c4countdown

I humbly submit this as the one that made me laugh the most so far. I had nothing useful to declare so went for the childish 9, but Gyles actually managed to outdo me with his double entrendre.



Another entry illustrating the dangers of stock dialogue:

Just played Raccoon boy with Jo Brand in DC, and in round 13 RMKRAEOOP we both had REMARK but Jo uttered this little beauty:

"Susie has come good again with MOREPORK which is new to me!" I'm sure it isn't new to her although realistically she would get the word POOMAKER!

I liked this:

Try this one and this one. I admit they don't match what's gone before them.

jimbentley wrote:I liked this:

Julian Fell wrote:

jimbentley wrote:I liked this:

Funniest


Thing


Ever

Not that funny, but one of those weird things that happens in testing sometimes. I'm sure you can figure out what went wrong:

Interestingly enough today, it gave me the conundrum PEEORGANS, I'll leave you to work out the answer.

Martin Gardner wrote:Interestingly enough today, it gave me the conundrum PEEORGANS, I'll leave you to work out the answer.

Haha. On a similar theme I've had ASSWIENER and VAGINALEZ, but forgot to screenshot them.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Martin Gardner wrote:Interestingly enough today, it gave me the conundrum PEEORGANS, I'll leave you to work out the answer.

Haha. On a similar theme I've had ASSWIENER and VAGINALEZ, but forgot to screenshot them.

One of today's was NEXTSHITE

I don't know if this has been explained elsewhere, but broadly speaking, how are conundrums set?

Gavin Chipper wrote:I don't know if this has been explained elsewhere, but broadly speaking, how are conundrums set?

It picks an answer at random from a list of all the valid 9s in the dictionary (somewhat hand-filtered to eliminate anything ultra-obscure.) Then, it tries to split the word into two subwords (of length 3/6 or 4/5), and if successful sets that as the conundrum. If that doesn't work, it tries to extract one subword and appends the rest of the letters as shuffled junk (this works quite well because you can normally find a subword of 7 or 8 and no one asks many questions about some junk on the end.) If even that proves impossible, it just shuffles them at random. Oh, and any candidate shuffle is filtered to make sure it doesn't look too much like the answer (otherwise the process of extracting subwords tends to give you stuff like COMBHONEY.) There might be some other black magic involved that I don't remember, but that's the essence of it.

Martin Gardner wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Martin Gardner wrote:Interestingly enough today, it gave me the conundrum PEEORGANS, I'll leave you to work out the answer.

Haha. On a similar theme I've had ASSWIENER and VAGINALEZ, but forgot to screenshot them.

One of today's was NEXTSHITE

I think your program has a dirty mind, Charlie. I remember that in one of Paul Howe's games in COGST, there was a really flat round with loads of alternative 5s, and one of the ones it chose to display in the recap was QUIMS

Julian Fell wrote: I think your program has a dirty mind, Charlie. I remember that in one of Paul Howe's games in COGST, there was a really flat round with loads of alternative 5s, and one of the ones it chose to display in the recap was QUIMS

I think it actually gives them in alpha-order.

Martin Gardner wrote:I think it actually gives them in alpha-order.

I think you could have fairly easily confirmed that it doesn't.

I know it's probably the start of a gradual decline into complete insanity when you start talking back to the bots, but I couldn't help myself. I hate Apterous Prime, the smug shit.

I talk to the bots too, if it's any consolation. I'm always a little wary of Apterous Prime when he says he likes a tight one.

Haha! I do it too! Priceless

jimbentley wrote:

I know it's probably the start of a gradual decline into complete insanity when you start talking back to the bots, but I couldn't help myself. I hate Apterous Prime, the smug shit.

I've never talk to the bot myself, but sometimes there come up with weird words and you think how the fuck did they know that, so you do want to tell them to fuck off.

Joseph Bolas wrote:

jimbentley wrote:

I know it's probably the start of a gradual decline into complete insanity when you start talking back to the bots, but I couldn't help myself. I hate Apterous Prime, the smug shit.

I've never talk to the bot myself, but sometimes there come up with weird words and you think how the fuck did they know that, so you do want to tell them to fuck off.

You better not play Julian, Conor or Paul then - they might punch you.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:

jimbentley wrote:

I know it's probably the start of a gradual decline into complete insanity when you start talking back to the bots, but I couldn't help myself. I hate Apterous Prime, the smug shit.

I've never talk to the bot myself, but sometimes there come up with weird words and you think how the fuck did they know that, so you do want to tell them to fuck off.

You better not play Julian, Conor or Paul then - they might punch you.

You can do that over the internet !? Must be that clever new violence over IP (VoIP) we've been hearing so much about. So many wasted opportunities

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:

jimbentley wrote:

I know it's probably the start of a gradual decline into complete insanity when you start talking back to the bots, but I couldn't help myself. I hate Apterous Prime, the smug shit.

I've never talk to the bot myself, but sometimes there come up with weird words and you think how the fuck did they know that, so you do want to tell them to fuck off.

You better not play Julian, Conor or Paul then - they might punch you.

Well, I've played against Conor before (at COLIN) and played Paul online (in COGST) and obviously I got thrashed in both games , but I don't think I've sweared at them. Infact I was quite apologetic to Conor for not giving him a decent match

I couldn't screenshot it but my numbers in my 174-round game against Prune were:

50 2 1 6 10 5 Target: 1353

A 4-figure target?

