c4countdown

The game has been running really slowly for me today. Whenever I had more than one word entered, it's been taking upwards of a minute for the "Declare your word" dialog box to come up, and the "postmortem" after the round came up several minutes later, if at all. Not only that, but each Conundrum round in the Duel took about a minute to load, and was followed by a crash. My connection seems OK, so I don't think it's on my end... anyone have any insight?

Edwin Mead wrote:Is this likely to be fixed soon?

Erp, slipped my mind completely. Fixed now indeed.

The game always runs really slowly for me when I play hyper numbers against Rex (and maybe against others but I only play hyper against Rex). I often have to wait minutes at the start and end of each round.

Gavin Chipper wrote:The game always runs really slowly for me when I play hyper numbers against Rex (and maybe against others but I only play hyper against Rex). I often have to wait minutes at the start and end of each round.

That sounds annoying. Do you have to wait before the start of the first round? What do you mean by end of round: between giving your solution and seeing his, or between the timer expiring and being asked for your method?

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:The game always runs really slowly for me when I play hyper numbers against Rex (and maybe against others but I only play hyper against Rex). I often have to wait minutes at the start and end of each round.

That sounds annoying. Do you have to wait before the start of the first round? What do you mean by end of round: between giving your solution and seeing his, or between the timer expiring and being asked for your method?

I'll have to check the exact details again. But currently I'm fairly sure there is a delay at the start of all rounds, including the first. And the delay at the end of the round is when the time runs out, so when I'm waiting to enter my solution or waiting to see if the one I typed in is correct. Once I've entered my solution in the secondary phase, I think there isn't a delay.

Aptochat is not working

Oliver Garner wrote:Aptochat is not working

Fixed imminently. Cheers.

Last night (and now tonight) I've been playing Prune at conundrum attacks and amongst all the:

Apterous: I wish I was a little better at this
Apterous: Well done, that was a good spot.
Apterous: I wish I was a little better at this

(which, incidentally, I had a little 'awww' out loud at when I noticed it) came this: "Chris Maudsley left the room." He wasn't even spectating so that confused me. I had it yesterday with someone else too and I saw that and thought "oh, didn't realise they were spectating me" and I doubt they were.

Indeed, in the main chat room, it also said "Chris Maudsley left the room." so I don't know why every so often when someone leaves it also pops up in the private aptochat with me and the bot.

Ohh...when trying to copy and paste the console (which I struggled with as every time something happened in the main room it would scroll to the bottom) it said "Andrew Herbertson left the room" in my aptochat with Prune:

ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@16de641
RX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@16de641
ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1692a49
RX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1692a49
XX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@16de641
EVINSERT:<a href="user?id=2590">Andrew Herbertson</a> left the room.
XX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1692a49
EVINSERT:<a href="user?id=2590">Andrew Herbertson</a> left the room.
SpecPanel: adding text
SpecPanel: Setting caret
SpecPanel: done.
SpecPanel: adding text
SpecPanel: Setting caret
SpecPanel: done.
ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@29a046
RX net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@29a046
XX net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@29a046
Exec delta: +[8851459133717096081: net.GameSummary@d98810]
Exec delta: +[7805968403029897202: net.GameSummary@173ee92]
Exec delta: +[1435092700221594606: net.GameSummary@33b503]
Exec delta: +[8545993867558088280: net.GameSummary@b0f0ae]
Exec delta: +[-5889515614145160249: net.GameSummary@893918]
Exec delta: +[4919257293784511858: net.GameSummary@1036651]
Exec delta: +[1083080831282776226: net.GameSummary@327236]
AsyncDespatcher << net.MessageToServer$RequestPlayerHTML@1eb8f6d
ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$PlayerHTML@69b25f
RX net.MessageToClient$PlayerHTML@69b25f
XX net.MessageToClient$PlayerHTML@69b25f
html for SUMMARY: <h2><a href="exuser?u=101">Apterous Prune</a></h2><img src="http://www.apterous.org/img/user/PRUNE.jpg" alt="Apterous Prune"/><table class="summary"><tr> <td class="t">Rating in normal rules/OED <td>-275. </td> </tr><tr><td class="t">Record in normal rules/OED</td> <td>190 wins in 12580 games.</td><tr><td class="t">Preferred variant</td> <td>Normal rules/OED.</td><tr><td class="t">All-class record</td><td>243 wins in 19012 games.</td></tr><tr> <td class="t">Member since</td> <td>1 August 2008. </td> </tr></table>
CX sending keepalive
KeepaliveThread << net.MessageToServer$Keepalive@7b0fb
CX sent keepalive
CX sending keepalive
KeepaliveThread << net.MessageToServer$Keepalive@1499616
CX sent keepalive
ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@113dd59
RX net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@113dd59
XX net.MessageToClient$GamesInProgressUpdate@113dd59
Exec delta: +[7805968403029897202: net.GameSummary@17667bd]
Exec delta: +[1435092700221594606: net.GameSummary@94d313]
Exec delta: +[8545993867558088280: net.GameSummary@ad9f5d]
Exec delta: +[-5889515614145160249: net.GameSummary@b99e4c]
Exec delta: +[4919257293784511858: net.GameSummary@47c130]
Exec delta: +[1083080831282776226: net.GameSummary@dc5434]
Exec delta: +[5302593412569052471: net.GameSummary@11c4123]
ClientReceiveThread >> net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1f873dd
RX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1f873dd
XX net.MessageToClient$SpectatorMessage@1f873dd
EVINSERT:<img src="http://apterous.org/gfx/star_try.png" /> <a href="user?id=8159">John Mullens</a> is shooting for Star 4 of The First Path. [<a href="http://dog.com/spectate.html?5302593412 ... pectate</a>]
SpecPanel: adding text
SpecPanel: Setting caret
SpecPanel: done.
CX sending keepalive
KeepaliveThread << net.MessageToServer$Keepalive@83df14
CX sent keepalive

