c4countdown

"Innis has buzzed on 0.6 seconds"

I'd like all your opinions please on which is the best way to do this on apterous. Do you whack the keyboard?
Or do you click the letter?

Which is best?

Ian Dent wrote:"Innis has buzzed on 0.6 seconds"

I'd like all your opinions please on which is the best way to do this on apterous. Do you whack the keyboard?
Or do you click the letter?

Which is best?

Type the letter. Thankyou.

Type the letter.

THE CONUNDRUM SCRAMBLE SHOULD DISAPPEAR AS SOON AS THIS OCCURS.

Jon Corby wrote:Type the letter.

THE CONUNDRUM SCRAMBLE SHOULD DISAPPEAR AS SOON AS THIS OCCURS.

This is implemented and will roll out soon.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:Type the letter.

THE CONUNDRUM SCRAMBLE SHOULD DISAPPEAR AS SOON AS THIS OCCURS.

This is implemented and will roll out soon.

I'm not entirely convinced by this. There have been several times when I've spotted the answer and buzzed, and then had to take a moment when typing in to check I'm putting all my Ns and Is (or whatever) in the right place. Admittedly this boils down to whether one thinks it should be as much like the show as possible or not (and, naturally, there are limiting factors), but do people manage to fluke the conundrum that often to make this a problem?

Michael Wallace wrote: I'm not entirely convinced by this. There have been several times when I've spotted the answer and buzzed, and then had to take a moment when typing in to check I'm putting all my Ns and Is (or whatever) in the right place. Admittedly this boils down to whether one thinks it should be as much like the show as possible or not (and, naturally, there are limiting factors), but do people manage to fluke the conundrum that often to make this a problem?

I'll see what the reaction is like. I'm assuming it'll be one of those things like the numbers patience bar that people hate because they never see when it works their advantage. I don't think hiding the selection does anything to make it harder to check your spelling, but it does make it harder to buzz and then change your mind on something like COMMENDED/CONDEMNED.

Charlie Reams wrote:but it does make it harder to buzz and then change your mind on something like COMMENDED/CONDEMNED.

This is exactly the sort of thing I would hope it stamps out - with either of those scrambles it's likely to start with the C. The current system allows you to buzz in with that assumption, then work out the answer.

I don't get your point re N's and I's really Michael - why should you be allowed to double-check your answer and spelling, having frozen your opponent out of the game? You're supposed to buzz in WHEN YOU HAVE THE ANSWER. Not when you have a vague idea of what it might be, or how it starts. If you can't spell a word, it's kinda tough shit. Spelling is kinda essential to the game really, and while you can get away with it in some rare instances on the show, it's unavoidable on an implementation like this.

Jon Corby wrote:I don't get your point re N's and I's really Michael - why should you be allowed to double-check your answer and spelling, having frozen your opponent out of the game? You're supposed to buzz in WHEN YOU HAVE THE ANSWER. Not when you have a vague idea of what it might be, or how it starts. If you can't spell a word, it's kinda tough shit. Spelling is kinda essential to the game really, and while you can get away with it in some rare instances on the show, it's unavoidable on an implementation like this.

This isn't an actual example, but say you saw it was RECURRING, but then you weren't sure if it was RECCURING or RECURRING. Sure, you should be able to spell it, but on the show that wouldn't matter. I'm not saying this is a huge deal or anything, I'm just surprised that there are that many occasions when people manage to get to the right answer when they've buzzed in with the wrong answer (but still got the right first letter). I think my point just boils down to "it should be as similar as possible to the show", I know it isn't the show, but plenty of people complain that apterous shouldn't be a test of typing speed, I'm not convinced it should be a test of spelling speed either.

But yeah, don't think I think this is a massive deal plz.

Michael Wallace wrote:I'm just surprised that there are that many occasions when people manage to get to the right answer when they've buzzed in with the wrong answer

I don't think it's even about that really - when you're racing against the clock, it's easy to think you know what letter the answer starts with. And a lot of the time you're gonna be right. The proof of the pudding will be in the stats once this gets introduced - if there is no change, we can probably conclude that everybody was only buzzing when they knew the answer anyway and this has made no difference. I'd wager that won't be the case.

Jon Corby wrote:I don't think it's even about that really - when you're racing against the clock, it's easy to think you know what letter the answer starts with. And a lot of the time you're gonna be right.

