c4countdown

Sorry Charlie, i meant as in your first link.

Gaelic language (s)!

Klingon.

Esperanto.

A skinny Latte.

I sometimes think it's a shame that games can get lost in the vastness of the Apterous database because of tiebreaks. I'm not sure what the best way round this is - maybe if the first x rounds of a game fit a particular format, then they count towards that format regardless of what comes after and if you click on the link of that game from the records page (if it makes the records page), then the last y rounds will be greyed out or something. Also under the main score for a game, it could have alternate scores underneath for any other formats it may happen to fit, counting from round 1. But when you click on the game from the records page of a format, the relevant score would be the largest/highlighted or whatever.

For example, I often wonder how many numbers attacks have been 200 all after 20 rounds.

-Sometimes when I am typing in the chat box in a game, the menu to pick numbers pops up, and as soon as I press a key on the keyboard, I have accidentally chosen 1 large. Anything which stops this happening would be great

-Also, most of the lists of words on statlland show around 100 words. It would be nice if you had a few values to chose between in regards to the numbers of results shown when looking at these lists.

-I've always disliked the "word search" box on lexplorer, mainly because where it says:
"Showing x games featuring the word [word]", it counts single rounds where both players declare the word as two games featuring that word, and also counts games where the word features in more then one round as two (or more) games. I would like this box to be kept, but instead of having the phrase "Showing x games featuring the word [word]", have another box with the following table

---------------------------Standard--All variants
No. rounds avilable
No. rounds available as max
No. of times declared

edit: counting the number of rounds where short words have been available might be a bit tiresome for the apto computer, so maybe only fill in those boxes for words that are of a certain length or longer.

Can we have a way of buzzing for conundrums whereby you can use the number keys to buzz, e.g. buzzing with key 1= using the letter in position one of the scramble and ao forth? The extra half a second time required to find a key on the keyboard and/or point at the letter with the mouse is so very often the difference between victory and defeat, particularly against bots like Rex & the Guardian who aren't hampered by such restrictions.

Ben Wilson wrote:Can we have a way of buzzing for conundrums whereby you can use the number keys to buzz, e.g. buzzing with key 1= using the letter in position one of the scramble and ao forth? The extra half a second time required to find a key on the keyboard and/or point at the letter with the mouse is so very often the difference between victory and defeat, particularly against bots like Rex & the Guardian who aren't hampered by such restrictions.

Er...if I see an S, I can press it in half a second at most. If I see an S in the middle somewhere, it would take far longer to recognise it was in the 6th position (and might hit 5 accidentally with fat fingers) and press 6 than it would just to find S. A bad idea.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:Can we have a way of buzzing for conundrums whereby you can use the number keys to buzz, e.g. buzzing with key 1= using the letter in position one of the scramble and ao forth? The extra half a second time required to find a key on the keyboard and/or point at the letter with the mouse is so very often the difference between victory and defeat, particularly against bots like Rex & the Guardian who aren't hampered by such restrictions.

Er...if I see an S, I can press it in half a second at most. If I see an S in the middle somewhere, it would take far longer to recognise it was in the 6th position (and might hit 5 accidentally with fat fingers) and press 6 than it would just to find S. A bad idea.

Well whoop-dee-doo for you, but I've never been able to touch-type and it's frustrating when I spot conundrums instantly but by the time I've finished typing it in it tells me 'well done you got it in 1.7 seconds' aka 'about a second slower than you would have done on-screen'. Having my fingers poised over 9 keys would make things a lot more level than having to hunt for one key out of 26.

Ben Wilson wrote: Well whoop-dee-doo for you, but I've never been able to touch-type and it's frustrating when I spot conundrums instantly but by the time I've finished typing it in it tells me 'well done you got it in 1.7 seconds' aka 'about a second slower than you would have done on-screen'. Having my fingers poised over 9 keys would make things a lot more level than having to hunt for one key out of 26.

And you'd bank yourself to count what position the first letter is in and find that number and press it just as quickly? Good luck with that.