Kirk Bevins wrote: Indeed, in the main chat room, it also said "Chris Maudsley left the room." so I don't know why every so often when someone leaves it also pops up in the private aptochat with me and the bot.

Yeah it seems I broke something last night. I'll have a prod around.

In the chat it said that a 9 is valid for CSW when it is also valid in the ODE. I realise they're valid in CSW as well, but surely it would be better to default to the ODE so as not to confuse my simple brain?

Thank you!

Lesley Hines wrote:In the chat it said that a 9 is valid for CSW when it is also valid in the ODE. I realise they're valid in CSW as well, but surely it would be better to default to the ODE so as not to confuse my simple brain?

Thank you!

This isn't a bug, but anyway, it depends whether you think ODE is the dictionary or just a dictionary. TBH I never really wanted CSW nines coming up in chat, it just amuses me to occasionally see German/Greek/Dutch nines coming.

Charlie Reams wrote:. TBH I never really wanted CSW nines coming up in chat, it just amuses me to occasionally see German/Greek/Dutch nines coming.

Oh good. That sounds like good reason to get rid of them then.

Were Benjamins supposed to have been fixed? They had been working for me for a while recently, but I didn't get one for a game today.

In the first round of games (for some reason this doesn't happen after the first round), I often find I can't enter anything (word, numbers solution) until after several seconds. The timer is obviously still going because the round will "start" with the clock some of the way round, although the music starts from the beginning, creating a mistmatch. If I'm playing a bullet round, this sometimes means a blank score.

Gavin Chipper wrote:In the first round of games (for some reason this doesn't happen after the first round), I often find I can't enter anything (word, numbers solution) until after several seconds. The timer is obviously still going because the round will "start" with the clock some of the way round, although the music starts from the beginning, creating a mistmatch. If I'm playing a bullet round, this sometimes means a blank score.

I always have this same problem too. It's particularly annoying when resuming an unfinished game, and the next round is a conundrum. My opponent can often buzz in before I've seen the letters.

I've always assumed this happens becuase my PC runs slowly.

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=156964

Don't know if this is a bug or not but I beat Carol on both rounds 12 and 14 in this start game.

HEEEEELPPPPP!!!! Me no can open apterous!!!! WAAAAAHH!!

Every time I go to the IP address, I get the 'diagnose connection problems' page. It's not my connection, as I can open every other page. Is there a problem with apterous? or are there any suggestions as to how I might get my apterous fix??

Jennifer Bett wrote:HEEEEELPPPPP!!!! Me no can open apterous!!!! WAAAAAHH!!

Every time I go to the IP address, I get the 'diagnose connection problems' page. It's not my connection, as I can open every other page. Is there a problem with apterous? or are there any suggestions as to how I might get my apterous fix??

Unfortunately the server's gone down, Jennifer. There is a message about it here: http://www.c4countdown.co.uk/viewtopic. ... 393#p70393

Thank you for telling me.