Fair enough - I guess that's just me being a bit rubbish. I wouldn't've expected it to be easy to work out which letter a conundrum starts with, but I can totally believe that it is.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:I don't think it's even about that really - when you're racing against the clock, it's easy to think you know what letter the answer starts with. And a lot of the time you're gonna be right.

Fair enough - I guess that's just me being a bit rubbish. I wouldn't've expected it to be easy to work out which letter a conundrum starts with, but I can totally believe that it is.

In many cases I believe it is. Not always, obviously.

As I said, if there's no change to the stats following implementation, we'll assume that everyone was only buzzing when they were 100% with their answer. I don't believe this will be the case.

If Michael's concerns are right, we may have a large increase in "stolen" conundrums, where player 1 buzzes in wrongly with RECCURING or PROPELLOR and player 2 then uses that incorrect guess to then get RECURRING or PROPELLER (etc).

As far as guessing the first letter, sometimes you can do that with no anagram understanding at all, as some letters (like J, F) have a 35-45% chance of being the first letter if they appear in a conundrum selection (check out my topic on conundrum affixes).

Simon Myers wrote:If Michael's concerns are right, we may have a large increase in "stolen" conundrums, where player 1 buzzes in wrongly with RECCURING or PROPELLOR and player 2 then uses that incorrect guess to then get RECURRING or PROPELLER (etc).

I firmly believe the onus is on the player to be sure with their guess before buzzing in. If they're buzzing before they're sure in order to get in first, then that's the risk they take. I honestly can't see an argument against that which would hold any water with me.

I too will be interested in seeing the stats; the discussion here makes me suspect that this is going to be a(nother) difference between the "pro" game and the "amateur" game (if Michael will forgive me), as I'm with Michael on this one -- superstats tells me I've solved 600-odd conundrums and I think I solved after the buzz twice.

That's great Andrew, and how it should be played (save even those two changed ones)

Given that you don't change your mind after you buzz, one would assume you're not opposed to the proposed change?

Jon Corby wrote: I firmly believe the onus is on the player to be sure with their guess before buzzing in.

In a crucial conundrum on the show, you sometimes buzz before being 100% all the letters are there. Waiting a vital extra couple of seconds could cost you the game so you buzz in without being 100% sure. It will be interesting to see the results.

Jon Corby wrote:That's great Andrew, and how it should be played (save even those two changed ones)

Given that you don't change your mind after you buzz, one would assume you're not opposed to the proposed change?

I'm pretty much indifferent to slightly positive; it will take away some (possible) gamesmanship, at the cost of losing a bit of a memory jog (which generally I don't need/use (since I'm a good speller)). The one time I can see it causing problems is the ever popular type-three-letters-of-the-conundrum-then-have-to-stop-because-the-other-person-rang-in-first scenario, where occasionally I lose my train of thought waiting for the other person to time themselves out, and it's not always clear when that happens what's going on. But again, generally the other person gets it right so it doesn't matter much (and I can see "don't zone out when the other person buzzes in, then" as a valid rejoinder/tactic to this situation).

Jon Corby executive summary: I'm not opposed to the proposed change.

It's not going to be perfect unless you have a few seconds to say it through a microphone and then Apterous uses voice recognition to see if it's right or not. I'm not particularly keen on the current system because you can guess the first letter, and then add another letter and delete and add another letter and delete and so on until you work out the answer.

Perhaps keep the scramble on the screen for about 3 seconds after buzzing before disappearing?

Darren Carter wrote:It's not going to be perfect unless you have a few seconds to say it through a microphone and then Apterous uses voice recognition to see if it's right or not. I'm not particularly keen on the current system because you can guess the first letter, and then add another letter and delete and add another letter and delete and so on until you work out the answer.

Perhaps keep the scramble on the screen for about 3 seconds after buzzing before disappearing?

1) Deleting is good (except first letter) as quick typers amongst us are likely to make typos.
2) Why keep the scramble on screen for 3 seconds after buzzing? Corby's idea is if you buzz, you know the answer, so don't need any more time for it to stay on screen.

My personal view: I quite like the Conundrum letters remaining displayed, so I can check my answer during the “Patience Time”, although like many other people, I do sometimes also buzz speculatively just before the clock runs out, to give me an extra few seconds of solving time. It’s the same for everyone, so I don’t think it’s particularly unfair. Anyhow, it will be interesting to see if the proposed change has much effect on my performance.

