There may have been some confusion in the past about exactly what constitutes cheating on apterous.org, and what happens if you cheat. This post intends to put an end to that confusion.

Cheating is using any kind of artificial aid to alter your performance in the game. This includes: using an anagram or numbers solver program or website, to generate solutions or to check your words; using multiple accounts to play yourself and boost your rating; using multiple accounts or some other means to see the rounds of the Duel before playing it; using word lists during the game; looking up words in the dictionary before declaring. This list is not exhaustive.

Cheating is not: picking letters slowly; declaring spurious numbers solutions and then attempting to fudge the solution; exploiting weaknesses in the bots. These things may be annoying but they're not cheating.

Now to the unpleasant business of what to do with discovered cheaters. Should you trigger off apterous's automatic cheat detector, I will review its evidence and, if convinced, contact you privately. Own up and I will delete the offending game, probably call you some rude names and then we can move on with our lives. But, should you elect the way of pain (by which I mean denying it and continuing to cheat), your name will be posted in this topic. Armed with this knowledge, other people can decide whether to play you. (And you still get the rude names.) Additionally, if you cheat on the Duel, I'll ban you from it for a month. And if you cheat in an Aptobash, may God have mercy, because I won't. Finally, I'm sure no one is dim enough to be a repeat offender, but should that occur then I'll deal with it in some utterly unsympathetic way. You have been warned.

To preempt the inevitable questions about the automatic cheat detector, no, I won't tell you how it works. But if you're currently cheating, I advise you to stop immediately. I know who you are, and I will not feel bad about naming and shaming you. This place is a community and by cheating, you're undermining the work I put into this place, and the work of those who practise long and hard to improve legitimately. Please don't do that.

The detector is already starting to chafe my nipples. I vote for one that doesn't involve me shaving.

Or am I just a guinea pig for version two?

Having now played today's duel, was the fact that the rounds kept starting automatically as soon as I'd finished the previous one done purposely with this thread in mind, or is it a bug? It was certainly intense...

So we're saying who's cheating? Where to begin...

That is some pretty sly cheating then coz I'm pretty sure none of the top players cheat and I really didn't think anybody did.

It's actually stupidly obvious who's cheating. I've made several hints both here and in aptochat, but to no avail. It's as funny as it is annoying though in all honesty, that they think they're pulling it off undetected

How about if you trigger the "automatic cheat detector" then it adds an item to your inventory, so everyone can see it before choosing whether to play you?

My suggestion for the item:

Apart from Ecclesiastes Myanmar (who turned out to be Richard Brittain with a solver) and Corby I don't think any of the top players have ever cheated. There are a few very suspicious players though who are being rather foolish if they think no-one has noticed. Personally, I don't mind playing a cheat: at least you know you are in for a tough game!

Frank Rodolf was a top player for several months. Most of the other obvious cheaters (Adam Dexter, Rob Francis, Stewart Patrick) were top players for a few days before they got bored. Also there are other highly-rated players who were cheating but seem to have stopped since the new cheating policy came in, so I won't say anything further about them, although monitoring their tumbling ratings should give you a good hint!

I take that very, very personally, i presume you are talking about me even with spelling my name incorrectly. I may have a good rating, but if you notice the vast majority of my games have been against Jonathan Guntrip, who happens to be my best friend who i enjoy playing against as its good banter between the two of us. I am fairly new to this so i'm unsure as to how the ratings work out, and to be honest i dont care about what my rating is!
I am, or to say was untill reading the last post, thoroughly enjoying using the program, i think that you, Charlie, and whoever else has helped to set it up have done a fantastic job.
In terms of not using the site for a few days i do not feel i have to justify myself to you, but to put your obviously overworked mind at ease some peope have family to see and friends to visit over new years and christmas. So apterous, no matter how good a program takes a back seat.
Before posting such remarks in future i would hope that you would have the decency to contact in person.

Not really sure what you're rabbiting on about here, I didn't say anything about ratings.



Again, I didn't ask you to justify your absence.



You always ignore me in chat and reject my game requests, so there's only so much effort I'm willing to make. Incidentally you might like to try playing your friend Jonathan Guntrip in real life some time...

You mentioned tumbling ratings, if that was not in relation to me, then please do ignore that bit of my post.
I have personally never seen you trying to chat to me on the program, in terms of rejecting your games, the only time i've ever seen a game request from you was this evening before i came off the program after playing Innis a couple of times. I was heading to bed but thought i'd check the forums seen as i've been away for a few days. And as for playing my friend in real life, that has happened on many, many occasions.
Would love to know where this idea has come from seen as you know very, very little about me! Are new comers who want to better themselves before applying for the show not welcome? If I have upset member of a clique then I can only apologise.