Steve Rogers wrote:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=156964

Don't know if this is a bug or not but I beat Carol on both rounds 12 and 14 in this start game.

I can't view that page as it's down (so I don't know if it was hyper or normal) but Carol can be beaten occasionally even on normal numbers. A couple of times I've seen ways to get closer to the target - I think both were 3 large jobs. Also when I've looked at Apterous Rex's percentage of maxes on numbers it was something like 99.8%, so he's not infallible either. I think Carol and Rex work at the same skill level but there must be randomness in where they go, so it's possible for one to fail where the other succeeds.

What's a start game?

It was a normal game and I thought Carol always got the best possible in normal games?

Also for Rex's 99.8% is this because in the early days he didn't always max everything but instead acted a bit like Prime? I may be wrong.

Kirk Bevins wrote:It was a normal game and I thought Carol always got the best possible in normal games?

Also for Rex's 99.8% is this because in the early days he didn't always max everything but instead acted a bit like Prime? I may be wrong.

I think these stats work off the last 30 days though, so if he was now perfect, it should be 100%. If Apterous was up, I could show you a couple of examples.

Gavin Chipper wrote:
I think these stats work off the last 30 days though, so if he was now perfect, it should be 100%. If Apterous was up, I could show you a couple of examples.

OK, I believe you. I stand corrected.

There seems to be an army of Dinos at the moment (there is probably an apt collective noun)

Apologies if you're already aware of this Charlie.

There's a problem with Hyper numbers. When you enter your declaration and the clock runs down, it hangs and doesn't ask you to input your solution, sometimes never at all and other times it takes 4 or 5 minutes to kick into that phase of play. I've had to quit a few games as i've waited for ages and not got the chance to do the sum.

Also, not sure if this is meant to happen or not, but last night i got a game where i picked 2 large in Hyper and the 150 came out twice.

Sort it out you muppet.

D Eadie wrote: Also, not sure if this is meant to happen or not, but last night i got a game where i picked 2 large in Hyper and the 150 came out twice.

In Touchdown and Hypertouch numbers are picked with replacement. So you could very well get a selection like 150,150,9,8,8,8,8,3

D Eadie wrote: There's a problem with Hyper numbers. When you enter your declaration and the clock runs down, it hangs and doesn't ask you to input your solution, sometimes never at all and other times it takes 4 or 5 minutes to kick into that phase of play. I've had to quit a few games as i've waited for ages and not got the chance to do the sum.

Basically you have a choice between the max sometimes being beatable, and sometimes waiting a while as it finds the best answer. No solution to this really.

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote: There's a problem with Hyper numbers. When you enter your declaration and the clock runs down, it hangs and doesn't ask you to input your solution, sometimes never at all and other times it takes 4 or 5 minutes to kick into that phase of play. I've had to quit a few games as i've waited for ages and not got the chance to do the sum.

Basically you have a choice between the max sometimes being beatable, and sometimes waiting a while as it finds the best answer. No solution to this really.

If that is the choice then can I request that we go back to having the max sometimes beatable please?
I really enjoy hypernumbers, and waiting 10 mins to be told "That was as good as anything I got" is frustrating and renders hyper/hypertouch numbers attacks practically unplayable.

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote: There's a problem with Hyper numbers. When you enter your declaration and the clock runs down, it hangs and doesn't ask you to input your solution, sometimes never at all and other times it takes 4 or 5 minutes to kick into that phase of play. I've had to quit a few games as i've waited for ages and not got the chance to do the sum.

Basically you have a choice between the max sometimes being beatable, and sometimes waiting a while as it finds the best answer. No solution to this really.

I'd personally not rather wait. Even in a game with just 3 rds of maths, it can extend it by 15 minutes while we wait for you to text The Human Calculator for the answer.

Thanks for all the endeavours as ever.

Above post appeared twice so have edited it out. May as well use this space to wish all Apterous and Forumites a happy xmas from all at Countdown. Exciting events to look forward to in 2010, including our 5000th show and the possibility of some specials, although we're still waiting on the green light for these from Derek Hazell. Thanks for all the anally-retentive messages, the moaning, whinging, slating, bitching and nit-picking. Am sure there's plenty more where that came from.

D Eadie wrote:Thanks for all the anally-retentive messages, the moaning, whinging, slating, bitching and nit-picking. Am sure there's plenty more where that came from.

You're welcome. Happy Christmas!