Just one logistical note: the change will make it extremely difficult to play conundrums in Greek, or any language which uses accented or non-English characters in the conundrums. (Currently Greek is the only such language available on apterous, so highly limited impact for now.)

Additionally, I won’t be able to solve conundrums until I get the keyboard fixed on the computer I use to play apterous, although I imagine this is an extremely rare occurrence amongst apterites. (I’m playing with mouse only at the moment, which I why I’m uncommunicative and ignoring all challenges...)

It's an interesting one. I'm not against Corby's suggestion as such but would another possible solution be to make the patience bar shorter?

On a related note, if you can delete letters of the conundrum, why not words that you'd ve started typing before the time runs out but have to finish after the time? Again, a reasonable patience bar should sort out "cheating". I've messed up a few times by pressing the wrong letter.

Also numbers games allow for a reasonable amount of fudging time after the clock. Are people generally happy with this?

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also numbers games allow for a reasonable amount of fudging time after the clock. Are people generally happy with this?

Imo the number fudging is much more open to abuse than conundrum fudging (but, as noted above, I can accept that this might just be me being crap at conundrums). But I'm not sure there's an as easily implementable 'solution' as there is in the conundrums case. Given that I imagine most players don't use the notes section to put in their solution, it's hard to see a way of preventing fudging that doesn't overly penalise legitimate players.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also numbers games allow for a reasonable amount of fudging time after the clock. Are people generally happy with this?

Imo the number fudging is much more open to abuse than conundrum fudging (but, as noted above, I can accept that this might just be me being crap at conundrums). But I'm not sure there's an as easily implementable 'solution' as there is in the conundrums case. Given that I imagine most players don't use the notes section to put in their solution, it's hard to see a way of preventing fudging that doesn't overly penalise legitimate players.

Yeah, the numbers bar is already pretty tough - I've lost points before when I've had a not-exact-solution early on, but then forgotten it by time it came to enter it. I'm not particularly complaining as that's my fault, but the point is that numbers rounds are different from letters rounds (inc. conundrum) in that you can say exactly when you have a (/the) word - if you can't, then you haven't got it. With numbers you have to recall something a bit more complex which takes time and thought.

As for Gavin's points, I don't think making the patience bar shorter helps that much - you have to still cater for slow typists, and you're still allowing time to be sure/change an answer. And I also agree that whatever solution Charlie adopts for this should also be applicable to 'out of time' letters declarations.

Jon Corby wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also numbers games allow for a reasonable amount of fudging time after the clock. Are people generally happy with this?

Imo the number fudging is much more open to abuse than conundrum fudging (but, as noted above, I can accept that this might just be me being crap at conundrums). But I'm not sure there's an as easily implementable 'solution' as there is in the conundrums case. Given that I imagine most players don't use the notes section to put in their solution, it's hard to see a way of preventing fudging that doesn't overly penalise legitimate players.

Yeah, the numbers bar is already pretty tough - I've lost points before when I've had a not-exact-solution early on, but then forgotten it by time it came to enter it. I'm not particularly complaining as that's my fault, but the point is that numbers rounds are different from letters rounds (inc. conundrum) in that you can say exactly when you have a (/the) word - if you can't, then you haven't got it. With numbers you have to recall something a bit more complex which takes time and thought.

As for Gavin's points, I don't think making the patience bar shorter helps that much - you have to still cater for slow typists, and you're still allowing time to be sure/change an answer. And I also agree that whatever solution Charlie adopts for this should also be applicable to 'out of time' letters declarations.

But wouldn't any patience bar be tough if you've forgotten your numbers solution? I'm not sure what the best answer is but you get five seconds per click I think and you can change your previous one. So effectively you have an extra 10 seconds before you have to decide anything if you keep cool enough.

Andrew Feist wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:That's great Andrew, and how it should be played (save even those two changed ones)

Given that you don't change your mind after you buzz, one would assume you're not opposed to the proposed change?

I'm pretty much indifferent to slightly positive; it will take away some (possible) gamesmanship, at the cost of losing a bit of a memory jog (which generally I don't need/use (since I'm a good speller)). The one time I can see it causing problems is the ever popular type-three-letters-of-the-conundrum-then-have-to-stop-because-the-other-person-rang-in-first scenario, where occasionally I lose my train of thought waiting for the other person to time themselves out, and it's not always clear when that happens what's going on. But again, generally the other person gets it right so it doesn't matter much (and I can see "don't zone out when the other person buzzes in, then" as a valid rejoinder/tactic to this situation).

