c4countdown

Lesley Hines wrote:On the whole more colourfully-spoken characters subject - I think Father Christmas might dispel a few myths. I'm gutted to be saying it really, cos I love the DC guests and think they're really entertaining. However, since I'm the one that's introduced our cleaner's wee lass to the site to improve her English and spelling I'll have to take some responsibility (and flak) if she learns more than intended. I did think a better solution might be a limited DC list for junior so those of who can vote can still enjoy them - I know it would detract for me if some of them weren't so brilliantly OTT. If kids decide to play the adult version they'll have to take what they get!

You know Father Christmas hasn't been in any games since March, right?

BTW, fantastic improvements - can't believe how hard you work on this and it really is cool.

Thanks

Lesley Hines wrote: I did think a better solution might be a limited DC list for junior so those of who can vote can still enjoy them - I know it would detract for me if some of them weren't so brilliantly OTT. If kids decide to play the adult version they'll have to take what they get!

Now that's a good idea! But I bet it means more work for you know who.

Charlie Reams wrote:You know Father Christmas hasn't been in any games since March, right?

I hadn't noticed him missing but he was my first ever DC guest so he really sticks in my head! He did make me laugh tho

Maxine Silkstone wrote:Now that's a good idea! But I bet it means more work for you know who.

D'you know, I often feel bad putting stuff on here as it's a bit like setting Charlie work and I'm sure he's got more than enough to do. Let's face it, if he never did anything else to the site it would still be phenomenal.

(As i always say in these posts, sorry if its already been suggested)

I think it would be nice to have a module in lexplorer that give you possible words that you could make the from the you are looking at if you swap one letter for another:

POINTED -O+A= PAINTED

URINATES -U+ L=LATRINES/RATLINES ETC.

That sort of thing.

Just a little niggle: I think the colours of some of the variants need to be changed. Check this page, for example.

Kai Laddiman wrote:Just a little niggle: I think the colours of some of the variants need to be changed. Check this page, for example.

Less of the racism please.

Kai Laddiman wrote:Just a little niggle: I think the colours of some of the variants need to be changed. Check this page, for example.

I agree with Kai. I now have a massive green splodge in the middle of my vision.
That colour has gotta go

A column in the "games in progress" tab that tells you how many rounds out of the full amount have been played would be useful.

A couple requests (of the either/or/pretty please variety):
1. A notification alert for a player -- i.e., sound a buzzer when player X enters/leaves.
2. The ability for someone (you, the system, someone with (TD) behind their name) to set up games for players, like the way the duel shows up in everybody's window Sunday morning. (This would fulfill the purpose of #1 at the same time, as the challenge will light up and make ... whatever noise that is ... when both players are present.) Even better if those games are tagged somehow (like the duel games say "Daily Duel" on that second line) making them easy to find.

Erm, how about scoring using the scrabble system, so it isn't how long the word is but more how obscure the letters are, e.g GAUZE would score more than NOTARISE. But if you manage a nine you get double that score. Just a thought.

Eoin Monaghan wrote:Erm, how about scoring using the scrabble system, so it isn't how long the word is but more how obscure the letters are, e.g GAUZE would score more than NOTARISE. But if you manage a nine you get double that score. Just a thought.

Scruntdown?

While I'm suggesting things that will never happen because Charlie has more sense than that, some inventory items (which is dangerous since I don't actually know what all the current inventory items are for):

• On the poultry theme, a turkey when you've missed out a -S ending (like giving PLEASE when PLEASES is there in the letters).
• Something for getting a sweep of five maxes for a "half" (rounds 1-5, 6-10, or 11-15).

How about different colours for the overlaid blobs on the superstats graphs, to match with the variants' colours?

Self-fulfulling prophecy.

As in 'maxes score double'? Maybe still have niners as just 18 points.

Or maybe not...

Like the way they show up on the high scores page, perfect games should get some sort of highlight on the 'today's games' and archive pages.

May I propose a new inventory item alongside the Tome of Travers, Bible of Beevers, Glossary of Gallen, and so forth?

One which appears if you make a non-existent declaration as used by Jon Stitcher? So busline^, girates^, facinated^ and carots^ would all earn the item?

If only I could think of another word for "book" beginning with ST...

A statement of Stitchers

Marc Meakin wrote:A statement of Stitchers

A scroll?

A statute?

