c4countdown

Gavin Chipper wrote:This could be taken further. In real life if you declare first and go for a 7 and you opponent does too, I think your opponent would be asked what his word is first. So perhaps when declaring first you could have it so the words you have entered are put into length groups and you just select one of these groups and then select the actual word out if these when your opponent has declared.

In "real" Countdown there is the possibility of miscounting the letters in your word, which doesn't happen on Apterous. Maybe it could ask you to select the number of letters in your word, and then select the actual word. If you then declare first and the opponent has the same number of letters, you then get to see their word before selecting which of your words to pick. Or would that be going too far?

Gavin Chipper wrote:Once in a numbers game, I entered my solution into the box, clicked on "end round early", and then my attention drifted away until I realised that I'd typed something in wrongly and also that I'd run out of time on the second chance thing! My suggestion would be that if you end the round early but make a mistake, it goes straight to the other bit without having to wait for the time to run down or the other player to click on "end round early".

Also if I declare further away from the target than my opponent, and I don't enter it into the first box, then it won't ask me for my solution unless the other player gets it wrong. I don't like the bit where you've got to sit staring at the screen waiting to see if you have to enter your solution. Can't it have you enter it anyway?

I have also thought this - obviously there's the option to type your solution into the box, but it's pretty easy to make mistakes.

Jon Corby wrote:Charlie - despite my defence of the numbers system previously, I am wondering if there is a little room for improvement. On difficult numbers games where you're using the whole 30 seconds (and not getting the target) it can be quite tricky to get your declaration in in time - particularly if you're typing in a formula when you see something else, it's a rush to switch the focus from the formula textbox to the declaration textbox, get it typed in and press enter. If you get it spot on but late, you can of course click the target to declare, which is great - what I'm wondering is if it would work to have a few buttons either side of the target you can use to declare inexact answers? It would probably get quite confusing to see '890' '891' etc if the target was '892', so maybe have -5, -4 etc through to +5. Dunno, might be shit and wouldn't work well, can't really decide without trying...

I think this would be good. You could still have the target at the top on its own to click on, but I would also have all the other numbers to click on rather than + -. So if the target's 892, that's at the top in the middle, down the lefthand side are 882 to 891 in a column and on the righthand side there's 893 to 902. No declaration box.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:Charlie - despite my defence of the numbers system previously, I am wondering if there is a little room for improvement. On difficult numbers games where you're using the whole 30 seconds (and not getting the target) it can be quite tricky to get your declaration in in time - particularly if you're typing in a formula when you see something else, it's a rush to switch the focus from the formula textbox to the declaration textbox, get it typed in and press enter. If you get it spot on but late, you can of course click the target to declare, which is great - what I'm wondering is if it would work to have a few buttons either side of the target you can use to declare inexact answers? It would probably get quite confusing to see '890' '891' etc if the target was '892', so maybe have -5, -4 etc through to +5. Dunno, might be shit and wouldn't work well, can't really decide without trying...

I think this would be good. You could still have the target at the top on its own to click on, but I would also have all the other numbers to click on rather than + -. So if the target's 892, that's at the top in the middle, down the lefthand side are 882 to 891 in a column and on the righthand side there's 893 to 902. No declaration box.

That sounds shit. Imagine on a laptop where it takes a while to scroll across to click on the right button - it's much quicker typing.

Kirk Bevins wrote:That sounds shit. Imagine on a laptop where it takes a while to scroll across to click on the right button - it's much quicker typing.

OK - have both then. I don't see why the general idea is shit. If you meant just eliminating the other option then fair enough.

I really like the new stemmer feature. Is it possible to make all the letters into a crazy word or words that's easy to remember. I can't think of a great example but I remember the LOCATES endings by SPRINGY BULL

Jimmy wrote:I really like the new stemmer feature. Is it possible to make all the letters into a crazy word or words that's easy to remember. I can't think of a great example but I remember the LOCATES endings by SPRINGY BULL

It would probably be more effort that it's worth to do that automatically, but maybe you should start a topic where people who make them up can share them, because they are kind of cool.

Jimmy wrote:I really like the new stemmer feature.