I think the apocalypse mucked everything up. I just got:

25 50 75 100 3 6 Target: 1603

Don't have screenshots but I've had several dialogues along the lines of "I got BEATEN" and some ruder ones I can't recall. Now that this thread has been bumped (i.e. now that I know about it) I'll take more careful notice.

This one amused me on a number of levels:



(What's embarrassing is that I still lost the game...)

I know Susie is renowned for being ladylike (at least on screen) but this takes the biscuit:

Completely failed to get a screenshot, but Brian Blessed told me I could've picked a D for DICKHEAD in a speedgoat yestreday. The bastard.

Oh yeah and I got some negative numbers to appear in my numbers solution, as Jon Corby will strenuously deny.

Paul Howe wrote:Oh yeah and I got some negative numbers to appear in my numbers solution, as Jon Corby will strenuously deny.

I don't have a screenshot either, but I myself have used a negative number in a solution

Paul Howe wrote:Completely failed to get a screenshot, but Brian Blessed told me I could've picked a D for DICKHEAD in a speedgoat yestreday. The bastard.

Oh yeah and I got some negative numbers to appear in my numbers solution, as Jon Corby will strenuously deny.

Lies. All lies.

Martin Gardner wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Martin Gardner wrote:Interestingly enough today, it gave me the conundrum PEEORGANS, I'll leave you to work out the answer.

Haha. On a similar theme I've had ASSWIENER and VAGINALEZ, but forgot to screenshot them.

One of today's was NEXTSHITE

I have recently had an easy but funny conundrum CUNTSGILT.

Kai Laddiman wrote: I have recently had an easy but funny conundrum CUNTSGILT.

I think this needs a "sorry Kai" from someone.

John Evans wrote:

Kai Laddiman wrote: I have recently had an easy but funny conundrum CUNTSGILT.

I think this needs a "sorry Kai" from someone.

(For those who don't know, it's DoD )

Some good advice here:



(I appreciate that this isn't actually very funny, but now I've gone to the effort of cropping it, so eh)

Geoffrey was obviously as confused as Rick:

Phil Reynolds wrote:Geoffrey was obviously as confused as Rick:

Not sure why people think this is a bug. Picking W would have given DILEMMAS, and it's mentioned because it's better than what you did pick (T) because there are fewer alternatives.

Charlie Reams wrote:it's mentioned because it's better than what you did pick (T) because there are fewer alternatives.

Ah, I hadn't worked this bit out, clever stuff.

edit: although now I think about it, I have some excuse since the alternative was not strictly better, unless I've missed something, which is always possible

Michael Wallace wrote: edit: although now I think about it, I have some excuse since the alternative was not strictly better, unless I've missed something, which is always possible

That bit was @ Phil. In your case it was just an equally good alternative. I guess the dialogue could be more explanatory but I got bored of fiddling with it.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Phil Reynolds wrote:Geoffrey was obviously as confused as Rick:

Not sure why people think this is a bug. Picking W would have given DILEMMAS, and it's mentioned because it's better than what you did pick (T) because there are fewer alternatives.

OK, but it's not obvious that that's the thinking, so you must be sure really!

This one I do rather like, although it put me off the solution:

Ian Volante wrote:This one I do rather like, although it put me off the solution:

For me, one of the best conundrums I've had was BOLASBREW

And another:

I got a screenshot but couldn't get it on here (please, someone, tell me how) but:

Des O'Connor: What was your method, Kai?
Kai Laddiman: I did

4+4=8
8x100=800

Des O'Connor: How did you make 800, Apterous?
Apterous Prune: I thought I had it but I made a mistake somewhere.

A few I collected in recent weeks, only just got round to uploading-


Practice game (hence the screenshot instead of a recap) of an unlimited csw game against Rex.


Who says Ann Widdecombe isn't classy?


Prune breathes a sigh of relief.

OUROBOROSES - awesome.

Sometimes the insertion of a DC word into the template dialogue has an outcome that is truly felicitous:



OK, I admit - the above 'screenshot' is a reconstruction, as I realised how apt* Richard's line was a nanosecond after I'd clicked Done to close the window. I thought it was worth it and hope you agree.

* Putting the 'apt' into apterous, you might say.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Haha, that's great, and worthy of reconstruction.

Ho ho ho

Paul Howe wrote:Ho ho ho

It's funny (well it made me giggle) because Santa sounds like he's stopping himself from saying hell even though he's just sworn far more grievously.

Paul Howe wrote:It's funny (well it made me giggle) because Santa sounds like he's stopping himself from saying hell even though he's just sworn far more grievously.

I thought it was because you lost.

Paul Howe wrote:It's funny (well it made me giggle) because Santa sounds like he's stopping himself from saying hell even though he's just sworn far more grievously.

Yes, but why do you appear to have photographed the screen through a turquoise net curtain?

Phil Reynolds wrote: Yes, but why do you appear to have photographed the screen through a turquoise net curtain?

Sadly that's what my screen looks like since I dropped my laptop a few days ago I think it's a problem with the graphics card (since you can see it), maybe a loose connector somewhere since if I press down in a particular place it either returns to normal or produces even more psychedelic effects.

Do you get the impression that maybe Susie rejected Brian's advances in the bar the night before?

Against Ian Dent I declared that 'I got SHAGGED'.

OK, get ready for this:





(I did spot AUTUMN just in time, BTW )

Kai Laddiman wrote:Against Ian Dent I declared that 'I got SHAGGED'.

Kai....