Hello

Instead of whinging in the chat I thought I'd put in a proper request - can I please be a her instead of a him? (I'm not hoping you do surgery - I don't want to be Loretta.) I know it's minor but heck, I was named after an uncle (seriously). I'm sure the other laydees would appreciate it too, and it would clear up some mysteries. I'm not saying who, but I was convinced another player was a girl until I saw him in glorious technicolor.

Thanks very much!

Lesley Hines wrote:Hello

Instead of whinging in the chat I thought I'd put in a proper request - can I please be a her instead of a him? (I'm not hoping you do surgery - I don't want to be Loretta.) I know it's minor but heck, I was named after an uncle (seriously). I'm sure the other laydees would appreciate it too, and it would clear up some mysteries. I'm not saying who, but I was convinced another player was a girl until I saw him in glorious technicolor.

Thanks very much!

You've had the snip, but it'll take til tomorrow for your authentic female appendages to appear.

Incidentally I'm sure Innis is used to being mistaken for a girl, Jono fancied him for about 6 weeks.

The proper response to this is almost certainly "pay attention you idiot", but I'll put it forward anyhow: sometimes, I don't notice that I'm not actually logged into apterous until I try to go somewhere. It would be nice if, when I clicked on "you'll have to log in" that I actually get to visit that page after logging in.

Charlie, you're a prince among men. On behalf of all philogynists (p1323), thanks

How about when URLs are entered into the chat windows (both in the lobby and in game), automagically making them into active links?

How about making the last numbers game worth double the points but instead you have to reach a 4 figure target (with normal 6 numbers)? Thought it might make things more interesting since I'm sick of losing by like 21 points with two rounds to go. Just an idea anyway.

When I see peoples games, I sometimes find it frustrating that the players methods don't come up. I have thought, looking at the selection, "wow, how'd they do that?", and if possible could you be able to view the player solutions.

How about a hangman game. C1 picks a letter, then C2, then C1 and so on until there is no more available words to pick and whoever picked last gets the points according to the length.
On conundrums, the 1st letter appears, then the 2nd, the 3rd and so on, and you score points accordingly, numbers I haven't thought about yet.

Eoin Monaghan wrote:When I see peoples games, I sometimes find it frustrating that the players methods don't come up. I have thought, looking at the selection, "wow, how'd they do that?", and if possible could you be able to view the player solutions.

For the numbers? You can see the methods by hovering the cursor over the person's declaration. Apologies if that's not what you meant.

Stat requests-

Toughest conundrums (say, attempted more than 10 times, % of times spotted)
Most prolific DC guest/host/etc (useless but I really want to know this)

Innis Carson wrote:

Eoin Monaghan wrote:When I see peoples games, I sometimes find it frustrating that the players methods don't come up. I have thought, looking at the selection, "wow, how'd they do that?", and if possible could you be able to view the player solutions.

For the numbers? You can see the methods by hovering the cursor over the person's declaration. Apologies if that's not what you meant.

Thanks Innis, that is what I meant.

How about poker? I think playing poker against the likes of Apterous Rex and Prime, but with no real money at stake could improve many people's games and win them back their Apterous fee in the future!

Dunno if this has ever come up, but what about Doubles? Not in the sense that everyone plays each round and the maximum amongst each pair is counted...that'd lead to too many max games and the best player on each team dominating the game too often. Rather, each pair alternates rounds. Restrictions such as they must play 7 rounds each out of the first 14, at least one numbers each etc . Teams take it in turns to volunteer a player for the next round. Sort of thing.

Imagine: Kirk/Corby vs DoD/Howe. Now I'd pay to watch that.

Or Kirk/Jimmy vs Mubeen/Reams vs DoD/Priest vs Corby/Paul Howe...you see what I'm getting at.

Junaid Mubeen wrote:Dunno if this has ever come up, but what about Doubles? Not in the sense that everyone plays each round and the maximum amongst each pair is counted...that'd lead to too many max games and the best player on each team dominating the game too often. Rather, each pair alternates rounds. Restrictions such as they must play 7 rounds each out of the first 14, at least one numbers each etc . Teams take it in turns to volunteer a player for the next round. Sort of thing.

Imagine: Kirk/Corby vs DoD/Howe. Now I'd pay to watch that.

Or Kirk/Jimmy vs Mubeen/Reams vs DoD/Priest vs Corby/Paul Howe...you see what I'm getting at.

Ooh I like this. Why not go ahead and make it seventeen rounds so that each player gets three letters and a numbers against each other opponent, plus a free-for-all conundrum?

