Hello, old friend, I see you*
*ref. today's puzzle
3 doubles in the first 4 plays but flamed out (relatively) to finish with 19 (main game).
Yesterday, we were once again bitten by the tsetse fly. We'll see what sort of pestilence today brings.
Eric's grid builder seems to like certain words that start or end with vowels as there aren't so many of them. And to build those outer words ya gotta have some vowels.
TSETSE is particularly strange because of the TS diphthongs which are pretty uncommon.
I think I've also seen EDGE a few times.
I don't mind the repeats and the grids themselves have plenty of differences.
I did pretty well today except grid C took me down.
The puzzle generator is trying to do two things:
(1) Choose a puzzle with not-so-obscure words
(2) Choose a puzzle with words that haven't been seen recently
These two goals are somewhat at odds with each other.
So in difficult situations, it relaxes the criteria little by little until a puzzle is chosen.
"I can't find a puzzle without duplicates with a 28 day horizon, so let's look for one with a 21 day horizon."
If the puzzle generator were allowed to use more obscure words, then it would be much easier to avoid dupes. I plan to remove the word obscurity criteria at some point, for at least some days of the week. For example, maybe the Monday-Friday games are using more common words but the weekend games are "tougher".
You're doing great, Eric. I vowed to play your game about as frequently as politicians demonstrate admirable qualities, but now I play it each day that a politician lies.
I like the idea of ramping up the difficulty, something akin to the NY Times crossword: Brain-Dead on Monday all the way to God Save Me on Saturday.
As for obscure words, my only request is that they appear in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary (or an accessible source of your choosing that you share with the users). When I ask the question, "Is QWEX a word?", I'd like us to be using the same reference.
https://scrabblewordfinder.org/solver is a good resource. I used it today to figure LAVER is a word.
I'm pretty sure that the word Laver, when used as a verb, means to play tennis in a such a sublime manner that no other human can ever equal. Then there's Lazar, which means to construct conspiracies and stories regarding the design of flying saucers and anti-gravity technology.
Took me 6 swaps to get one letter of 1st 5 letter word of grid C today cuz I forgetted what I already tried.
I had a similar problem with the Big Board. I could not get any traction. Blah.
https://wordbox.game
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10 Oct 2024 : 21 swaps
I'd have to say that I was teensy bit disappointed with today's game. I am going to have to unload on Eric. I don't like being mooned and I don't think that it's my role to put up with such smut. Today's game just a scrape above the bare minimum of decency.
Kind of you to SCRAPE some time out of the EDDY of time in your day and UNLOAD your TEENSY complaint about a slang definition of MOONED which may be considered SMUT. Not my ROLE to complain. Not within the CONE of my life view. PEAS! ANON!
Can anyone else use all 10 words from today's 4x6 in a shorter paragraph?
Nice form, guys. If you really have given the answers to today’s main board before 6 am in the U.S., it was a bit of unnecessary selfishness.
I have started a new thread for such activities.
Guilty! A one time gift from cellmate
Let's see how it effects the scores
Maybe delete the post? It's too late for me, but ....
My score was 23... without knowing the answers
Just a heads up BuzzClik, the wordbox site score record keeping isn't nearly as sophisticated as freecell. The wordbox.game site does not require a login so it doesn't know who scored what. Therefore an individual user's score must be kept in their local browser cookies. This means that an individual user can simply delete cookies that have kept their score and start the game anew. In Chrome you can launch a new incognito browser instance (or private window in Firefox) and start the same game again. You could even have the solved game sitting side by side with a new version of the game in the incognito window. There is point in pretending that isn't possible or that the best score listed on the site for that day was done by some brilliant individual at their first attempt. Maybe it was but you will never know. If it can be done then it will be done.
You can play the daily game one hundred times over if you want. So there is no point in getting precious about the fact that the answers were posted in a cryptic sentence. It would be nice if Erik could develop the wordbox.game site with logins and record keeping and rankings just like Denny had done with freecell.net. But that requires a hell of a lot of coding, probably more than the game code itself. It requires a sophisticated database. It results in a lot more hits on the server. So I am not criticizing Erik for failing to do all that. I appreciate the fact that he has taken the time to give this little gem for free. I am just saying that there is no point in getting competitive about it. Sorry if I have spoiled your fun by stating something that was immediately obvious to anyone who has ever coded a website.
I'd say it's more about the "spoiler" aspect where you don't get the fun of trying to guess the words.
Even if Eric does a login he's still got issues cuz it would be relatively trivial to get another name, play the game, and then play it with your competitive name looking at the results.
One option would be to walk away from the WORDLE daily model and to deliver random grids like I deliver random games. And since the grids would have varying degrees of difficulty, just track average.
He could pre-gen 32k or so grids and then select one at random every time you play.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves designing his game. :-)
MrFixit
I didn’t bother with reading the longwinded rationalization above. I already decided to simply avoid this thread until I have played Wordbox for the day.