I too like the feature, so well done Charlie

Joseph Bolas wrote:

Jimmy wrote:I really like the new stemmer feature.

I too like the feature, so well done Charlie

Yes, it's very good.

It should be called "Conor's Brain" though tbf.

I'm not a fan of the new numbers. 10 second rounds are hard enough and then trying to quickly click on a target is silly - it wastes precious time. It's much quicker to type "243" in the box and then try to look for 244. Trying to divert your eyes to find 243 to click on before time runs out (time consuming in itself) means you're not concentrating on the problem in hand.

Can I suggest either reverting back to the old way or to please Gevin et al who are never happy keep it this way but also add the normal declarations box as an alternative to those who prefer that method. Not sure the logistics of this with programming though.

Kirk Bevins wrote:I'm not a fan of the new numbers. 10 second rounds are hard enough and then trying to quickly click on a target is silly - it wastes precious time. It's much quicker to type "243" in the box and then try to look for 244. Trying to divert your eyes to find 243 to click on before time runs out (time consuming in itself) means you're not concentrating on the problem in hand.

Can I suggest either reverting back to the old way or to please Gevin et al who are never happy keep it this way but also add the normal declarations box as an alternative to those who prefer that method. Not sure the logistics of this with programming though.

I have to admit, it didn't work out as neatly as I'd hoped. It's quite fiddly to find the button you want unless its the big one on the end. However the old system was worse (in a different way), since it's fiddly to type in the target and you often end up declaring 79 or 7990 or something stupid like that. I'm open to better suggestions though.

My suggestion of having "both clickable buttons and typing in boxes" is better. You type 7990 if you have like 1 second to go and rush. If you have 1 second to go on this system, there is no chance you're gonna hit the 799 button. In my eyes, we're not helping the situation.

I just tried the new numbers system for the first time today. What I found most strange was a bigger gaps between the numbers. I'm not sure if that just takes getting used to, or if I'll always find that more awkward though.

Kirk Bevins wrote:My suggestion of having "both clickable buttons and typing in boxes" is better.

I prefer my suggestion of having both.

Kirk Bevins wrote:I'm not a fan of the new numbers. 10 second rounds are hard enough and then trying to quickly click on a target is silly - it wastes precious time. It's much quicker to type "243" in the box and then try to look for 244. Trying to divert your eyes to find 243 to click on before time runs out (time consuming in itself) means you're not concentrating on the problem in hand.

Can I suggest either reverting back to the old way or to please Gevin et al who are never happy keep it this way but also add the normal declarations box as an alternative to those who prefer that method. Not sure the logistics of this with programming though.

Hmm, I have to say I'm with Kirk on this. At first I thought it was just the change that was jarring and I'd quickly become accustomed to it, but the new system is definitely more difficult to use. The widening of the box means that the numbers are too far apart to easily assimilate at a glance, plus rather than there being a single point of focus for declaring, there's now twenty or so, which is a bit distracting. Worst of all, when it comes to entering the solution via the clickable buttons, the dialog box suddenly reverts back to its original narrower form, which means that all the numbers move their on-screen positions. It's very disconcerting.

Sorry Charlie, nice try, but I don't think it's the way to go.

jimbentley wrote:Hmm, I have to say I'm with Kirk on this. At first I thought it was just the change that was jarring and I'd quickly become accustomed to it, but the new system is definitely more difficult to use. The widening of the box means that the numbers are too far apart to easily assimilate at a glance, plus rather than there being a single point of focus for declaring, there's now twenty or so, which is a bit distracting. Worst of all, when it comes to entering the solution via the clickable buttons, the dialog box suddenly reverts back to its original narrower form, which means that all the numbers move their on-screen positions. It's very disconcerting.

Sorry Charlie, nice try, but I don't think it's the way to go.

I think it just needs to be tweaked - no reason to suggest the whole thing's a write-off. For a start, just because the dialog box is wider to accommodate the extra number buttons, it doesn't mean that the target and the numbers have to be spread out across the whole thing. They could surely be re-narrowed while still having the wider box. So that's half the problem gone.

Then you could have the box to type in your solution put back as an alternative and then it's surely automatically better than before as it has everything the old one did and more.