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote: There's a problem with Hyper numbers. When you enter your declaration and the clock runs down, it hangs and doesn't ask you to input your solution, sometimes never at all and other times it takes 4 or 5 minutes to kick into that phase of play. I've had to quit a few games as i've waited for ages and not got the chance to do the sum.

Basically you have a choice between the max sometimes being beatable, and sometimes waiting a while as it finds the best answer. No solution to this really.

I thought it was still beatable in hyper as well as having to wait ages.

D Eadie wrote:May as well use this space to wish all Apterous and Forumites a happy xmas from all at Countdown.

And to yourselves - a very merry xmas.

D Eadie wrote:Above post appeared twice so have edited it out. May as well use this space to wish all Apterous and Forumites a happy xmas from all at Countdown. Exciting events to look forward to in 2010, including our 5000th show and the possibility of some specials, although we're still waiting on the green light for these from Derek Hazell. Thanks for all the anally-retentive messages, the moaning, whinging, slating, bitching and nit-picking. Am sure there's plenty more where that came from.

Happy Christmas and a prosperous new year to you and the Countdown crew.

Apterous Front Page wrote: Jeremy Bentham achieved a full rating of -17 in OED/Omelette.

Congratulations to Mr Bentham!

Andrew Feist wrote:

Apterous Front Page wrote: Jeremy Bentham achieved a full rating of -17 in OED/Omelette.

Congratulations to Mr Bentham!

Haha, oops. 10 points to anyone who can work out what happened here. Fixed now, anyway.

Not sure if its just me, but maxes no longer appear in BOLD when looking back at the details of the game.

Ps- i put the word 'bold' in bold, just for nuisance value. Getting more like James Robinson every day.

D Eadie wrote:Not sure if its just me, but maxes no longer appear in BOLD when looking back at the details of the game.

Ps- i put the word 'bold' in bold, just for nuisance value. Getting more like James Robinson every day.

Looks okay to me. Try doing a forced refresh on the page (hold Ctrl and press F5).

D Eadie wrote:Getting more like James Robinson every day.

You mean:

D Eadie meant to wrote:Getting more like James Robinson every day.

Ahem.
The game i looked at contained all-maxes.
What i meant to say was, why do non-max words appear in bold?
Anyway, it was still a max game, so there were no non-max words.
I'll just go away.

D Eadie wrote:Ahem.
The game i looked at contained all-maxes.
What i meant to say was, why do non-max words appear in bold?
Anyway, it was still a max game, so there were no non-max words.
I'll just go away.

I think it's just the new "sexy" font for the game pages. I find I have to look pretty closely to tell the difference between bold/non-bold these days. (Maybe my browser is replacing the font because I don't have the truly sexy font, but.)

Andrew Feist wrote:

D Eadie wrote:Ahem.
The game i looked at contained all-maxes.
What i meant to say was, why do non-max words appear in bold?
Anyway, it was still a max game, so there were no non-max words.
I'll just go away.

I think it's just the new "sexy" font for the game pages. I find I have to look pretty closely to tell the difference between bold/non-bold these days. (Maybe my browser is replacing the font because I don't have the truly sexy font, but.)

I am going to get round to sorting this out. You're right that it doesn't look as good in the default font if you don't have Calibri. To be attended to.

Not sure the high score page is updating as normal. It still shows Scott Phillips with 84 pts as the record for Hypertouch 9, even though Innis beat this two days ago, and since then Scott has reclaimed his crown. The tosser.

D Eadie wrote:Not sure the high score page is updating as normal. It still shows Scott Phillips with 84 pts as the record for Hypertouch 9, even though Innis beat this two days ago, and since then Scott has reclaimed his crown. The tosser.

All statland/high score pages are frozen at the moment. I thought I put this in News but apparently I forgot.

My system keeps crashing during the number rounds for some odd reason - probably my computer but I thought I'd have a bitchy little moan here anyway because you love it you tart.

Happenings on the main Apterous page:

"Betty Power played his first game."

Either this is a bug, or there's something Betty isn't telling us!

Edwin Mead wrote:Happenings on the main Apterous page:

"Betty Power played his first game."

Either this is a bug, or there's something Betty isn't telling us!

It's not a bug, Betty registered "himself" as a dude when "he" signed up.

I tried searching for a word in Lexplorer and then it obviously showed me a list of times it had occurred. Then I clicked "hide" and it hid it but 1 second later automatically showed the list again. It was quite frustrating. The other tabs seem to show and hide correctly though.