Kirk Bevins wrote:And you'd bank yourself to count what position the first letter is in and find that number and press it just as quickly? Good luck with that.

It seems pretty plausible to me that someone who couldn't touchtype could employ Ben's method quicker than trying to find one of 26 letters on a keyboard. I really don't think it's that hard to identify the position of something in a list of 9, either.

Ben Wilson wrote:Can we have a way of buzzing for conundrums whereby you can use the number keys to buzz, e.g. buzzing with key 1= using the letter in position one of the scramble and ao forth? The extra half a second time required to find a key on the keyboard and/or point at the letter with the mouse is so very often the difference between victory and defeat, particularly against bots like Rex & the Guardian who aren't hampered by such restrictions.

What about just hitting space/return? Now the letters disappear would this be very cheatable? I always spend the first second looking for the first letter too when I've seen it (although tbf i usually spend at least 29.5 seconds seeing it )

Michael Wallace wrote: It seems pretty plausible to me that someone who couldn't touchtype could employ Ben's method quicker than trying to find one of 26 letters on a keyboard. I really don't think it's that hard to identify the position of something in a list of 9, either.

Hmm...maybe. The one problem I see, perhaps, is to beat Rex on a game, you have to answer the conundrum quicker than about 0.7 seconds usually. Now sometimes in Goatdown when I have a chance to beat him, I wait to see the scramble and, since there is no time to solve it, I see a letter in the solution and press it quick. This is very often not quick enough. What sometimes works if if you just press say S after it's revealed and hope that a) it has an S in the scramble and b) the solution starts with S. Of course this is highly unlikely to be true as there are so many possibilities. However, with this new system, I have a 1 in 9 chance of guessing the first letter right and will improve my chances at beating Rex.

Lesley Hines wrote:What about just hitting space/return? Now the letters disappear would this be very cheatable?

I, too, have often wished there were just a button you could press for the purposes of buzzing in, no matter what the first letter was. Also, there's that thing where if you both buzz in at almost the same time and your opponent gets it wrong, you're forced to start your answer as soon as they're declared wrong, with the same letter that you originally buzzed with. (So if you were thinking of the same wrong answer and it starts with a different letter than the right answer does, you're screwed.) Is it this way for a reason – i.e. "if you want to buzz at all, you'd better be prepared to take that risk"?

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote: Well whoop-dee-doo for you, but I've never been able to touch-type and it's frustrating when I spot conundrums instantly but by the time I've finished typing it in it tells me 'well done you got it in 1.7 seconds' aka 'about a second slower than you would have done on-screen'. Having my fingers poised over 9 keys would make things a lot more level than having to hunt for one key out of 26.

And you'd bank yourself to count what position the first letter is in and find that number and press it just as quickly? Good luck with that.

Works for me - my brain is much quicker with counting stuff like that than it is with trying to find the correct letter.

Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

Miriam Nussbaum wrote:

Lesley Hines wrote:What about just hitting space/return? Now the letters disappear would this be very cheatable?

I, too, have often wished there were just a button you could press for the purposes of buzzing in, no matter what the first letter was. Also, there's that thing where if you both buzz in at almost the same time and your opponent gets it wrong, you're forced to start your answer as soon as they're declared wrong, with the same letter that you originally buzzed with. (So if you were thinking of the same wrong answer and it starts with a different letter than the right answer does, you're screwed.) Is it this way for a reason – i.e. "if you want to buzz at all, you'd better be prepared to take that risk"?

I agree it should scrap your answer and make you buzz in again if the other player beats you to it. Also, now that the letters disappear, a case could well be made for pressing space to buzz rather than the first letter.

Gavin Chipper wrote: I agree it should scrap your answer and make you buzz in again if the other player beats you to it. Also, now that the letters disappear, a case could well be made for pressing space to buzz rather than the first letter.

Well maybe not space, but a different key. (The reason I say not space is if you'd accidentally press it twice, it would say "Sorry I've misread" and lock you out.)

Gavin Chipper wrote:Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

If the bots are inconsistent across disciplines then they get milked for ratings points.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

If the bots are inconsistent across disciplines then they get milked for ratings points.