As for struggling to find the right button to click, I think you'd get used to that. Both one-away solutions are adjacent to the target with further away solutions being further away, so it's quite intuitive in that respect.

I'm also surprised that Kirk would enter his near solution at the start of the time and then spend the rest of the time trying to get spot-on. The fact that one might have to do that at all surely shows the shortcomings of the old method.

And let's not forget, laptop or not, you still had to click on that box at the bottom to make it "active" (or whatever the geek term is) to enter your near solution, so I don't really see much going for it in favour of the clickable buttons.

So good initial move Charlie.

Gavin Chipper wrote: I'm also surprised that Kirk would enter his near solution at the start of the time and then spend the rest of the time trying to get spot-on. The fact that one might have to do that at all surely shows the shortcomings of the old method.

I don't understand you - why is that a shortcoming of the old method? So many times you get 1 away and try to find it exact, then forget to declare anything so it's good practice to declare as soon as you get close. I have no idea how this shows the shortcomings of the old method as typing in "564" is infinitely quicker than searching for 564 with the mouse.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote: I'm also surprised that Kirk would enter his near solution at the start of the time and then spend the rest of the time trying to get spot-on. The fact that one might have to do that at all surely shows the shortcomings of the old method.

I don't understand you - why is that a shortcoming of the old method? So many times you get 1 away and try to find it exact, then forget to declare anything so it's good practice to declare as soon as you get close. I have no idea how this shows the shortcomings of the old method as typing in "564" is infinitely quicker than searching for 564 with the mouse.

I think it's a shortcoming of the system that you have to spend valuable thinking time entering an answer that you ultimately hope won't even be your final answer. Especially if it's a 10-second round, you've taken out quite a bit of that time already. As I've said before (and I think Charlie may have acknowledged this anyway) I think it would be better if you could spend the whole time thinking and then have a small window of time to declare your answer afterwards.

In any case, I don't think typing in the answer would be quicker, let alone infinitely so. That's just where we differ but that's why we could have both systems.

Gavin Chipper wrote:
In any case, I don't think typing in the answer would be quicker, let alone infinitely so. That's just where we differ but that's why we could have both systems.

Trust me - it's quicker typing it in. I can also type whilst still looking at the numbers to work it out. Clicking the right button not only takes longer but also means you have to divert your eyes. Just accept you're wrong for once.

Kirk Bevins wrote: Just accept you're wrong for once.

Good luck with that!

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:
In any case, I don't think typing in the answer would be quicker, let alone infinitely so. That's just where we differ but that's why we could have both systems.

Trust me - it's quicker typing it in. I can also type whilst still looking at the numbers to work it out. Clicking the right button not only takes longer but also means you have to divert your eyes. Just accept you're wrong for once.

But surely you still have to click on the typing box to activate, and would need to divert your eyes to do so. And it may be quicker for you but not someone else, which is why we could have both systems, so I don't see it as being about right or wrong.

Gavin Chipper wrote: But surely you still have to click on the typing box to activate, and would need to divert your eyes to do so.

The typing box now has focus automatically.

Like its been pointed out in another thread, when playing Unlimted, you can only see the vowel box before maximising the screen.

Would it be possible to change the boxes from "request vowel" and " request consonant" to just "vowel" and "consonant" (maybe capitalise them just incase the buttons are too small).

An automatic password request feature? I'm away visiting family, but I've now escaped back to the online world, but can't play because my password isn't saved on this computer, and none of my standard set of passwords and variations appear to be working.

How about a De-stemmer? You type in a word (for example MOUSETRAP) and it shows you the stems you can use to make it (APTEROUS+M).

Kai Laddiman wrote:How about a De-stemmer? You type in a word (for example MOUSETRAP) and it shows you the stems you can use to make it (APTEROUS+M).

How about an extension on the Stemmer, where you enter your letters (say for example BOLAS ) and you can pick the word length (in this case it would be 6, 7, 8 or 9), so you can see all combos to make a 6 letter word, or all combos to make a 7 letter word etc.