Jon Corby executive summary: I'm not opposed to the proposed change.

This is why we need a buzzer sound on the conundrum.

Gavin Chipper wrote:But wouldn't any patience bar be tough if you've forgotten your numbers solution? I'm not sure what the best answer is but you get five seconds per click I think and you can change your previous one. So effectively you have an extra 10 seconds before you have to decide anything if you keep cool enough.

Hold on mate I think we're getting confused now - I was responding to the notion of speeding up the patience bar for the conundrum (instead of blanking the letters), and then separately talking about the (separate) problem of numbers fudging. Number fudging does undoubtedly go on, but I can't think of a good way to combat that at the moment, and I don't think any method will work for both numbers and letters rounds because they are so different.

Jon Corby wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:But wouldn't any patience bar be tough if you've forgotten your numbers solution? I'm not sure what the best answer is but you get five seconds per click I think and you can change your previous one. So effectively you have an extra 10 seconds before you have to decide anything if you keep cool enough.

Hold on mate I think we're getting confused now - I was responding to the notion of speeding up the patience bar for the conundrum (instead of blanking the letters), and then separately talking about the (separate) problem of numbers fudging. Number fudging does undoubtedly go on, but I can't think of a good way to combat that at the moment, and I don't think any method will work for both numbers and letters rounds because they are so different.

I don't think we're getting confused. I probably quoted more of your post than I needed, but you were saying that the numbers bar is pretty tough and then went on to recall the time you forgot your solution and I was saying that if you forget it, any amount of time is tough. And then I went onto discuss the numbers patience bar in more detail.

But yes, these are separate issues, and sorry for blurring them.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:But wouldn't any patience bar be tough if you've forgotten your numbers solution? I'm not sure what the best answer is but you get five seconds per click I think and you can change your previous one. So effectively you have an extra 10 seconds before you have to decide anything if you keep cool enough.

Hold on mate I think we're getting confused now - I was responding to the notion of speeding up the patience bar for the conundrum (instead of blanking the letters), and then separately talking about the (separate) problem of numbers fudging. Number fudging does undoubtedly go on, but I can't think of a good way to combat that at the moment, and I don't think any method will work for both numbers and letters rounds because they are so different.

I don't think we're getting confused. I probably quoted more of your post than I needed, but you were saying that the numbers bar is pretty tough and then went on to recall the time you forgot your solution and I was saying that if you forget it, any amount of time is tough. And then I went onto discuss the numbers patience bar in more detail.

But yes, these are separate issues, and sorry for blurring them.

I'm sorry too. Can we just forget about this?

So this is implemented now. I don't know if my lag is exceptional (and I practice clean living, at least in the narrow sense outlined above), but so far I've never not gotten the entire conundrum typed in before the letters went away. Don't know if other people are in the same situation?

(Also: did you change the clock mechanism at the same time, so that now it stops when I type a letter, or did I just not notice before? Currently, the scenario is basically: I push a letter, the clock stops, I type the rest of the conundrum, wait for the letters to go away which is my cue to press return, the clock moves forward for about 1.5s making me think I got it wrong, the clock stops again, I look over to the right and notice I got it correct.)

Andrew Feist wrote:So this is implemented now. I don't know if my lag is exceptional (and I practice clean living, at least in the narrow sense outlined above), but so far I've never not gotten the entire conundrum typed in before the letters went away. Don't know if other people are in the same situation?

(Also: did you change the clock mechanism at the same time, so that now it stops when I type a letter, or did I just not notice before? Currently, the scenario is basically: I push a letter, the clock stops, I type the rest of the conundrum, wait for the letters to go away which is my cue to press return, the clock moves forward for about 1.5s making me think I got it wrong, the clock stops again, I look over to the right and notice I got it correct.)

Yeah, the clock does have this thing of continuing forward after you've entered your correct word for about a second but then stops and says you've got it correct. Don't know why. Happens to me too.

Jon Corby wrote:I'm sorry too. Can we just forget about this?

No. The damage is done.

