c4countdown

Simon Myers

Jon Corby wrote:Speed Demon:

Jon Corby 1-1 Charlie Reams

Jon 109-94 Charlie
Charlie 85-72 Jon

Nice games. Just FYI for the next round, speed demon matches are meant to be speed 9 rather than speed 15 games. I don't think it matters hugely though as scores aren't being used as a tie-breaker.

Simon Myers

Not so much a bug as a "feature" with unintended consequences perhaps. After every round the default focus is on the "play next round" button, which is great. However, after the last round (unless playing a bot) there are usually some pleasantries between the players ("gg&qu...

Simon Myers

well, in a game i was watching earlier, there was no letter response givin in the commentary unless my eyes were playing tricks. If you buzz with the enter button you can give a no letter response, But I don't know why anyone would do that. Ah, my bad. I thought you could only start by clicking or ...

Simon Myers

Speed Demon

Simon Myers 2 - 0 Matt Morrison

Game 1
Game 2

Simon Myers

And I knew you were going bring it full circle by saying "dictionary corner's had its fair share of tits". Oh, you didn't did you. I didn't, because where would it end? If we took an inclusive approach, who knows how long we'd be running this thread for? Take this forum, for example, with...

Simon Myers

Something like this might work, although you need to refine it or it turns into one of those tedious games like Boggle where you can get about a zillion points by just hammering down all the 3s. Good point, I will give it a re-think. As I think I've mentioned before, you could just get points for t...

Simon Myers

Ben Wilson wrote:Maybe Charlie needs to add 'Sorry Kai' to the bots' vocabulary...

Poor Prune had to learn it somewhere...

Simon Myers

Both please.

Simon Myers

Derek Hazell wrote:Where? is? this? be-ing? host-ed? now?

http://www.apterous.org/lexplorer.php

Simon Myers

Matt Morrison wrote:Sid is not in there I don't think (Sorry, Kai).

I am in the picture, technically. You can just about see part of my shoulder as I'm standing to Mark Tournoff's left.

Simon Myers

I've calculated that in Stewart's octochamp run, his 8 opponents scored 409 points between them, which is 47% of Stewart's 870 point total. Brian has scored 211 points, so far, compared to 63 by his 2 opponents. That is only 30%. Quite a huge gap, wouldn't you say. :roll: I was addressing the origi...

Simon Myers

Ben Hunter wrote:Brian Selway's my favourite.

Simon Myers wrote:Perhaps I misread. I think I can find something to beat that too.
Don't you dare.

Too late! Stewart Holden.

Simon Myers

So far his 2 opponents have scored just 63 points between them. That's only around 60% of either of Brian's scores. Has anyone else ever done anything that remarkable in the history of the show :!: :?: Well, yeah, they have - and better. Just this series you have (averaged over the whole octorun): ...

Simon Myers

So far his 2 opponents have scored just 63 points between them. That's only around 60% of either of Brian's scores. Has anyone else ever done anything that remarkable in the history of the show :!: :?: Well, yeah, they have - and better. Just this series you have (averaged over the whole octorun): ...

Simon Myers

Paul Howe wrote:Right, I've been thinking about this non-stop for the last two months and still don't know the answer. Time to spill the beans, Myers.

Ah yes. In all fairness the two you didn't get were nigh on impossible. They are:
APPARATCHIKI
GASTROCNEMII

Simon Myers

MELISMA as a beater in round 6.

Simon Myers

This game is probably my best performance on apterous to date, and the conundrum was probably one of my proudest moments playing the game. Whichever of Sid and I allowed that through as a valid conundrum must've been cackling wildly as we did so... Great spot. Indeed, very nice. You'll have to take...

Simon Myers

Yep that's pretty much it. As an aside, it appears that some bots are disproportionately-skilled in different disciplines. In particular I think this affects Caesar, Plum and Velvet. For example Velvet is very strong at letters games, currently 11th overall in terms of maximums, but is hitting below...

Simon Myers

Are you still just talking about Rex, Sid? Yes I was exclusively talking about Rex. The other bots will be weaker in speed rounds by design. You'd have to ask Charlie about how he programmed the fallibility of the lesser bots though, as restricting the time they're given to solve a numbers round is...

Simon Myers

Over the long haul are Rex and whoever plays the Carol/Rachel role equally good? Yes. Also does it make any difference how long the rounds are? I was aware that Rex could be beaten on hyper numbers so tried him out with some 5-second rounds but as this shows, he was still pretty good. I don't think...