Joseph Bolas wrote:

Kai Laddiman wrote:How about a De-stemmer? You type in a word (for example MOUSETRAP) and it shows you the stems you can use to make it (APTEROUS+M).

How about an extension on the Stemmer, where you enter your letters (say for example BOLAS ) and you can pick the word length (in this case it would be 6, 7, 8 or 9), so you can see all combos to make a 6 letter word, or all combos to make a 7 letter word etc.

How about both?

How about a list of say the 200 most common 9 letter words and then put them into a conundrum attack thingy so I would never have to miss any easy 9s!

A second idea: with your stats you have your most commonly missed word(s) and also conundrum(s). That way you're a lot less likely to miss them again.

Do you think it would be possible to introduce a bot to fill the huge gap between Caesar and Prime? Call him Apterous Bigglesworth or something like that.

As suggested by Charlie himself, why not have a game of the week and/or performance of the week feature? Anyone who thinks they have anything worthy of mention should nominate themselves and the forumites can vote. Or something like that. Admittedly I haven't fully thought this through.

Junaid Mubeen wrote:As suggested by Charlie himself, why not have a game of the week and/or performance of the week feature? Anyone who thinks they have anything worthy of mention should nominate themselves and the forumites can vote. Or something like that. Admittedly I haven't fully thought this through.

I've tried similar things before and I can never find anyone reliable enough to run it every week. Anyone want to volunteer?

Charlie Reams wrote:

Junaid Mubeen wrote:As suggested by Charlie himself, why not have a game of the week and/or performance of the week feature? Anyone who thinks they have anything worthy of mention should nominate themselves and the forumites can vote. Or something like that. Admittedly I haven't fully thought this through.

I've tried similar things before and I can never find anyone reliable enough to run it every week. Anyone want to volunteer?

I quite enjoy spying on other people's games so I'm happy to do it or run a vote or whatever, as long as game of the week is understood to mean best game I've looked at or been recommended to me.

Paul Howe wrote: I quite enjoy spying on other people's games so I'm happy to do it or run a vote or whatever, as long as game of the week is understood to mean best game I've looked at or been recommended to me.

Excellent. If you run the poll and so on, I'll keep an archive on the site.

Not so much a feature request, but elegance is nice - on the word search, if both players spot a word in the same game then the game is listed twice. Would it be better instead to list the game once and bold both names? Depending on how it's coded it might be more fiddly than it's worth though.
There's probably a nicer way to deal with words that crop up in duels too, but I admit I haven't thought of a good solution to that myself.

I can't remember where Kirk requested this, but I thought I'd announce it here anyway: the game format pages (e.g. this one) now include a list of all the perfect games. Equivalent pages for other formats are linked from the "More..." text on the High Scores page.

Simon Myers wrote:Not so much a feature request, but elegance is nice - on the word search, if both players spot a word in the same game then the game is listed twice. Would it be better instead to list the game once and bold both names? Depending on how it's coded it might be more fiddly than it's worth though.
There's probably a nicer way to deal with words that crop up in duels too, but I admit I haven't thought of a good solution to that myself.

I've changed the way this page works now so that it just gives you the name of the finder rather than both players, so it no longer looks weird if both players find the same word. I've also added the highlighting feature you suggested. It wouldn't be that hard to suppress duplicate results from the Duel but I don't know if people really want that or not.

I had an idea, although its probably pretty crap really.

You pick the first 5 letters as normal, then you pick the next 4 yourself as in Goatdown. The person picking the letters then has to beat the other player. If they both get the same score, then the non-picking player gets the points.

Example:
-Player 1 picks CCCVV and gets N-T-R-A-U
-He then picks L-E-I-D manually.
-If both players spot URINATED, player 2 gets 8 points and player 1 gets zilch.
-If player 1 gets UITLANDER and player 2 gets URINATED, its obviously 18-0

The idea is to reward people for knowing damn good words, especially when they leave tempting smaller words like in the above example.

How about a 'Des Chiffres et Des Lettres' type selection, where one players picks the first letters, the opponent has the next choice, then the first player chooses again and so on.