Maybe its time to have a human v human only rating.

Marc Meakin wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

If the bots are inconsistent across disciplines then they get milked for ratings points.

Maybe its time to have a human v human only rating.

Do you mean two ratings systems, or not counting bots for rating points at all?

Charlie Reams wrote: Do you mean two ratings systems, or not counting bots for rating points at all?

I personally think games against bots are for training and should not be included in GOTW etc. but I guess I am in a small minority.
It would be intersting, though, to see how human v human only ratings would affect the leaderboard.
But sure, have both.

Marc Meakin wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote: Do you mean two ratings systems, or not counting bots for rating points at all?

I personally think games against bots are for training and should not be included in GOTW etc. but I guess I am in a small minority.
It would be intersting, though, to see how human v human only ratings would affect the leaderboard.
But sure, have both.

Having both would make for such a confusing interface, and I'd get endless emails from people asking why their ratings didn't match up. I really like the fact that apterous largely treats human and bot players indistinguishably, and I'd like to maintain that as far as possible. The bots are still quite underrated, but that's more to do with the shortcomings of the ratings algorithm itself than its application.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote: Do you mean two ratings systems, or not counting bots for rating points at all?

I personally think games against bots are for training and should not be included in GOTW etc. but I guess I am in a small minority.
It would be intersting, though, to see how human v human only ratings would affect the leaderboard.
But sure, have both.

Having both would make for such a confusing interface, and I'd get endless emails from people asking why their ratings didn't match up. I really like the fact that apterous largely treats human and bot players indistinguishably, and I'd like to maintain that as far as possible. The bots are still quite underrated, but that's more to do with the shortcomings of the ratings algorithm itself than its application.

Fairy nuff.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

If the bots are inconsistent across disciplines then they get milked for ratings points.

Well yes, but 0.7 seconds (which I think is his standard) seems a bit harsh to me. And you can still milk some of the other bots!

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Does Rex really need to be so hard to beat on conundrums?

If the bots are inconsistent across disciplines then they get milked for ratings points.

Well yes, but 0.7 seconds (which I think is his standard) seems a bit harsh to me. And you can still milk some of the other bots!

To be fair for a while he averaged 0.4, which isn't really humanly beatable.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote: I agree it should scrap your answer and make you buzz in again if the other player beats you to it. Also, now that the letters disappear, a case could well be made for pressing space to buzz rather than the first letter.

Well maybe not space, but a different key. (The reason I say not space is if you'd accidentally press it twice, it would say "Sorry I've misread" and lock you out.)

I've thought about this again and decided it's not that great an idea anyway. It might be OK for early buzzes, but later on in the 30 seconds, there's every chance that someone might have written the scramble down. So people will start buzzing on 29 seconds just to buy an extra 5 seconds.

As well as simply having 'perfect games' on a format page, it'd be nice to see how many games also achieved all but one maxes or all but two (also as a % of total games played), especially for the bigger formats (i.e. anything with more than 1000 games played). 'Top losing maxes' would also be a good one.

It tells you in chat when you set a personal high score, but knowing what they are would be good. Some kind of personal high score page?

D Eadie wrote:It tells you in chat when you set a personal high score, but knowing what they are would be good. Some kind of personal high score page?

Cha-ching

That was quick....

I want to be able to specify 15 rounder when i click "im feeling lucky" on classic games

Also, when you are clicked on a users name their name should be in bold when you go on the "games in progress" tab

Is there any chance of having a cancel button when trying to input a numbers solution, obviously not resetting the clock? I'm not sure whether it should cancel everything or just the last part done but I reckon it would be useful in preventing mis clicks.

Craig, there is a give up button available to use when entering your solution

craig wrote:Is there any chance of having a cancel button when trying to input a numbers solution, obviously not resetting the clock? I'm not sure whether it should cancel everything or just the last part done but I reckon it would be useful in preventing mis clicks.

You know you can cancel your last click anyway don't you just by clicking something else? So 100+ can become 100*.