You seem to rabbit by habit. I don't know much about you, which is why I didn't say much about you. No idea what "clique" you're referring to, why you think you've upset them, or why that has anything to do with this. What I do know is that your games have been repeatedly flagged by the cheat detector. Are you saying categorically that you definitely do not and have never used any kind of anagram solver or word checking program?

As there seem to be a lot of newbies on apterous, bearing in mind today's blind duel, I think it's worth repeating that writing down the letters in a blind duel is cheating.

You're supposed to commit the letters to memory as they appear then disappear. Hence my rubbish score today. I don't have a memory.

Does that include committing them to short-term memory just long enough to enter them in the 'notes' box on screen? If so, I cheated, for which I apologise. Charlie, feel free to nullify my score for today.

It's a bit of an odd one really, as sometimes you instantly see a long-ish word and write it straight down, and then it's usually not much effort to remember the extra other couple of letters you didn't use. Or maybe the first 4 come out as 'EITM' and you think 'TIME' (or maybe even enter it!) and then the next 5 come out as 'NTSEO' and you think/enter 'STONE' - it's hardly cheating to note TIME and then STONE in your list, and then you have all the letteres. I have wondered before about suggesting you have no list, and instead you just get that timer at the end to enter your final declaration (although this would mess up regular blind games, but does anyone play blind other than when it comes up in the duel?). I mean, if you wanna cheat you can obviously just write the letters down, but sometimes you can sort of "accidentally" "cheat" just by noting down words which happen to contain most/all of the letters.

(I think I could have phrased all that better, but I can't be arsed to change it)

Who knows, Phil. Hadn't thought of that one. One for Charlie to decide, I feel.
Jon's idea means that maybe we could all think of 'invented' words to get the letters down. You'd still have had to remember them for a bit, though.Tricky one.
I only meant you shouldn't sit there with pen and paper writing them down as they come out.

Yeah. I thought not.

So, Charlie, what constitutes cheating in a blind game, and what's OK?

Honestly I'm not sure yet. Obviously you shouldn't be writing the letters down. But, as has been pointed out, it's perfectly possible to write down legitimate words which happen to "spoil" the selection. I think I'll ask people to use their own judgment until I come up with a better technical solution.

I freely admit to being someone who looks to form a word or two from the letters as they appear, and then jot down the other letters in the declaration box after. Sometimes I'll have CATSBONEH, sometimes DOGFMUZLI, and sometimes I'll still note a letter wrong anyway.

As it goes, I find the Blind variant a bit pointless for Apterous. It works ok IRL as everything can be done audibly, as Colin 06 showed. Anyway, my "better technical solution" for the letters would be to do them as the conundrum is currently done - show all 9 for a second or two, then blank the lot. I reckon that'd be an improvement, although still unideal.

This of course entails pre-choosing numbers of vowels/consonants without seeing any of them, which makes things a bit less optimal.

That's a good point, I was only considering how it'd work for the daily duel.

I'm puzzled why anyone would play Blind otherwise, so ignored that ramification.

People do like a challenge round here. Although I have seen bugger all people playing blind, so fair point.

I've only played blind custom games to practice before a blind duel.
So apterous selecting all the letters at once wouldn't be a problem for me, if that's how the duel would work.
Sounds like a solution to me, Dan.

A couple of common Internet Scrabble Club ways of cheating include asking your friends for the solutions, or making "agreements" to lose on purpose so the other person's rating goes up. I think we can assume that both of those things are unallowable on Apterous as well.

Is it possible you could could just say who cheats (or has) rather than us having to guess. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt but there is always a niggling question as to whether they are or not.
Sorry, I just find it really frustrating. Cheating cunts should be banned.

Ok I'm owning up.. I was cheating before Christmas... I'm sorry. Feel free to delete my previous high scores. Not that I think I can defend it, but I was fed up with loss after loss. I must commend you on an excellent site and cheat finder! I'm really sorry.

Erm I'm a newbie here and haven't played any games yet. I want to play the game where you write down the letters and numbers on a piece of paper and try to come up with the biggest word and target numbers in the 30 seconds like on the tv show. Not really bothered with rankings etc, just want to try to improve my game play, particularly my poor Conundrums. Don't really want to play any blind version as that's like the DVD interactive version where the letters disappear, don't mind playing bots either. Which game do I play where I am allowed to write down the letters and numbers without it being cheating?

Any of the formats except blind.

Out of interest, is it illegal to have an anagram program open, or just to use one? I suppose the 'system' doesn't know the difference between the two.

