The problem with making it public is that cheaters can then learn what they can get away with - they can monitor the published list and develop their own cheating techniques in order to remain just on the right side of the being-discovered line.

It's the same reason why Charlie could never reveal HOW the Cheatomatic works - I'm sure the details of its computation would interest a great deal of innocently-intrigued non-cheaters, but the more information you give, the more information you're making available to cheaters to help them cheat.

I can back this up. I don't play on Apterous, but do against every episode of Countdown. Some days i seem to be inspired, getting some great words and numbers soloutions, and other days i just can't seem to get it together, missing some obvious words that other days i'd get. It just depends on what mood i'm in at the time, whether i'm a bit tired or stressed etc. I don't think you should label someone as a cheat, especially publically, if the only evidence is their lack of consistency. Unless it's particularly extreme, perhaps.

Has anybody else encountered the unfortunate computer crashing syndrome, where during a close game where you are 11 behind going into round 14 you decide to go for 6 small to increase your chances of getting to a crucial conundrum only to find that as the clock ticks down to zero and you have the solution and you feel sure your opponent hasn't only to find the dreeaded error box and your opponents computer seems to have crashed

And typically after you restart the 6 small that you pick again yields an easy peasy solution costing you the game

This has happened a few times now

Maybe I am paranoid, but it would be interesting if anyone else has experienced this

Not the paranoia but the situation

No.

Good point Marc. It is frustrating and it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or accidental. Would be interesting if that could be investigated into, e.g. did the user click 'x' or did it freeze or something, but I think this is hard/impossible to do.

I hope this is a better reply than Jon's

Yes.

Thanks Kirk

I suppose it could just be a bad coincidence but it does annoy me if it happens during a crucial conundrum

Asking whether the program has crashed is rather akin to asking someone if they're dead. You're only going to get one answer. The real solution is, as ever, for people to submit actual bug reports.


Cheaters get warned and then banned. There's currently no way to tell who's warned, and I'm happy to keep it that way for now. I can't really ban contrib members (unless I give them their money back, which seems rather too nice of me), but they're much less likely to cheat anyway (I have their real identity from Paypal and people are strangely loathe to be Internet Dicks in that case).


What proof would you accept as irrefutable? I can't stand over their shoulder and watch them. Part of the problem for me is that I cannot disclose the evidence that I have without dispensing details of the many tentacles of the Cheatomatic, which obviously I can't do. However the elite few who do know how it works are very satisfied with it, and the number of false positives in the last 6 months is zero.


Not so. Also how would people know who to ignore if they can't tell who's cheating? If some guy starts posting amazing scores, even against bots, then he's going to get noticed.

I'd call it breach of contract. Ban 'em, I say Seriously, it is pretty clear no cheating, so (and I'm sure a player could appeal in the case of a serious misjudgement) I'd definitely say they've invalidated their own membership. Get medieval on their arses

Edit: In fairness last night there was a confession! Good spot

Frank Rodolf did, and he said he bought the ODE

There was?

My 16 year old daughter, Emily, recently started playing on Apterous. She is doing this because she finds it fun and also wants to improve her skills when she "competes" against players when watching the Countdown TV programme.

There are times when she practices and plays ranked games alone in her bedroom. There are also other times when she brings her laptop downstairs and sits next to me whilst I'm watching TV or reading. On these occasions, I've helped her out by suggesting words (she normally does the numbers by herself, but only discovered how to correctly input the answers the other day). As a consequence of now scoring on the numbers and occasionally getting my help on the letters, she has recently started winning more games than she loses.

She is not doing this to try to get up the rankings. It's more a case of a father / daughter bonding exercise to increase the fun of the game. She's not been trying to hide anything. I believe she mentioned in the chat on one of the games she lost that her Dad wasn't there to help her. She feels she's more likely to learn from the words I help her with than by noting some of the more obscure ones shown in Apterous Dictionary Corner. Eventually her skills will be good enough that she doesn't need to ask for my help. However, in the meantime, I thought it only fair to clarify the situation.

Are other players OK with this or does it fall under the definition of "cheating"?

I'd be surprised if anyone had an issue with that, Philip.

An interesting post, PJ. I haven't thought through my reasoning in detail yet, but my immediate gut reaction would be: if she wants to improve her game with your help, then fine provided she restricts herself to playing against bots. If she wants to practise against humanoid apteroids, then she should play unaided, unless she declares to her opponent at the outset that her dad will be helping and asks if that's OK. Otherwise, anyone she plays against will be at an unfair disadvantage and would have quite legitimate cause for complaint if it only came out afterwards that they were in fact playing against two people.

Surely if she is playing next to you then you could just let her log in as you?

Not that I'm really bothered. For all I care you can invite Chris Davies, Kirk, Paul Howe and whoever to yourhouse and give me a pasting with their help. Don't give two shinies about my rating, so the bigger the challenge the better

Given what happened at C of C 13, I would hope not.

It's only a game. My boys sometimes find 7's and 8's for me while i go to the pub. The severity of the beatings i administer to them upon my return solely depends on how many games they have won and lost in my name.

Great teaching aid, i find.