This obviously won't save you if you have something like 100+(9*4) and you start with 100+. You are screwed.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

craig wrote:Is there any chance of having a cancel button when trying to input a numbers solution, obviously not resetting the clock? I'm not sure whether it should cancel everything or just the last part done but I reckon it would be useful in preventing mis clicks.

You know you can cancel your last click anyway don't you just by clicking something else? So 100+ can become 100*.

This obviously won't save you if you have something like 100+(9*4) and you start with 100+. You are screwed.

I have never tried it, but did Charlie not say that the clicking still followed order of operations? (I.e., if you clicked 100+9*4, and then hit "confirm", do you get 136 or 436?)

Yep I'm pretty sure clicking 100+9*4 would be interpreted as 100+(9*4). But there still are similar situations where you can screw yourself, like clicking 100* when you want 100*(9-4).

Gavin Chipper wrote:
You know you can cancel your last click anyway don't you just by clicking something else? So 100+ can become 100*.

This obviously won't save you if you have something like 100+(9*4) and you start with 100+. You are screwed.

Yeah I know about this, but like in the example Innis used, you can make it impossible for yourself and so a cancel button would be nice. I suppose the simple answer is to not mess up.

Jason, I do know of the give up button but that doesn't help me too much with getting the answer right.

craig wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:
You know you can cancel your last click anyway don't you just by clicking something else? So 100+ can become 100*.

This obviously won't save you if you have something like 100+(9*4) and you start with 100+. You are screwed.

Yeah I know about this, but like in the example Innis used, you can make it impossible for yourself and so a cancel button would be nice. I suppose the simple answer is to not mess up.

Jason, I do know of the give up button but that doesn't help me too much with getting the answer right.

I don't think I'd do a cancel button, because Virtual Rachel computes intermediate targets for you and therefore it would just encourage more numbers fluffing. It sounds like a brackets button would solve your problems, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

Charlie Reams wrote:
I don't think I'd do a cancel button, because Virtual Rachel computes intermediate targets for you and therefore it would just encourage more numbers fluffing. It sounds like a brackets button would solve your problems, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

I tried thinking of a way that the cancel button could be used that didn't encourage even more blag but couldn't so brackets are probably the best solution, thanks Charlie. At the end of the day, I really should just stop pressing the wrong buttons whilst inputting the solution (not that I do this all the time, it's usually just when I'm close to maxing a bullet game and panic)

Innis Carson wrote:Yep I'm pretty sure clicking 100+9*4 would be interpreted as 100+(9*4). But there still are similar situations where you can screw yourself, like clicking 100* when you want 100*(9-4).

Yeah, that's what I meant really. I didn't put enough thought into my example.

Charlie Reams wrote:I don't think I'd do a cancel button, because Virtual Rachel computes intermediate targets for you and therefore it would just encourage more numbers fluffing. It sounds like a brackets button would solve your problems, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

But there used to be brackets - I thought you dumped them because it was hard to have them and make it impossible to use them as a time-stalling device.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I don't think I'd do a cancel button, because Virtual Rachel computes intermediate targets for you and therefore it would just encourage more numbers fluffing. It sounds like a brackets button would solve your problems, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

But there used to be brackets - I thought you dumped them because it was hard to have them and make it impossible to use them as a time-stalling device.

I think I'd just make it so that opening/closing a bracket didn't reset the patience bar.

How many times have they allowed someone to change their answer after the clock had stopped? Never

Jason Larsen wrote:How many times have they allowed someone to change their answer after the clock had stopped? Never

Incorrect. An example of this was transmitted just last week. Anyway, Jason, this is apterous, not Countdown.

Jason Larsen wrote:How many times have they allowed someone to change their answer after the clock had stopped? Never

How many times on Countdown has someone lost points on the maths round because they said +5 before realising they meant to say -5? How many times on Countdown has someone lost points because of a spelling mistake which they shouldn't have made. For example: jusitfy instead of justify? Also, what Kirk said.

Oh, sometimes you mouth says what it doesn't mean to say!

