c4countdown

As you may know, the Duels are scheduled long in advance by an automated system (except when I occasionally interfere manually). The current schedule runs out in one week, so it's time for me to update and extend the system in some way. Therefore I'm asking you what you'd like in the forthcoming duels. More of certain rounds? Certain variants? More rounds? Fewer rounds? Other stuff? I'm willing to write a fair amount of code for this so more ambitious suggestions are also welcome. It's like Have Your Say except not fucking stupid. So if you're ready for the question, Noel:

New Duels - what do you want?

As it's getting near, how about some kind of Christmas theme - but with everybody naked.

To be fair I've only played the last three days since forever, but they've all been standard 30 second rounds, normal variants.
So, mix it up a bit - always a good way to introduce people to new formats they haven't tried.

I'd say anything sub 10 seconds isn't particularly average-user-friendly although the occasional 5-seconder is quite fun.

No doubt should be a couple of numbery ones soon in light of the tournament bearing down on us.

A few duels without conundrums would be appreciated by those of us who struggle with this minimal area of the game.

I always thought it would be nice if duels were thematic. Like, the 3 numbers games all have a solution which involves the ability to spot a multiplication by 7, or a large number of the words rounds contain -ing words that people wouldn't have heard of, or something.

Ian Dent wrote:A few duels without conundrums would be appreciated by those of us who struggle with this minimal area of the game.

This. Nearly every duel has a conundrum and if it's not maxes only scoring then it's biased heavily towards those that can solve them.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Ian Dent wrote:A few duels without conundrums would be appreciated by those of us who struggle with this minimal area of the game.

This. Nearly every duel has a conundrum and if it's not maxes only scoring then it's biased heavily towards those that can solve them.

Good point.

More unlimited for me please!

And I personally prefer not to have too many rounds - about 10 rounds would be perfect for me.

Since I hadn't played for months and then have played just a handful of games in the last few days, I'm probably not the best person to answer this, but I like the idea of all numbers duels - one with all 6 smalls, one with all 1 from the top, one with all 2 from the top etc. Obviously I'm not suggesting that all duels should be numbers only.

I hardly ever do duels, so I understand if you don't want to listen to me, but a duel containing which contains Junior, then Standard and then Hyper; having one letters, and numbers and one conundrum in each would be cool.

Yes I know, I can't use punctuation very well.

I quite like the less-used variants (even though I'm rubbish at most of them) - Hyper, Goat, Blind and so on - cropping up unexpectedly as Duels. One of the big strengths of the Duel should be that you don't know what you're going to get beforehand.

I do like the weird variants.

How about a month where every day is different? Maybe fifteen different formats at default time, and then the same formats repeated with 5s rounds. Something like that anyway. Having just checked the high scores page, there are eleven basic variants without changing the time default. The could be augmented by some attacks, and other days could be filled by various weirdnesses.

I liked the 24 hour one.

I like the idea of different formats appearing more often, especially goat since it's the second most popular format and yet has seen less duels than blind (har har).

Aside from that, some thematic stuff of the ilk Kieran mentioned: letters rounds where every selection guarantees a darren or a nine, numbers games where every round has the same target but different numbers, conundrums full of ING-decoys.

If you want to code it you could throw in some slightly more bizarre stuff - conundrums with two letters missing, numbers games with a random large number (like a 35 or a 60) instead of the usual ones, letters rounds where you have to offer two valid words but score with the second best (of course you can still get a 9 if you can get both COMEDIANS and DEMONIACS etc).

How about a game that lasts for say 10 or 15 minutes and then ends, without a specific number of rounds? So it's to your advantage to "end round early" as soon as you see a decent word or spot the numbers solution because you'll get more rounds in and score more points.

Simon Myers wrote:letters rounds where every selection guarantee a nine

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

Jimmy Gough wrote:I liked the 24 hour one.

This

Dinos Sfyris wrote:

Jimmy Gough wrote:I liked the 24 hour one.

This

IAWTP too.

Sorry to appear negative, but it does mean that I like most formats, so it's easier to list what I don't want to see much of in future duels:

NOT blind duels or speed duels, or if you really must, not less than 10 second rounds, please, please, please.

Dinos Sfyris wrote:

Jimmy Gough wrote:I liked the 24 hour one.

This

Also this. I might actually remember to set my alarm for the next one too.

There will definitely be another 24 hour Duel Marathon soon.

Simon Myers wrote: If you want to code it you could throw in some slightly more bizarre stuff - conundrums with two letters missing, numbers games with a random large number (like a 35 or a 60) instead of the usual ones, letters rounds where you have to offer two valid words but score with the second best (of course you can still get a 9 if you can get both COMEDIANS and DEMONIACS etc).

I'd hate to have something like X T N E E I S M O come out then as I'd be well chuffed with SIXTEENMO and would be happy to go 18 points ahead of lots of people (presumably) but I'd also have to declare MONETISE and only get 8 points. Someone else gets MONETISE and SEMITONE and also scores 8 points and I'm a bit miffed. Nice idea though.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Simon Myers wrote: If you want to code it you could throw in some slightly more bizarre stuff - conundrums with two letters missing, numbers games with a random large number (like a 35 or a 60) instead of the usual ones, letters rounds where you have to offer two valid words but score with the second best (of course you can still get a 9 if you can get both COMEDIANS and DEMONIACS etc).

I'd hate to have something like X T N E E I S M O come out then as I'd be well chuffed with SIXTEENMO and would be happy to go 18 points ahead of lots of people (presumably) but I'd also have to declare MONETISE and only get 8 points. Someone else gets MONETISE and SEMITONE and also scores 8 points and I'm a bit miffed. Nice idea though.

It was only an idea - how about the combined score of your two best words? You could even have a variant where you get the combined score of all your valid words, with points taken off for invalid words perhaps.