Obviously with flat scoring you could abuse it pretty hard.
Yes. Only the exact normal format counts. Otherwise you could abuse it quite a bit harder with maxes only.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:19 pm
by JackHurst
http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41193

In the first numbers round we got better than a maximum.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:28 pm
by Charlie Reams
JackHurst wrote:http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41193

In the first numbers round we got better than a maximum.
I'll do something about this at some point.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 3:01 pm
by Ben Wilson
JackHurst wrote:http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41193

In the first numbers round we got better than a maximum.
In my HNA record I think I beat the max 3 times causing me to impressively come within one point of the maximum on a numbers attack. Had I not botched an earlier round I'd have beaten the max by a considerable margin.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:22 pm
by Kevin Davis

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:38 pm
by Kirk Bevins
Kevin Davis wrote:Round Three: Some men can find it, you know.
Every time I see CLITORIS recently, ELICITORS is always there. No wonder I'm shit in bed...

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 1:04 am
by Simon Myers
Kirk Bevins wrote:
Kevin Davis wrote:Round Three: Some men can find it, you know.
Every time I see CLITORIS recently, ELICITORS is always there. No wonder I'm shit in bed...
Every time I see CLITORIS recently, my SOLICITOR is always there. I wish he'd stop following me around...

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 5:15 am
by Charlie Reams
The only all-darrens 15 rounder ever.

(Statistically a game like this happens about once every 46 thousand.)

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:03 am
by Jon Corby
Charlie Reams wrote:(Statistically a game like this happens about once every 46 thousand.)
How did you calculate that? Just based on the proportion of rounds which have darrens from your database?

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:08 pm
by Charlie Reams
Jon Corby wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:(Statistically a game like this happens about once every 46 thousand.)
How did you calculate that? Just based on the proportion of rounds which have darrens from your database?
Yep, 65606 darrenic rounds in 15684 games, or 38%. So assuming darrens occur independently (seems roughly reasonable), that gives one all-darrens game in, umm, 41587... I think I messed up the rounding somewhere, but you get the idea.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:27 pm
by Jon Corby
Charlie Reams wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:(Statistically a game like this happens about once every 46 thousand.)
How did you calculate that? Just based on the proportion of rounds which have darrens from your database?
Yep, 65606 darrenic rounds in 15684 games, or 38%. So assuming darrens occur independently (seems roughly reasonable), that gives one all-darrens game in, umm, 41587... I think I messed up the rounding somewhere, but you get the idea.
Aye, makes sense.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:02 am
by Chris Davies
Not that strange really, but this is almost certainly my first palindromic nine-letter word.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:05 am
by Junaid Mubeen
Chris Davies wrote:Not that strange really, but this is almost certainly my first palindromic nine-letter word.
It was a stunning spot, nice one. By the way Chris, my quietness during games is due to chat not working in case you were wondering.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:24 am
by Chris Davies
Junaid Mubeen wrote:
Chris Davies wrote:Not that strange really, but this is almost certainly my first palindromic nine-letter word.
It was a stunning spot, nice one. By the way Chris, my quietness during games is due to chat not working in case you were wondering.
Cheers :D Yeah, I reckoned it most likely meant that your chat wasn't working. I often have the same problem.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:23 pm
by Neil Zussman
Closest I'll ever get to a perfect speed 9: http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=42146 Pissed me off immensely. I got the first numbers, but for some reason apterous doesn't think 10/2*7 is 35. Which it clearly is. So in a way, I'm glad I messed up the other numbers as well. But it's still infuriating. :evil:

I decided to take my anger out on Prune in the next game, trying to only score with words that were maxes. Obviously this meant taking some stupid risks, but on the bright side, I set some records- like the lowest ever winning score :D (although it hasn't appeared in statland yet for some reason)
http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=42154

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:13 pm
by Chris Davies
Neil Zussman wrote:Closest I'll ever get to a perfect speed 9: http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=42146 Pissed me off immensely. I got the first numbers, but for some reason apterous doesn't think 10/2*7 is 35. Which it clearly is. So in a way, I'm glad I messed up the other numbers as well. But it's still infuriating. :evil:

I decided to take my anger out on Prune in the next game, trying to only score with words that were maxes. Obviously this meant taking some stupid risks, but on the bright side, I set some records- like the lowest ever winning score :D (although it hasn't appeared in statland yet for some reason)
http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=42154
Multiplications are done before any other math operations, including division, so 10/2*7 is understood as 10/(2*7), rather than (10/2)*7.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:47 pm
by Kirk Bevins
Chris Davies wrote:
Multiplications are done before any other math operations, including division, so 10/2*7 is understood as 10/(2*7), rather than (10/2)*7.
This is not true. Multiplication and division are worth the same and so if you have an expression containing just multiplication and division, one should read left to right and thus would read it 10/2 then * 7.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:52 pm
by Charlie Reams
Kirk Bevins wrote: This is not true. Multiplication and division are worth the same and so if you have an expression containing just multiplication and division, one should read left to right and thus would read it 10/2 then * 7.
Chris was explaining what Apterous does, not how BIDMAS works.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:54 pm
by Stuart Arnot
Charlie Reams wrote:
Kirk Bevins wrote: This is not true. Multiplication and division are worth the same and so if you have an expression containing just multiplication and division, one should read left to right and thus would read it 10/2 then * 7.
Chris was explaining what Apterous does, not how BIDMAS works.
It used to trip me up all the time when I started out. Now I bracket the shit out of everything, just to be safe.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:37 pm
by Ben Hunter
I just press = after everything.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:01 pm
by Kirk Bevins
Good to see that in one round on goatdown, there was just a darrenical 4 available and I missed it!

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ga ... 69#r642069

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 10:31 pm
by Kai Laddiman
Kirk Bevins wrote:Good to see that in one round on goatdown, there was just a darrenical 4 available and I missed it!

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ga ... 69#r642069
Kirk you got pwned in round 18.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 3:49 pm
by Kieran Child
Not a particularly strange game, but I liked round 2 of this, as an oddity:
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=43935

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:02 pm
by Charlie Reams
Played okay here but again could easily have been a max game in the hands of someone better.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 2:10 pm
by Matt Morrison
Charlie Reams wrote:Played okay here but again could easily have been a max game in the hands of someone better.
Odd how the conundrum turned out. That was my answer from the first conundrum which you never even got to see (the extra Es didn't even come up on my screen either, I just bashed a load of letters when it didn't let me press enter).

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:37 pm
by D Eadie
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ga ... 97#r640197

Somehow i managed to overcome Rex here, even in the face of his veiled threats in the opening 2 rds.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:12 am
by Oliver Garner
Is this me being rubbish or is this a really hard collection of 2 large numbers games?
http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=45167

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:34 pm
by Matt Morrison

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:53 pm
by Kirk Bevins
Matt Morrison wrote:Undeniably strange: http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=45286
Yeah, I was on a mission to cracking the eggs (no pun intended). I ended round early expecting to beat prune but he hit me with a max and I lost 7-0 :(

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:47 pm
by D Eadie
it was nonsense.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 11:52 pm
by Ben Wilson

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:32 pm
by Ben Wilson

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 11:02 pm
by Ben Wilson

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 4:05 am
by Dinos Sfyris
Jeez thats harsh! Congrats on the 70 points tho :)

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:24 pm
by Dinos Sfyris
Check out the fucking metamax!

Also notice how in rounds 8 and 10 Innis managed to replicate 2 exact selections from todays show! Although what really took the biscuit was his admirably mighty declaration for round 11 :)

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:57 pm
by Charlie Reams
Dinos Sfyris wrote:Check out the fucking metamax!
This game had a higher max than that metamax...

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 8:00 pm
by Callum Laddiman
Charlie Reams wrote:
Dinos Sfyris wrote:Check out the fucking metamax!
This game had a higher max than that metamax...

Sorry, please may you point out where the max was higher.

Re: Strange Games

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 8:57 pm
by Charlie Reams
Callum Laddiman wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:
Dinos Sfyris wrote:Check out the fucking metamax!
This game had a higher max than that metamax...

Sorry, please may you point out where the max was higher.
The max was 195, which is higher than 194.