For example, if someone said, "I declare 100" and their math was wrong when they were doing it against the clock, it is still acceptable if they correct themselves verbally out of time?

Jason Larsen wrote:Oh, sometimes you mouth says what it doesn't mean to say!

For example, if someone said, "I declare 100" and their math was wrong when they were doing it against the clock, it is still acceptable if they correct themselves verbally out of time?

I would say it's cheating rather like changing your word after your opponent declares, but people read out their own solutions so how would you ever know?

Maybe

Jason Larsen wrote:Oh, sometimes you mouth says what it doesn't mean to say!

But it's far more likely that you will accidentally click the wrong button.

For example, if someone said, "I declare 100" and their math was wrong when they were doing it against the clock, it is still acceptable if they correct themselves verbally out of time?

On Apterous you have to do your numbers solution against the clock anyway and you don't get extra time to correct errors.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Jason Larsen wrote:Oh, sometimes you mouth says what it doesn't mean to say!

But it's far more likely that you will accidentally click the wrong button.

For example, if someone said, "I declare 100" and their math was wrong when they were doing it against the clock, it is still acceptable if they correct themselves verbally out of time?

{/quote}On Apterous you have to do your numbers solution against the clock anyway and you don't get extra time to correct errors.

That's what Craig thought Charlie would do!

Derek had a good idea in chat, a button that randomly chooses a variant for you and your opponent to play if you cant decide

A filter on lexplorer that lets you specify an interval for the word length to fall within. Would be mostly useful for Prefix, suffix and "words using" boxes.

Another suggestion is a feature on the site that generates random selections for you to copy into word and print off for when your not around apterous. So you could chose from 10, 25, 50 or 100 selections of either letters, numbers or conundrums. It would also be sick if it generated a list of the maxes, in case you wanted to print that off too.

JackHurst wrote:A filter on lexplorer that lets you specify an interval for the word length to fall within. Would be mostly useful for Prefix, suffix and "words using" boxes.

Another suggestion is a feature on the site that generates random selections for you to copy into word and print off for when your not around apterous. So you could chose from 10, 25, 50 or 100 selections of either letters, numbers or conundrums. It would also be sick if it generated a list of the maxes, in case you wanted to print that off too.

With regards to this I've been going to the gym recently as I'm a fat bastard and I need to lose some weight. Listening to music doesn't suffice so I've printed off some lists from the stats, e.g. "words never been spotted" and just stared at them. Whilst this isn't the most exciting thing in the world, it has helped me learn words and I then printed off the list of words which people forget to put an S on the end. This was a rather more tedious list but I was struggling to think of things to print off and memorise whilst running. So, in short, any word lists or word stems or classic rounds etc for me to print off and look at when exercising would be brill.

JackHurst wrote:A filter on lexplorer that lets you specify an interval for the word length to fall within. Would be mostly useful for Prefix, suffix and "words using" boxes.

Another suggestion is a feature on the site that generates random selections for you to copy into word and print off for when your not around apterous. So you could chose from 10, 25, 50 or 100 selections of either letters, numbers or conundrums. It would also be sick if it generated a list of the maxes, in case you wanted to print that off too.

Is sick good?

Kirk Bevins wrote:So, in short, any word lists or word stems or classic rounds etc for me to print off and look at when exercising would be brill.

You could record yourself reading the list out, save it as an mp3 and put it on your iPod (or whatever) to listen to in the gym. That might be easier to concentrate on and, as a bonus, would reduce the risk of major nerd alerts.

Alec Rivers wrote: You could record yourself reading the list out, save it as an mp3 and put it on your iPod (or whatever) to listen to in the gym. That might be easier to concentrate on and, as a bonus, would reduce the risk of major nerd alerts.

Have you seen me with technology, Alec?

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Alec Rivers wrote: You could record yourself reading the list out, save it as an mp3 and put it on your iPod (or whatever) to listen to in the gym. That might be easier to concentrate on and, as a bonus, would reduce the risk of major nerd alerts.

Have you seen me with technology, Alec?

Oh yeah, good point.