A group for contestants and lovers of the Channel 4 game show 'Countdown'.
http://c4countdown.co.uk/
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'.Charlie Reams wrote:
I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...
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.JimBentley wrote:BLACKCOCK (noun) the male of the black grouse
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.Mark Harrison wrote: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 think that would be a terrible idea. I think it's a massive failing of most of the previous electronic versions (before my game, basicallyCharlie Reams wrote:I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...
) 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.Yeah, I guess so. Conundrum attacks do throw a bit of a spanner into the works. Was just a thoughtCharlie Reams wrote: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.Mark Harrison wrote: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 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.Jon Corby wrote: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, basicallyCharlie Reams wrote:I wonder if this is heading ultimately to just allowing any valid conundrum...
I don't like it.
Nilpotent isn't on the list?!Michael Wallace wrote:Didn't realise UNIPOTENT and NILPOTENT weren't in the list, they are awesome.
Get it on now! 
TPOTNNEILNeil Zussman wrote:Nilpotent isn't on the list?!Michael Wallace wrote:Didn't realise UNIPOTENT and NILPOTENT weren't in the list, they are awesome.
Phil Reynolds wrote: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.JimBentley wrote:BLACKCOCK (noun) the male of the black grousePhil Reynolds wrote:PHAGOCYTE
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?Charlie Reams wrote: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.
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.Gavin Chipper wrote: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?Charlie Reams wrote: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.
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.Gavin Chipper wrote: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?Charlie Reams wrote: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.
Wasn't at my best, but that does not really explain the difficulty in some of these conundrumsCharlie Reams wrote: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.Gavin Chipper wrote: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?Charlie Reams wrote: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.
What explanation are you hoping for? Some conundrums are difficult, that's how it goes.Oliver Garner wrote: 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
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.Charlie Reams wrote:What explanation are you hoping for? Some conundrums are difficult, that's how it goes.Oliver Garner wrote: 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
As is the Central London sorting office.James Hall wrote:I'd like to see XYLOGRAPH.
Just because it's an impressive looking set of letters.