And, Denny, you nailed it. I don’t play Wordbox (or Freecell, for that matter) to compete. It’s the personal challenge, and knowing the words ahead of time would improve my scores by 3-6 “swaps”.
No need to change the game. Eric and the gang have created a winner.
https://wordbox.game
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12 Oct 2024 B: 14 swaps
If he went to random grids he’d lose the daily lure. The game might be done, developed as much as it needs to be. Up to Eric. But I'm playing every day just as it is.
I lack consistency. That is why I don't want any more score keeping.
So the theoretical minimum for a 6x4 grid is 12? and a 5x4 grid must be 10? Is that correct? Assuming that, initially, every box has the wrong letter. Then the quickest solution must be a series of doubles.
Yes, you've got the theoretical minimums correct. But not all 6x4 grids can be solved in 12 swaps. It depends on how the grid was shuffled. This is mentioned somewhere much earlier in this discussion thread.
When I first completed this, no histogram.
https://wordbox.game
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14 Oct 2024 A: 18 swaps
But when I completed B, histogram came in on A.
update: we’re staying in a cabin with dodgy internet. I think that was the issue.
Interesting main puzzle. I had a few quick doubles, and then a string of 2-for3s.
Unlike any other game I play daily, I need as much quiet focus as possible. (I can play more quickly with less attention, but my score suffers.)
Whoa, someone had 11!!! on game C today. That’s 10 doubles and a single. I opened that on with two doubles but only managed 15.
Wow yeah. Eric- to your knowledge are we all human?
Also my freecell playing has been suffering recently. And I’ve playing word box more. Correlation = cause?
As others have noted, it's not hard to "cheat" by playing a puzzle twice, either using multiple devices or incognito mode. That'll never be completely preventable.
Vague comment about today's main puzzle:
Again!?!
I need to fix something here.
>>Date: Tue Oct 15 08:32:12 2024
>>User: EricSink
>>Message: "As others have noted, it's not hard to 'cheat' by playing a puzzle twice, either using multiple devices or incognito mode. That'll never be completely preventable."
Yes, it comes with the territory. It will get worse if you start ranking solution times or compile a cumulative leader board.
One of my "favorite" instances was in Angry Birds (early versions) when users figured out how to hack the scoreboards. Once that happened, there were about 2000 players who had cumulative scores that were in the trillions, for a game with a max score in the millions.
As for repeated words: that comes with having a daily game. With a finite number of words ... as you've discussed before. Those of us who gravitate toward word games see this in every game and it's no biggie. I haven't completed the puzzle, but if the entire board is a repeat, well, that would be a different story. Not sure we're ready for re-runs just yet.
I’m aware of the obvious cheats. But 11 was pretty amazing. Made me wonder if a machine was finding the optimum path.
that said, one thing I’ve learned from freecell— there are just some folks who are really really good.
I've gotten hooked on this game and won't enjoy it any less if some people are cheating. That said, some of the words are not from the English language. As examples, in the last week or so I've seen claro, sked, and mors. Sorry, those aren't English words.
Use https://scrabblewordfinder.org/solver to verify valid scrabble words. Mors, SKED and claro are all legit.
Bored with bad football. Tanked the main board (21 — yuck). So I tried the A game:
https://wordbox.game
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17 Oct 2024 A: 14 swaps
This is Denny territory!
Wow!! I’ve had a pretty unremarkable week. I can pretty consistently get a single letter every time but those doubles are the final frontier. Well there are those times it takes me 3 swaps to get the first letter. But I think that’s pretty luck-of-the-draw when you’re scrambling to acquire more info.
Got another 14
https://wordbox.game
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23 Oct 2024 B: 14 swaps
I finally got a 15! Second best score for this puzzle! (Great job, MrFixit!
https://wordbox.game
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23 Oct 2024 B: 15 swaps
Wow cool!
Hey Eric we're going to start billing you for time wasted! :-)
The one-word definition of one of today's words was the word itself! I call bullshit. >:(
Edit: I said "one of today's words", so that means I posted about a puzzle the same day it appeared and didn't want to give it away. I don't remember what it was, but it started with "a". If I remember it I'll add it here.
Not sure what you meant by that. Was that in the list of words definitions for one of yesterday's puzzles?
Given that this is about yesterday I don't think you need to worry about mentioning the word. And it helps to specify the grid too.
I don't really fret about the definitions. I accept that playing word games there will sometimes be words I don't know.
it was something like this... HAJI {hadji=n} [n HAJIS]
<this space intentionally left blank>
(cellmate had a question about a 5x4 game, but I think he resolved it)
https://wordbox.game
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1 Nov 2024 : 19 swaps
So it is possible to win this without cheating or using a foreign language dictionary -- as long as some luck is involved and you don't expect it to happen too often!
https://wordbox.game
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1 Nov 2024 A: 16 swaps
Dang. Did it again but this time I'm sharing the glory with a few others.