Make the recently added statland pages appear bold in the list on the side when you are in statland.

Perhaps max games could be mentioned in the happenings? Standard 15 and 9 rounders at least.

I think it was Jono who had an idea a few months ago for defendable 'titles' for various formats, whereby one player would be the 'champion' of that format and every time they played that format, they were effectively defending their title. e.g. Kirk Bevins is 15-rounder champion, Kirk plays Chris Davies in a 15-rounder, Kirk loses, and Chris is the new 15-round champion etc. There's some good potential in this idea though it would need a few guidelines (i.e. games against bots don't count, players must defend their titles once every few days or they automatically get vacated etc). Maybe even special items for winning streaks?

It's a nice idea but somewhat YAKBV. I'd rather do something to encourage all players to improve and reward them for it, rather than create new vectors for the same old names. Top Dog was a step in the right direction and I'm open to other ideas in a similar vein.

What about a hint button that will tell you the score of the max in letters rounds and the target max in numbers rounds and the first and last letter in conundrums.

Just first letter in conundrum I reckon. Rather than a hint button, make it a new variant called Hintdown. Every round you are given a hint whether you like it or not (or make it so a hint is available in every round but you don't have to click "show hint"). This would produce more max games methinks and is a nice idea.

Maybe the hint could 'kick in' after 20 seconds but you lose one point if you use it.

Don't like this idea - you could max all the rounds but not get a max game. I like it how you can get a max game in hintdown. This opens up more challenges and records to be broken if every round a hint is given with no penalty.

Max games and records aren't the concern of most Apterous players, Kirk.

How about the titles idea of mine but simply handicapped?

Interesting...

This would punish the ratings-hoarders, which is a plus.

It's a great idea Jono - keep it moving like a hot potato and the lesser-rated players have a chance of wearing the crown if they beat a top player, then they can play someone of their own ability and if they lose, it goes to someone who normally wouldn't have much chance of winning anything.

Terrific stuff for a ginger.

Indeed - i think Kirk should be forced to play for Star 30 in the conundrum attack, at least 10 times.

Everyone with a rating above 1500 will now be charged £1 per game. That'll learn 'em.

Haven't you punished him enough, by denying him a chance of winning a CoC.

Will maybe do something big in 2012 for our 30th birthday show, if we're all still here of course.

I was thinking of "zero time" numbers rounds, so the only time you get is when you click on the buttons for your solution. Obviously you wouldn't have time to declare anything before entering your solution, so perhaps you could have it so you don't need to declare and what you end up on just becomes your declaration. People have maxed bullet numbers - this would be something new and even harder (although easier in a way if you're not going for a max because you can end up anywhere within 10 without having to say what).

Representing the multilingual apterous massive, I would be delighted if my lists of nine-letter words (both in the "nines from the last 30 days" tab of my user profile, and in my "all-time nines" Superstats page) could be broken down by language/lexicon, and then by variant - in very much the same way that the Superstats pencils lists are broken down.

It would allow me to see much more clearly how many nines I've scored (and the other polyglot players have scored) in each language. Also, for those of us who play in ODE and CSW, it would help to minimise confusion about which dictionary an English nine belonged to.

--Mätt "Umlaut" Bäyfield

Heres one that might be addictive.
See how many consecutive games you can play getting at least one bronze pencil.
Omelette letters attacks seem to be the best format.

That does sound fun, but it's not really a feature request.

Incidentally I think the recent "pencil mining" meta-game is really fun. Presumably it will drive up the scarcity of pencils in the long run, and accelerate the introduction of the silver pencil, both of which are good.

Yeah, it's not really a feature request, but it could be included in the stats.
Still trying for that elusive 2 letter OED pencil.

Is there already a decided amount of pencils that need to go before the silver is introduced (also bronzes for CSW and Johnny Foreigner)?

Making the assumption that Prune is on apterous mainly to allow users to set personal bests etc (let's face it, over 9 rounds he's no competition for even apterous' worst human player), is there any chance that Prune's abilities could be re-jigged so that he never scores at all in Letters or Numbers rounds? Obviously he would still need to get the occasional Conundrum, or tied games could be never-ending.