Edit: I say out of interest, that's not really true. I just tend to use a specific solver all the time, which I've got loads of languages for now (about six) and I tend not to close it every time I use it, because it's quite plausible something will just occur to me just like that. I know on the ISC it only looks for programs if you're playing a game, not observing one. Admittedly that piece of crap doesn't work, but hey.

Something I wanted to clarify...

When I'm practising, I often have various pieces of solving software open (such as the numbers solver on Kountdown, and Lexpert), as well as my own crib sheets, so I can check how I could have optimised my play (after playing).

But even worse than that, I sometimes use the 'practice' mode against bots on Apterous in a way that would most certainly look like cheating, i.e. for each round I use various bits and bobs to enhance my play. This is because I'm testing out various techniques and also because sometimes the best way to get something to stick in my head is to look up the answer as I'm practising.

I'm hoping that the fact that I'm in practice mode against a bot and not playing a rated game, or against a real live person, means that it doesn't count as cheating, but I thought I'd better check before I get denounced!

And on a total tangent, should it be "practice mode" or "practise mode"? Practice is the noun, practise is the verb (I find the best way to remember is to use ADVISE and ADVICE as templates). I think it should be probably be the noun, as in "I am in the mode I use for my practice", but a case could be made for the verb, as in "I am in the mode I use to practise" and in comparison with "cheat mode", where cheat is a verb not a noun (well, not an active noun - "a cheat" is a person who cheats, not an act of cheating... oh, hang on... hmm)...

The cheat detector doesn't look at practice games, so you can do what you like in those. Also, realistically speaking, I would ignore anything from the cheat detector concerning players who are soon to appear on the show, because 1) they're probably not cheating 2) if they are cheating, it will catch up with them very shortly. But in practice the cheat detector rarely generates false positives with it's current level of refinement, so it's not an issue I've ever had to consider.

Had to do this after you hounded me with my grammar mistakes.

Hahaha. Oh I really should avoid posting after more than 1 pint.

It's more funny that you call this a grammar mistake, when I'd think it would have been better described as a punctuation mistake...

I would say punctuation is a subset of grammar. You are therefore incorrect to correct Kirk's correct correction.

I'd say it's half grammar, half spelling, and so is actually a whole grammar and a whole spelling mistake, and as such Charlie is doubly wrong.

Cut from a whole grammar/spelling sandwich?

I can't tell if you didn't read the rest of my post or are just trying to 'hilariously' explain my own 'hilarious' joke.

Let's both agree that we're both half-hilarious (and thus wholly hilarious) and get on with our lives.

Is that cut from a whole slice of hilarity?

No. Don't be silly.

Wow, lots of jokes sandwiched between each other!

Oh man. I give in. These jokes are spread so thinly I'm finding it hard to like them.

The Marmite effect?

Yeah - I was gonna explain the other half of my joke but I couldn't be bothered.

Which way did you slice it in half?

Was it two halves of a joke, or two separate jokes?

I had Countmax open during this game: http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=31552

I had it open during Kirk's game to see if he could break the record, and forgot to close it before opening Apterous. If the cheat detector flags that game, that's why.

Quality guess in Rd 1

Hard to accuse someone of using a solver that solves letters games perfectly when they have 2 words disallowed, 3 maxes and 6 other non-max valid words.

Edit: Tough game that one, I'd lose quite a lot of points.

Presumably the cheat detector does more than just detect that you've got a solver open. It would be more about the use wouldn't it? I don't know anything about computer programming, but how could Apterous tell what other programs you've got running? Even if it could, would it be able to recognise a program as a solver without recognising it as a specific solver (if you didn't use Countmax, for example)? Is this how it actually works anyway? Would anyone else be put off by the idea of running a program that looks at all the other programs you've got running and reports back?

If you use Countmax online that could presumably be checked in a "non-invasive" way but when the cheat detector was first announced I wondered if it was partly based on timing. When a selection comes up it takes a certain amount of time to use a solver, so if someone always types in words after the same amount of time and never solves a conundrum below a certain time, then that might be flagged.

I'm surprised by the discussion about how the cheat detector works - did no-one else notice Charlie installing cameras in their bedroom?

I agree. I think it's all about timing.

I did, but it never occurred to me that it was in connection with Apterous.

SORRY KIRK!!!!!!

Had it open by accident again earlier after watching the first third of Kirk on 4OD, soz.

Did you try and watch the rest of the show? Mine cut to some test card-esque screen after the first third.

Yep, same here. Bumholes. I'm not sure I can bear to wait for the Thursday 5am repeat, so I may have to go and read the spoiler thread. Ten types of cock.

Faggotry.

(also - *ten*?)