Training Methods/Methods of improvement

[Jimmy Gough]

I was the same as you Jack and I always used to ask the best players how they got so impossibly good. The answer "oh, just a bit of practice" was pretty annoying because I was already practising loads and seeing little improvement. I tried learning stems and I printed off a few hundred jumbled up words that I'd missed a lot but this sort of word learning was just so boring it made me want to die.

I'd just say be really competitive when playing apterous: be pissed off when you miss an easy word or get beaten by somebody worse than you, and take your apterous rating quite seriously and use this as a guide to your improvement. Depends how good you want to be I suppose - I just found (and still do) apterous great fun and amazingly addictive. I never felt like improving was in any way hard work or tiresome, just that I was on apterous a hell of a lot more than I should've been.

Anyway, aren't you better than me? I suppose me giving advice is a bit stupid, but only using apterous to improve got me from shit to, well, reasonably good in a short space of time. And it's FUN!

I'd like to hear what Chris Davies has to say - I've never seen someone improve as quickly as he has. He's maybe the very best now when just a few months ago he was quite shit. Aaron Higgs has also improved amazingly quickly.

Oh yeah, I did learn all of the stems of RETAINS, which come in useful a lot. I'd recommend learning these if you're thinking of learning some stems. Also the letters that make RADIUS are YEANS and that often comes in handy since all 5 are quite hard to spot!

[Charlie Reams]

I can remember tonnes more and can add them to that page if you want.

Please do!

[JackHurst]

I'd like to hear what Chris Davies has to say - I've never seen someone improve as quickly as he has. He's maybe the very best now when just a few months ago he was quite shit. Aaron Higgs has also improved amazingly quickly.

These are probably two of the people who pay the most, which could be an explaination for their rapid improvement. I feel sorry for Aaron Higgs, because he has got to the standard of possibly a series finalist since he got beaten by an eventual octochamp.

[Kirk Bevins]

Practice is the best way but when you miss a word you need to remember how to spot it in future. If you were to miss, say, ATROPINE then you could remember it as POINTER + PAINTER, or just PAINTER + O or whatever. I find with a lot of the words I'm learning now I have to write them down in a special book I keep otherwise they'll be forgotten.

I first used stems as a way of spotting words (e.g. I learnt ATROPINE as POINTER + PAINTER) but after a while of spotting it I no longer need this stem as ATROPINE just jumps out of AEOIPNRT.

It can sometimes be useful to memorise all the stems from a certain high-probability word and use a mnemonic to help you remember. As I've mentioned this on c4c before I'll use the same example (so as not to give away too many of my secrets): TOASTER. I always spot this word and it made sense to memorise a list of letters that can be added to TOASTER to make an 8. The letters form the mnemonic IBUSTGRAPH, e.g. TOASTER + I = TOASTIER, TOASTER + B = ABETTORS, TOASTER + A = AEROSTAT etc. This is useful as, for example, AEROSTAT is quite hard to spot on its own so memorising the stems help.

Caution: A selection came up at a CO-event as follows:
T S R A O E L O T

I saw TOASTER and looked at the two remaining letters, L and O. Neither of these letters are in IBUSTGRAPH so I couldn't find an 8 using the letters of TOASTER. Turns out there was an 8 amongst the selection - ROOTLETS.

[Kirk Bevins]

These are probably two of the people who pay the most, .

Careful - Charlie may be on your back quickly to correct you

[Ian Dent]

Who does play the most?

[Charlie Reams]

Who does play the most?

http://www.apterous.org/statland.php?se ... st_players

Might be interesting to do a version which normalises for total time of membership or something.

[Kai Laddiman]

Who does play the most?

http://www.apterous.org/statland.php?se ... st_players

Might be interesting to do a version which normalises for total time of membership or something.

Or the fact that Innis hasn't played against a bot in his life.

[Richard Brittain]

I'd like to hear what Chris Davies has to say - I've never seen someone improve as quickly as he has. He's maybe the very best now when just a few months ago he was quite shit. Aaron Higgs has also improved amazingly quickly.

Yes. I'm still not sure who or what exactly this 'Chris Davies' guy is, but he's ridiculously good. He came from nowhere in a few months, and is probably the best player of Countdown in existence. I fully expect him to score over 1000 in his Octochamp run. Innis Carson has also got to a very high level quickly, and others like Aaron Higgs, yes.

But yes, those players do play the most, so I think it's fair to assume that playing thousands of games is likely to make you a very good player.

[Jimmy Gough]

Who does play the most?

http://www.apterous.org/statland.php?se ... st_players

Might be interesting to do a version which normalises for total time of membership or something.

Or the fact that Innis hasn't played against a bot in his life.

And Aaron's played amazing amount of games in a short space of time.

[Chris Davies]

I'd like to hear what Chris Davies has to say - I've never seen someone improve as quickly as he has. He's maybe the very best now when just a few months ago he was quite shit. Aaron Higgs has also improved amazingly quickly.

Yes. I'm still not sure who or what exactly this 'Chris Davies' guy is, but he's ridiculously good. He came from nowhere in a few months, and is probably the best player of Countdown in existence. I fully expect him to score over 1000 in his Octochamp run. Innis Carson has also got to a very high level quickly, and others like Aaron Higgs, yes.

But yes, those players do play the most, so I think it's fair to assume that playing thousands of games is likely to make you a very good player.

Wow, well, that's quite an accolade, thanks!

As for why I've improved as quickly as I have, playing a lot of games has certainly played a large part. Also, I used to play Scrabble a hell of a lot (I've been on ISC for 8 years) and I used Lexpert to learn words of high probability. Back when I played Scrabble more I was pretty good (and I'm still using a clock radio I won in a real-life tournament years ago).

In the times when apterous used to be down quite frequently, I would make the most of this time by practising numbers games on crosswordtools.com, and I'd use Lexpert to revise a few words I'd recently missed.

[Gavin Chipper]

Yes. I'm still not sure who or what exactly this 'Chris Davies' guy is, but he's ridiculously good. He came from nowhere in a few months, and is probably the best player of Countdown in existence.

I'm looking forward to seeing him in his run now! (His "run" which could end up as a first game defeat!) I knew he was good anyway, but I haven't been on Apterous for months. So you reckon he's better than Bevins/Howe/Hulme/Fell/Beevers/Gallen/Travers etc?

[Kai Laddiman]

Or the fact that Innis hasn't played against a bot in his life.

.

OK, he hadn't played a bot until at least his 2000th game.

[Ian Dent]

I asked him about this and he is not stimulated by playing Bots.

[stefan]

Thanks for all your opinions here as i was thinking of posting a subject similar to this for pointers etc.

Please keep it coming......

[Ben Hunter]

I follow a strict regimen of fish at 7 am, followed by Apterous and a rice cake, then fish, then Apterous and a rice cake, then I spend an hour looking at stems, then an hour of conundrum attacks, then fish, then Apterous and rice cake, followed by Apterous and a rice cake. Day ends 9 pm.

[David Williams]

No tangelos?