My motivation here is an increasing frustration when I'm on for a personal best score in one of the foreign language formats, only for Prune to whip out some obscure Letters maximum to deny me my chance. For some reason, Prune seems to be particularly "good" at French - he frequently scores, often with max words, in more than 1 round per game.

--Matt

(And on a previous subject - many thanks for implementing the "nines by language/dictionary" - much appreciated.)

He also has this annoying habit at CSW. Pretty annoying to see him mess up every round and then pull something like WAHCONDA out of nowhere.

That's a bug that I wasn't aware of. I'll take a look when I get back to the land of the living.

My suggestion is an Apterous Dave Wilkinson. He does his best to win, but with as low a score as possible. I'm not sure what the ideal algorithm would be, but he could be designed so that if the maximum in a particular round won't put him more than 10 behind, he'll declare nothing. If he declares second, then he'll only ever declare as many as the other player - or nothing if he can't go more than 10 behind. And he would be Rex-like on a crucial conundrum, but wouldn't buzz at all if he accidentally found himself 10 or more ahead.

At the risk of being full of suggestions at the moment, here's another one, inspired by the recent pencil-mining game...

On the Statland "Pencils by language and length" page, would it be possible to display the %age of available pencils after each figure in the table? For example, the top few rows might read something like:

All 61114 (n1%) 58370 (n2%) 727 (n3%) 72 (n4%) 1010 (n5%) 1 (0%) 164 (n6%) 604 (n7%) 18 (n8%) 148 (n9%)
2 (0%) 1 (0%) 1 (0%)
3 683 (m1%) 669 (m2%) 9 (m3%) 5 (m4%)

In this case, if the apterous lexicons all put together contained 611140 unique words (I know that's an underestimate, but never mind), then n1 above would be 10. If ODE contained 116740 words, then n2 would equal 50, and so on.

Of course, there's a slight snag in as much as some words are valid in more than one lexicon, and you can only get a pencil for the first appearance of the word, so it would never be possible for all figures to reach 100%. So what I suggest is:

the left hand-column (total pencils per letter, summed across all lexicons): the %age should be the %age of unique n-letter words. This could reach 100%
subsequent columns (total pencils per letter, for each individual lexicon): the %age should be the %age of n-letter words in that lexicon. This could only reach 100% in Greek and Russian or other languages with unique character sets... but will give an estimate of how many pencils have already been taken.

Might be interesting for those deciding where best to mdig for their bronze pencils. Might also give a point at which bronze pencils could be instated in foreign lexicons, and silver pencils in ODE, etc.

This is perhaps sufficiently obvious that it has already been suggested, and the implementation is hard, but in my experience no-one ever uses the chat room feature, so how bad would it be to have a separate box for the scrolling "x beat y m-n in a $variant" stuff. That way, if people want to talk in what seems the 'main' area of apterous, they can without all that stuff completely overwhelming any conversation attempts.

New variant http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... hange.html could work on Apterous.

I'd have expected to see this last Thursday! Games would be ridiculous.

"My dog's called XIIZIDYW, that'll be 401 points please."

Can I just say a ginormous THANK YOU for all of the new features. You are awesome Charlie

Could there be a scoring system called Void scoring? It would get rid of any words you type in a round that aren't valid.

Good idea.

I don't understand - what are the points awarded for?

As in it removes any invalid words you have noted just before it offers you the declarations - so you could only declare valid words.

Ah I see, sort of a halfway between junior and the full game.

Hahaha, I declare loads of invalid words in Junior. And in all other disciplines too. I am awesome.

Nice idea Kai, but I can't see that I'd play it much unless an opponent really wanted to. I kind of like the excitement of not knowing. It's a bit like Void scoring on ISC: most people refused to play it because it took the skill out of it, but as I have very little skill at Scrabble I refused to play it because it removed the gambling element of playing some made-up shit and letting them wonder whether or not to challenge it, always one of my favourite parts of the game.

pubertydown

Thanks mate!