I don't exactly know what is wrong with my PC, but I'd tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to play Apterous since about last December. My problem was that everytime a new letter appeared on the board, all previous letters would change to the latest letter (i.e. if the last letter was "C", I'd end up with CCCCCCCCC. I tried various versions of Java to no effect.

This has recently been compounded by BTInternet's latest security protection coupled with their Family Protection from McAfee. I'm not a technically minded person, but I now can't even open videos on YouTube. I get the message "Javascript may need enabling" or "Download latest Flash player". When I try changing my default internet security settings to enable anything with the words Java or Script in it, I get a window popping up from Dell Support telling me to immediately change it back to default because my security is compromised. When I try downloading the latest Adobe Flash, my security seems to block this from happening. It even tried blocking me from this forum because the site contains unsuitable language / sexual material (or words to that effect). Hopefully, I'll get the PC sorted shortly because it's driving me crackers.

Anyway, the real point of this post is to let you know I've now got my own account and I started paying Apterous in my own right yesterday (I'm using Emily's laptop which doesn't go through BT/Yahoo). Consequently, from now on, if you see either Emily or me logged on (clearly not at the same time), you can rest assured that only that person will be playing. Emily accepts that she's on her own from now on.

The lines are a bit long. But apart from that, good poem!

It sounds like your PC is entirely fucked. That's my expert diagnosis.

Sounds about right to me.

I am not sure about the ethics of this but I wonder if anyone thinks I was scammed in this game http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ke ... 7385442783

As this score was after a close win by me and then I get anhialated

Id say you almost certainly were

It was probably caused by his reaction to my comeback in this game http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ke ... 2080932600

FWIW he was cheating in both games. Warned.

Ooh yeh, my unofficial cheat detector flagged him.

Thanks, although I am surprised that he failed to beat me on the crucial conundrum in the first game if he was cheating

This seems the best place to congratulate Mark Pitfield on his amazing 158/160 score on yesterday's duel. That's a stunning improvement on recent 15 rounders where he's won 77-62 (max 121), and lost 38-88 (max 118). Well played sir....

Hmm... Pot kettle black you might cry, but

http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=91173

It takes longer than 4 seconds to whack a conundrum into a solver and then put Apterous back up, so it makes perfect sense.

Byebye Michael Marlowe, it's been nice.

I think this could be a problem with Windows XP. When I was playing using XP the game would often freeze at this point (the solution screen would come up blank). Since I've switched I've noticed that any freezes now tend to happen mid-game (usually at the end of round 8). FWIW it cost me games more often than not.

It happened to me a lot when I was running the old version of Java. As soon as I updated it was absolutely fine, and I've not had a crash since.

Tremendously sad. The numbers solutions particularly are ludicrous.

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?key=5023150664274286730

Ha, the retard couldn't even get the right letters into his solver in one round.

I'd like to say thank you very much to him - I haven't laughed so much in a long time (and I like laughing lots!!). It was fucking funny. No two ways about it. Kirk, you were a star and played a blinder There was a studio audience for every game! I can't wait until he plays the other 11/20ths (or whatever it was) after he's psyced (sic) himself enough. Gutted he bottled the Conundrum, Junaid. Very well played though

Still laughing

Edit: Yesterday it was funny - today I was outraged to see he was still playing. Excellent work to ban him so fast - thanks.

Hi,
I'm quite new to apterous, as is my son. We sometimes play each other, with him on the PC upstairs and me on the laptop downstairs. Is this considered cheating? If it is, we are not very good at cheating as can be seen from our ratings!

Hi John. I don't think anyone would consider that cheating - that's generally reserved for people using word lists, or game solvers, that sort of thing

Hi John, doesn't sound like cheating in any way to me. Welcome.

Unless your "son" is actually your hand and you have extremely long arms or a very small staircase, I don't think it's cheating

Oh, and welcome.

Maybe it's not John Gillies, but John Tickle from Big Brother 4, who you could call Mr Tickle, who had extremely long arms lol

Thanks for the welcome guys, and the quick response to my query. So I'm free to keep whipping his ass (sometimes).

Nobody cheats these days.

Nobody could be as bad as me without cheating . . .

Chris Davies cheats at the Rubik's Cube.

I hadn't actually read what Jimmy was replying to when I read this and I was rather disturbed.

Yeah. They got bored and edited it.

Wow, what happened? Or did he just take ages (understandably, given the pressure)?

Is this meant to make me respond with something funny or sensible?

Stun him and do both Kirk.

Oh Kirk.

Not cheating at all. All part of the fun of online gameplay I would have said.

I think I played your son (Josh?) the other day actually but the bloody thing crashed early on so we never finished. Some other time I'm sure.

Not sure how you could even consider the possibility that this might be cheating.

I often play Supee when we're in the very same room, let alone the same building.

Maybe I'm missing something but if you're in competition with each other and playing the game honestly what the hell can be wrong with that?

Who's Supee?

Edit: Still don't know who they are, but looked them up on apterous. They love the numbers attack.

You know. Supee.

As would you if you were trying to play this game in your third language.

I'm to tired to have a clue what your on about, all I know is they love the numbers attack.

[quote="Douglas Wilson"I'm to tired to have a clue what your on about, all I know is they love the numbers attack.[/quote]

Just spit it out Douglas.

I think he trying to say they love number attacks.