Simon Myers

Easily my best, 31 behind Kirk in rd14 of a speed letters attack to take it at the death.

Simon Myers

http://www.apterous.org/lexplorer.php?g=1&word=BEFUDDLE I didn't get a pencil for this. Are they broken or have I misunderstood something? It's possible that the person who earned the pencil for that word ended up not completing the game for some reason (or spotted it in a practice game). I thi...

Simon Myers

If Innis (or anyone else) has to pull out I'll be happy to take that place; can have Kirk PayPal the fee pronto.

Simon Myers

Ok, well, i suppose i meant let you down... how often are you correct in assuming it's MENT, say, out of ten, if you were aware? The naive approach is 17.6% successful if you consider all apterous conundrums (39 of 221 conundrums that contain M, E, N, T end in -MENT). Of course Kirk's intuition may...

Simon Myers

I suppose the other thing to be wary of with double conundrums is that a contestant might simply know the dual-anagram and not need to do any "solving". If I were to see the scramble ARCHSTORE then it might take me a few seconds to work it out, but if I was given ORCHESTRA then CARTHORSE w...

Simon Myers

You can play apterous with a robot and nobody will think you're a sad gee... err...

Simon Myers

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 ...

Simon Myers

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,...

Simon Myers

If you choose your selections with the keyboard (C for consonant, V for vowel) you should have no problem comfortably choosing the letters with one hand (as C and V are adjacent) and writing them down with the other hand.

Simon Myers

Well, yeah of course. Every time I get a solution before the time runs out I'll type it into the notes box and hit end round early. It's a waste of time clicking away in the GUI if I can just type in "2*(100+7)-3" and be done. Less error-prone too.

Simon Myers

Since statland seems to be the order of the day right now, I thought I'd post some ideas that might be interesting if not too difficult to implement: Top letters players list for 3/4/5 vowels (like the ones for different numbers formats) Top goatdown players on own / others pick (%max) Most common i...

Simon Myers

I knew SOMEONE would say 'Carol' eventually. It's happened loads; I've personally seen it happen twice in the studio. The best was during Kirk's second heat game where his hapless opponent tried to cover it up by claiming she "hadn't put her glasses on" :lol: They tend to get edited out t...

Simon Myers

What was the 8-game total in the end? 892 I don't think anyone scoring as high as Innis in third place has ever not been number one seed before. So well done Chris. You're right, Innis' 861 is higher than any past #2 seed, the highest scoring of which were Jon Corby (856, S54) and Tom Hargreaves (8...

Simon Myers

On for a nice pair of nines which Chris should get...

Simon Myers

Kieran Child wrote:They say it in America (I assume). It's been on two American 'comedies'. It was also referenced by Ed Byrne.

American dictionaries tend to have illustrations, which would explain those jokes and the general bemusement of a British audience.

Simon Myers

Obviously the answer to the question is highly dependent on the richness of the language used in the dictionary. I'd imagine you'd get a different outcome if you were to compare a concise dictionary with the ODE or OED. @Charlie - The Zyzzyva website has an annotated CSW (and OWL2, though I think th...

Simon Myers

PRAETORS/PRORATES (SEPARATOR, PERORATES, PRIORATES, OPERATORS, PTEROSAUR) if you choose 4 vowels. Otherwise probably just the 7 letter words here . There is another 8-letter word (aside from PRAETORS) that is never a maximum if you choose 4 vowels, can anyone else find it? EDIT: Sorry Kieran, since ...

Simon Myers

Yes please. Format best of one presumably?

Simon Myers

Charlie uses the dictionary file maintained by Jim (accidental removal of single-letter words notwithstanding). AFAIK CountMax doesn't have single letters either. CountMax throws out any words shorter than 4 letters long, so it's not really dictionary related. JimDic does appear to be missing all s...

Simon Myers

I had FEINTER disallowed in yesterday's duel which I would have thought would be acceptable as it's a comparative of a 1-syllable adjective. FEINT isn't an adjective. It is in the relevant dictionary, "denoting paper printed with faint lines as a guide for handwriting; denoting the lines so pr...