Andrew Feist wrote:

Junaid Mubeen wrote:Dunno if this has ever come up, but what about Doubles? Not in the sense that everyone plays each round and the maximum amongst each pair is counted...that'd lead to too many max games and the best player on each team dominating the game too often. Rather, each pair alternates rounds. Restrictions such as they must play 7 rounds each out of the first 14, at least one numbers each etc . Teams take it in turns to volunteer a player for the next round. Sort of thing.

Imagine: Kirk/Corby vs DoD/Howe. Now I'd pay to watch that.

Or Kirk/Jimmy vs Mubeen/Reams vs DoD/Priest vs Corby/Paul Howe...you see what I'm getting at.

Ooh I like this. Why not go ahead and make it seventeen rounds so that each player gets three letters and a numbers against each other opponent, plus a free-for-all conundrum?

I set it up and you smash it home. Waddya say, Charlie?

Eoin Monaghan wrote:When I see peoples games, I sometimes find it frustrating that the players methods don't come up. I have thought, looking at the selection, "wow, how'd they do that?", and if possible could you be able to view the player solutions.

RTFM

When you lexplore a word, I think it would be good if you were told the percentage of times it was spotted when available as a max.

This Game (which I am unashamedly proud of and want to spam all over this forum) made me wish there was a joint maxes score board for standard 15 rounder.

It would be interesting to see the probability of any particular word appearing, in a similar vein to the improbable spots in Statland, when viewing it in the Lexplorer, as well as perhaps some form of contrast with the amount of times it has actually come up.
Getting carried away now, but if that was done, maybe you could have player statistic which said the average probability of the words they've spotted.
Also maybe a little box to tick to hide the bots if you want a clearer view of who's online.

Shaun Hegarty wrote: Also maybe a little box to tick to hide the bots if you want a clearer view of who's online.

Right click on the player roster, click "Hide bots".

Ah, cheers. Still stuff to learn.

Since it is highly unlikely that Conor's amazing 161 would be broken in any given week, there could be a weekly high-score leaderboard as well as an overall one just for 15 rounders.

Oliver Garner wrote:Since it is highly unlikely that Conor's amazing 161 would be broken in any given week, there could be a weekly high-score leaderboard as well as an overall one just for 15 rounders.

Good idea, oh yeah, and a fastest conundrums table again?

Oliver Garner wrote:Since it is highly unlikely that Conor's amazing 161 would be broken in any given week, there could be a weekly high-score leaderboard as well as an overall one just for 15 rounders.

I have been planning to do a weekly/monthly "round up", including high scores, for a while, but currently my coding time is being taken up with other things. Consider this a "yes, eventually".

Yeh, mebe a feature to give the probability of a word (so that I could incorporate it into a statonerdological spreadsheet) and possibly only make it available to statonerds (those with Superstats).

Maybe some parts of this are there already, but how about something to say the rating of players when they played a particular game, and possibly the change that occurred afterwards.

Shaun Hegarty wrote:Maybe some parts of this are there already, but how about something to say the rating of players when they played a particular game, and possibly the change that occurred afterwards.

This data is in the database, I just need to figure out somewhere to put it.

Charlie Reams wrote:This data is

*growl*

Kai Laddiman wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:This data is

*growl*

Good luck with that.

A page like this but for letters round instead.
i.e, showing us the amount of vowels, and what percentage of the time a word of length X is the max. There already a page like it here, but I'd like to see a fruther breakdown like there is in the numbers one.

JackHurst wrote:A page like this but for letters round instead.
i.e, showing us the amount of vowels, and what percentage of the time a word of length X is the max. There already a page like it here, but I'd like to see a fruther breakdown like there is in the numbers one.

Top idea.

Has anyone suggested an option to select your own proportions of each letter in the selection? I mean, it might already exist, but I haven't played for months. I know it's not a ground-breaking idea, but I'm trying to make it look like I'm paying attention.

A scoring system that awards points not on how long a word is but on where it ranks in terms of longest words in the selection (obviously maxes only is this to an extent but this goes further). For joint positions, we could be generous so if there are 5 joint longest words, you'd still get the top-ranking score. But then the next word along would only get points for the 6th rank obviously.

I like the idea of the score being proportional to the reciprocal of the rank position. I think a reasonable compromise would be 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1. Nothing for 7th or lower. Or maybe 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 to fit in with the old F1 scoring system. And so that 10 points is the maximum in all rounds. Or 10, 5, 3, 2, 1. And also both players score.