How about the ability to choose your own DC guests

Oliver Garner wrote:How about the ability to choose your own DC guests

I was thinking that as well. Now there's so many, it's hard to get hold of a particular one.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Oliver Garner wrote:How about the ability to choose your own DC guests

I was thinking that as well. Now there's so many, it's hard to get hold of a particular one.

Ability to pick own hosts would be good as well if only so I can shoot that annoying dog in the head.

Would it be possible to, on the user page, link the high score to the game in which they achieved it?

Ooh, reminds me of another small thing I'd like to see- as well as the max for each format, knowing the minimum would be interesting too, as well as any various averages you'd care to throw at us stats geeks.

Kai Laddiman wrote:Would it be possible to, on the user page, link the high score to the game in which they achieved it?

Done.

Can we have another bug report thread?

Only joking mate, think everyone appreciates all the work you put in

Paul Howe wrote:Can we have another bug report thread?

Only joking mate, think everyone appreciates all the work you put in

Now you're just being vexatious! Naughty person.

Customisable numbers of letters per round?

In the "online players" box, players who are currently engaged in a game should appear in a lighter font, so it is easier to indenify which people you can challenge and which people you can't.

In numbers games, if you type a potential declaration but don't enter it, the computer assumes this is what you mean after 30s. Whereas in a letters game, you get the patience bar when you've started a new word which you can add as a choice to declare. Could we get the same feature in the numbers, so that if you have declaration x, and then have typed y, you get to choose which you take on?

Kai Laddiman wrote:Customisable numbers of letters per round?

And customisable maximum consonants and vowels.

I have bombed out on a couple numbers games after clicking on the wrong number in error - the sort of 'slip of the mouse' you could get away with on the show, but there doesn't seem to be any way of changing your choice. I'm not suggesting you should be able to start again from scratch, but is there any way of 'deselecting' your last choice?

Obviously the prefix and suffix search things are brilliant and everything, but how about a search for words that simply contain that set of letters? If I spot the letters ING, it's just as useful to me to see that GENETICS is there as something that actually ends in ING.

On the format pages where it lists perfect games, if there haven't been any, can it display the nearest misses?

Ben Wilson wrote:On the format pages where it lists perfect games, if there haven't been any, can it display the nearest misses?

That's kind of a cool idea. I'll see what I can do.

Charles, I like the 'player' page which shows, among other things, 'latest games'. However, I am often frustrated by the fact that it only shows the top n games, without a facility to 'show all' or 'page next'.

No idea if it could be implemented easily, but I'd like to see a kind of 'Anti-Stemmer' feature- i.e. if you put in a string of n letters, it tells you all the words of length n-1 that could be made from those
(such as: ACELP
Stemmer: ACELP+A=PALACE
ACELP+D=PLACED etc.
Anagrams: Place
Anti-Stemmer: ACELP-P=LACE
ACELP-L=CAPE, PACE etc.)

Neil Zussman wrote:No idea if it could be implemented easily, but I'd like to see a kind of 'Anti-Stemmer' feature- i.e. if you put in a string of n letters, it tells you all the words of length n-1 that could be made from those
(such as: ACELP
Stemmer: ACELP+A=PALACE
ACELP+D=PLACED etc.
Anagrams: Place
Anti-Stemmer: ACELP-P=LACE
ACELP-L=CAPE, PACE etc.)

Pretty useless as this is just like an anagram solver.

I was just looking at the best pickers in Goatdown - http://apterous.org/statland.php?sectio ... arrenicity - I notice that none of the bots always pick the selection with the best max (apparently Rex gets 98.1% of the metamax). I think Rex goes for Darrenic maximums over highest max, but maybe it would be nice to have a bot that always goes for the best max so that a human player playing this bot could go for the metamax score (even if it would be pretty much impossibly hard).

Edit - Obviously this might look like the bot would have to have Rex-like skill. Picking the best letter every time sort of implies knowing the best word as well. But to avoid having two Rexes, this one could be Apterous Psychic who has an uncanny knack of knowing the best pick without actually necessarily knowing what the longest word is.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Ithis one could be Apterous Psychic who has an uncanny knack of knowing the best pick without actually necessarily knowing what the longest word is.

Ha, nice idea.