Kirk Bevins wrote:I tried searching for a word in Lexplorer and then it obviously showed me a list of times it had occurred. Then I clicked "hide" and it hid it but 1 second later automatically showed the list again. It was quite frustrating. The other tabs seem to show and hide correctly though.

This happens if you try to "hide" a tab before it's finished loading. I will try to fix this at some point but I'm not sure if it's possible.

Charlie Reams wrote: This happens if you try to "hide" a tab before it's finished loading. I will try to fix this at some point but I'm not sure if it's possible.

Just tested it, you are correct, Sir. Well done. Have yourself 10 points.

Not sure if this is a bug or just down to lag, but on the conundrum in this gamehttp://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=160663, I buzzed in on 28.7 secs but was interrupted on the second letter to say Ian had buzzed first on 29.0secs (wrong answer as it turned out) then back to me for the correct answer (which I mistyped thanks to the interruption). If it is lag then is there anything I can do to improve times on my end, or am I completely at the mercy of the service provider?

Liam Tiernan wrote:Not sure if this is a bug or just down to lag, but on the conundrum in this gamehttp://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=160663, I buzzed in on 28.7 secs but was interrupted on the second letter to say Ian had buzzed first on 29.0secs (wrong answer as it turned out) then back to me for the correct answer (which I mistyped thanks to the interruption). If it is lag then is there anything I can do to improve times on my end, or am I completely at the mercy of the service provider?

So when it went back to you did you have to start typing the word again from the beginning or did it pick up where you left off?

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Liam Tiernan wrote:Not sure if this is a bug or just down to lag, but on the conundrum in this gamehttp://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=160663, I buzzed in on 28.7 secs but was interrupted on the second letter to say Ian had buzzed first on 29.0secs (wrong answer as it turned out) then back to me for the correct answer (which I mistyped thanks to the interruption). If it is lag then is there anything I can do to improve times on my end, or am I completely at the mercy of the service provider?

So when it went back to you did you have to start typing the word again from the beginning or did it pick up where you left off?

Not sure. I think it picked up where I'd left off.

When playing Omlette, if you have two scoring words the same length it seems to think that the one you didn't submit was something you missed in the comentary (e.g. "and bad luck - WORD is there!")

Nothing serious, but still a bug

Not really a bug, more of a question. What's the distribution of letters? I've just had a game with two Ws in and I know there's been two Ws per game on TV recently but there should only be one W in the pack, right?

Kirk Bevins wrote:Not really a bug, more of a question. What's the distribution of letters? I've just had a game with two Ws in and I know there's been two Ws per game on TV recently but there should only be one W in the pack, right?

Oh and while we're here, if Apterous is designed to be like normal Countdown so that letters aren't replaced, does Apterous have to invent a different distribution when you select to have more rounds? And then if you did pick a game with many rounds, would it be possible to have a round where all the consonants are Qs?

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Kirk Bevins wrote:Not really a bug, more of a question. What's the distribution of letters? I've just had a game with two Ws in and I know there's been two Ws per game on TV recently but there should only be one W in the pack, right?

Oh and while we're here, if Apterous is designed to be like normal Countdown so that letters aren't replaced, does Apterous have to invent a different distribution when you select to have more rounds? And then if you did pick a game with many rounds, would it be possible to have a round where all the consonants are Qs?

Wish people wouldn't post non-bugs in here. Anyway I'll check the distro for you but it's the same as the show because I got it from Demi and Damian independently.

To answer Gavin's question, what happens under the hood is that the stack gets regenerated when it gets empty, but each time using the same old distro. So it is possible for a Q to be at the bottom of one stack and the top of next stack, and hence to get 2 Qs in one round if you play enough rounds to empty the consonant stack, but not more than that.

Either a bug or a misunderstanding:

When reading the mass of red and pink squares that is the Daily Duel full report, one's own name is not bolded. (It is in the simple table at the top, but not the round-by-round report.)

And tonight:


If you want us to play blind, just say so. (Also notice the lack of chat.) There wasn't anything in error tracker, and I forgot to save the console, sorry.

Think this is a bug:

"Time's up and 2 people got a point; Craig Beevers was the fastest on 6.7 seconds and gets 2 bonus points. The answer to STAERVD was ADVERTS."

Where's STARVED? Martin May said it's been doing it all afternoon. He said "Martin: earlier had ALERTING, but didnt allow TRIANGLE OR TANGLIER"