Gavin Chipper wrote:. Or maybe 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 to fit in with the old F1 scoring system.

That had 9 for a win, not 10.

Gavin Chipper wrote:A scoring system that awards points not on how long a word is but on where it ranks in terms of longest words in the selection (obviously maxes only is this to an extent but this goes further). For joint positions, we could be generous so if there are 5 joint longest words, you'd still get the top-ranking score. But then the next word along would only get points for the 6th rank obviously.

I like the idea of the score being proportional to the reciprocal of the rank position. I think a reasonable compromise would be 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1. Nothing for 7th or lower. Or maybe 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 to fit in with the old F1 scoring system. And so that 10 points is the maximum in all rounds. Or 10, 5, 3, 2, 1. And also both players score.

This does sound oddly familiar.

Ben Wilson wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:A scoring system that awards points not on how long a word is but on where it ranks in terms of longest words in the selection (obviously maxes only is this to an extent but this goes further). For joint positions, we could be generous so if there are 5 joint longest words, you'd still get the top-ranking score. But then the next word along would only get points for the 6th rank obviously.

I like the idea of the score being proportional to the reciprocal of the rank position. I think a reasonable compromise would be 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1. Nothing for 7th or lower. Or maybe 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 to fit in with the old F1 scoring system. And so that 10 points is the maximum in all rounds. Or 10, 5, 3, 2, 1. And also both players score.

This does sound oddly familiar.

OK. Looks a bit different though.

Since statland seems to be the order of the day right now, I thought I'd post some ideas that might be interesting if not too difficult to implement:

• Top letters players list for 3/4/5 vowels (like the ones for different numbers formats)
• Top goatdown players on own / others pick (%max)
• Most common incorrect conundrum guesses (like GOOGLIEST which is probably up there)
• Most common double darrens (etc)
• Top spotters of darrens (double darrens etc)
• Most missed -S extensions (e.g. missing OVERMANS when declaring OVERMAN)
• Most distinct conundrums solved list
• Historical top players lists - like the top players lists but records only the very top % each player has ever attained
• Never spotted words (not including anagrams of words that have been spotted)
• Today's new words (words that have never come out in normal mode till the last cycle, e.g. KOESISTER was a new word for 22nd May

For Superstats:

• Graphs for picking (max/darrenicity) quality
• Per numbers format max graphs
• Number of distinct conundrums encountered (to go with how many solved)
• Most solved / missed conundrum
• Most common words never spotted (upto anagrams)
• Word overlay (like head-to-head) - [most common] words Player A has spotted that Player B has never spotted (upto angrams)

Itemised response:

• Top letters players list for 3/4/5 vowels (like the ones for different numbers formats)
• Top goatdown players on own / others pick (%max)
• Most common incorrect conundrum guesses. Done. Guess what's #1...
• Most common double darrens (etc)
• Top spotters of darrens (double darrens etc) Done (Double darrens are a bit harder because we don't store that info in the database. I will consider back-dating it.)
• Most missed -S extensions: Done. Really interesting page as well, implying many words that I didn't know. Who would've thought that CUNT takes an S?
• Most distinct conundrums solved list. Done. Looks like someone's been practising a lot harder than anyone else!
• Historical top players lists - like the top players lists but records only the very top % each player has ever attained
• Never spotted words (not including anagrams of words that have been spotted.)
• Today's new words (words that have never come out in normal mode till the last cycle. Nice idea. Maybe this is something for the front page.

For Superstats:

• Graphs for picking (max/darrenicity) quality
• Per numbers format max graphs
• Number of distinct conundrums encountered (to go with how many solved)
• Most solved / missed conundrum
• Most common words never spotted (upto anagrams)
• Word overlay (like head-to-head) - [most common] words Player A has spotted that Player B has never spotted (upto angrams)

Decided games (ahead by 11 after 14 rounds, ahead by 21 after 13 rounds...) to be adjudicated should one person log out and not log back in within 24 hours.

I thought there was a mistake on the -S extension page when COMES was listed but it turns out COMESS is in, clearly not the plural of COMES though. Neat.

Kieran Child wrote:Decided games (ahead by 11 after 14 rounds, ahead by 21 after 13 rounds...) to be adjudicated should one person log out and not log back in within 24 hours.

There are some complications with this in terms of recording incomplete games in the database and so on. The basic idea is good though.