Simon Myers

Ladies and gentlemen, I did something that I'm sure no other contestant has ever done before in the history of Countdown. I declared a 1-letter word. Unfortunately, the word was I and I got no points. "I" has been declared 39 times on Apterous so far. It seems that Charlie accidentally re...

Simon Myers

Off the top of my head, Carson and Hulme, Bevins and Corby. Had the question been asked back in March or so you'd have Howe and Prime as perfectly even, but Paul is now over 100 games up.

Simon Myers

ANGREZI should be deleted as it is no longer listed as the plural of ANGREZ. One of my fave words :( http://www.oed.com/help/updates/latest-additions.html This doesn't belong in this thread at all, but it's great to see these neologisms getting the recognition they deserve at last. Only a childish ...

Simon Myers

Stewart Gordon's cdsolve is my numbers solver of choice; despite the less glamorous name it's lightweight and very speedy. AFAIK it finds all possible solutions. The source code is available on his site too, if you don't mind D.

The word SOLVABLE is valid on Countdown, by the way.

Simon Myers

Simon Myers

Paul Howe wrote: STREPTOCOCCI

Yes.

Paul Howe wrote: STRATOCUMULI

Yes.

Paul Howe wrote: CUMULOSTRATI

No.

Phil Reynolds wrote:ELECTROPHORI

No.

Simon Myers

Paul Howe wrote: I is harder, the only word that comes to mind atm is CARAVANSERAI?

No, that's not one of the four. I suppose you could also consider yourself unlucky; falling foul of Charlie's somewhat arbitrary judgement in selecting fair conundrums.

Simon Myers

Paul Howe wrote:
Simon Myers wrote: A VFSMB to whoever correctly identifies the single hyper conundrum that ends in X.
PORTMANTEAUX?

Indeed. Should've posted when I knew you weren't lurking around here Paul. Try the 4 that end in I, which are more challenging I think.

Simon Myers

As an accompaniment to the regular conundrums, here are the hyper conundrums: PREFIXES 55% of 119 - EX 42% of 57 - COMM 39% of 186 - OVER 27% of 1133 - UN 22% of 98 - COMP 22% of 90 - EXT 21% of 108 - SUPER 21% of 205 - UNDER 21% of 586 - DIS 20% of 113 - HYP 20% of 1265 - CO 19% of 170 - SUB 17% of...

Simon Myers

Shaun Hegarty wrote:I notice a lot of bio- conundrums, perhaps that could be included. Overall, though, and interesting set of statistics though.

4% of 257.

Simon Myers

* What minimum (if any) did you set on how many words each set of letters had to appear in? In the program itself I set no minimum. I had it go through the whole list once and record all "affixes" of up to 5 letters. So for COMPUTING, say, it recorded C, CO, COM, COMP, COMPU and G, NG, IN...

Simon Myers

For many who play Countdown, a common heuristic used to help solve conundrums is affix matching. In particular, looking for common prefixes (UN-, OVER-) and suffixes (-ING, -IEST). I wanted to see to what extent this was useful and see whether conventional wisdom is accurate in this case. Using the ...

Simon Myers

Conundrums are only "easy" if you know the word aren't they. To expect Kai to know the word "laserdisc" (which was one of his subsequent Conundrums) when they were becoming obselete around the time he was being born, was a stretch of even the most vivid imagination. Well, not ex...

Simon Myers

Not the best display of etiquette I've seen. Needless to say I won't be playing him again.

Simon Myers

29/29 maxes makes this another monster

Simon Myers

A bit late to the party with this one, but here's my final Open game with Martin May:

Simon Myers 104 - 97 Martin May
Simon Myers 80 - 101 Martin May
Martin May 60 - 95 Simon Myers

Simon Myers

U1200 result:

Peter Lee 63 - 78 Simon Myers
Peter Lee 67 - 103 Simon Myers

Simon Myers

Open result:

Simon Myers 85 - 59 Julie Taylor
Julie Taylor 68 - 84 Simon Myers

Simon Myers

U1200 result:

Simon Myers 72 - 80 Marcus Hares
Marcus Hares 63 - 87 Simon Myers
Simon Myers 60 - 97 Marcus Hares

Simon Myers

PRONATED wasn't there, I think the other letter was a N hence surprising miss averted or was this an elaborate wind-up? Yeah, it was E O N D R A P N J meaning Andrew got the max. APRONED and OPERAND also available as OT words. Did anyone else notice the (apart from the RELATIONS round) more awkward...

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