I've considered this before (since it's available on ISC) and I'm pretty sure it's not something I'd want to do. My experience with ISC suggests that new players start out playing Void because it's "friendlier", then come to rely on the safety net and never develop the skills of judgment necessary to play the full game. I don't want to encourage people to get stuck in that rut.

It can also give some bizarre readings in the rating system, such as Jon Stitcher's rating of 1600 on ISC which was gained exclusively through playing void.

An item suggestion - how about a 'sleepsuit', awarded for stealing a game in the last two rounds, like I did here

Auto-logout for players that are idle? Would that help with lag?

Also, a button for "repeat last challenge" would be handy.

Any chance of making an ipad compatible version?

Countdown is already on the Ipod Touch if I'm not mistaking

Doesn't the Mac version work on such contraptions?

The Mac is an ancient brand

Depends whether the iPad supports Java, which it probably doesn't. So yeah, if it works it works and if it doesn't then I won't bother to port it.


Have you been reading HP Lovecraft, Jason?

What is that?

I tried when I was in the Apple store on launch day, and no, it doesn't.


Awesome.

A variant suggestion based on Goatdown.

How about a version whereby you play with the 8 letters and keep your 9th letter up your sleeve until declaring, thereby giving you the chance to truly work on finding the max instead of being forced to choose a letter within 3 seconds, as is the case now with standard goatdown. Effectively it would be like an 8-letter touchdown, but it'll take more skill to get the maxes.

Would work great for duels as well. I often 'pick' the 9th letter as the time bar runs out, only to realise there was a much better pick a few seconds later. It could be called Bestiality, or Touch Goat if you prefer.

What do you reckon girls?

Not for me. You could never play it human vs. human as one person would have to work with 8 letters the whole time, or be brave and try and assume what the other person will eventually choose as a 9th letter, which is laden with danger. And as far as the functionality, it's a Touchdown and Goatdown combination, Touchgoat if you will, that isn't really different enough from either?

I think this is the first time I've disagreed publicly with anything you've ever said Damian so please be nice and don't ban me from applying for Countdown.

I think you've misunderstood me. Playing human v human Matt, you'd both have 8 letters on the screen. So if the selection was ABEFOILD, you could declare LIFEBOAT and i could spot OBLIGED.

The idea being you don't strictly choosethe 9th letter, you just incorporate it into your word. Does that make sense? This way you get the whole alphabet to play with during the 30 seconds, as opposed to being forced to nominate the 9th letter beforehand.

Getcha. So it's a bit like a cut down Touchdown, right? My bad. Hmm, hang on, I can't get my maths brain on quite right, but would the best words not be the same as a round of Touchdown anyway?

Touchdown - JACKKNIQE.....you can get JACKKNIFE.

TouchGoat - JACKKNIQ(?)......you can't.

You're effectively playing with 10 letters in Touchdown but this is strictly 9. Yes its a cut-down Touchdown but it keeps to the Countdown ethos of using 9-letters. It's goatdown without a nominated letter prior to the 30 seconds. Anyway, it's obviously a winner.................

I truly have got you now. Sorry about that. Yeah I think it's got legs then. It's more 'regular' than Touchdown, so good for people trying to learn the game for the show, and it's a bit more forgiving for normal players than Goatdown. I like it. You've won me over. You should be a politician.

Wait I'm still confused. Is this different to Touchdown with 8-letter selections?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8634952.stm

Quality journalism.......a photo of THE actual egg, in case we were all wondering........

No its basically just that.

I don't think so, but that's precisely what makes it different? Like Hyper is 'just' Junior but with 12-letter selections.

Quite eggstraordinary..........although why post it in this thread?
Unless its a tenuous link to a new form of omelette

Okay, cool. I wasn't trying to dick on the idea, I just wondered whether I was being asked to write new code, or whether I could just change a 9 to an 8 and be done with it.