Any stats on the impact of the conundrum-buzzy-disappeary thing Charles? I don't really know what, but have sub-second spots decreased? Have times on the whole increased or stayed the same? More wrong answers? Can you draw any conclusions? (I haven't really thought about what you can actually examine, as you might notice)

Jon Corby wrote:Any stats on the impact of the conundrum-buzzy-disappeary thing Charles? I don't really know what, but have sub-second spots decreased? Have times on the whole increased or stayed the same? More wrong answers? Can you draw any conclusions? (I haven't really thought about what you can actually examine, as you might notice)

My conclusion is that Apterous is now harder than Countdown (well playing it at home anyway) where as before it was about the same.

Marc Meakin wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:Any stats on the impact of the conundrum-buzzy-disappeary thing Charles? I don't really know what, but have sub-second spots decreased? Have times on the whole increased or stayed the same? More wrong answers? Can you draw any conclusions? (I haven't really thought about what you can actually examine, as you might notice)

My conclusion is that Apterous is now harder than Countdown (well playing it at home anyway) where as before it was about the same.

Why?

(ETA that is, why - it only disappears when you know what the answer is. How does that make it harder?)

Jon Corby wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:Any stats on the impact of the conundrum-buzzy-disappeary thing Charles? I don't really know what, but have sub-second spots decreased? Have times on the whole increased or stayed the same? More wrong answers? Can you draw any conclusions? (I haven't really thought about what you can actually examine, as you might notice)

My conclusion is that Apterous is now harder than Countdown (well playing it at home anyway) where as before it was about the same.

Why?

(ETA that is, why - it only disappears when you know what the answer is. How does that make it harder?)

I seem to have deveolped the habit of forgetting the spelling of certain conundrums, so I used to look at the screen as I typed which I now cannot do.

Marc Meakin wrote:I seem to have deveolped the habit of forgetting the spelling of certain conundrums, so I used to look at the screen as I typed which I now cannot do.

Okay, that doesn't make sense to me. They're not "conundrums that you have to remember how to spell", they're just... words. Knowing the spelling of the word is kinda key to solving the anagram, isn't it?

(I'm not saying you're "wrong", just it seems weird to me)

I'll see if I can gather some numbers at some point. My main feeling is that existing players have mainly taken to moaning about it rather than getting the idea of not buzzing til you've solved it, but for new players I imagine it's had the desired effect.

Jon Corby wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:I seem to have deveolped the habit of forgetting the spelling of certain conundrums, so I used to look at the screen as I typed which I now cannot do.

Okay, that doesn't make sense to me. They're not "conundrums that you have to remember how to spell", they're just... words. Knowing the spelling of the word is kinda key to solving the anagram, isn't it?

(I'm not saying you're "wrong", just it seems weird to me)

I tried to explain this before, not sure what happened, but I'll try again.

Consider WAKIZASHI. You see the shuffle, and you're not sure if it's spelt WAKAZASHI or WAKIZASHI, but you know it from AAHIKSWZ?. On the show it wouldn't be an issue, but on apterous it is. You can then debate whether it matters if it's like the show, or whether the handful of conundrums that are like this make it enough of a problem (probably not, given the rife Handsfording that was apparently going on). But that's the principle, at least from my perspective.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:I seem to have deveolped the habit of forgetting the spelling of certain conundrums, so I used to look at the screen as I typed which I now cannot do.

Okay, that doesn't make sense to me. They're not "conundrums that you have to remember how to spell", they're just... words. Knowing the spelling of the word is kinda key to solving the anagram, isn't it?

(I'm not saying you're "wrong", just it seems weird to me)

I tried to explain this before, not sure what happened, but I'll try again.

Consider WAKIZASHI. You see the shuffle, and you're not sure if it's spelt WAKAZASHI or WAKIZASHI, but you know it from AAHIKSWZ?. On the show it wouldn't be an issue, but on apterous it is. You can then debate whether it matters if it's like the show, or whether the handful of conundrums that are like this make it enough of a problem (probably not, given the rife Handsfording that was apparently going on). But that's the principle, at least from my perspective.

What he said.

Personally I don't think the small number of cases where the different spellings are pronounced the same and hence you could get away with it on the show outweigh the prevention of hansfording.

Michael Wallace wrote:Consider WAKIZASHI. You see the shuffle, and you're not sure if it's spelt WAKAZASHI or WAKIZASHI, but you know it from AAHIKSWZ?. On the show it wouldn't be an issue, but on apterous it is. You can then debate whether it matters if it's like the show, or whether the handful of conundrums that are like this make it enough of a problem (probably not, given the rife Handsfording that was apparently going on). But that's the principle, at least from my perspective.

You could always look at which letters are there before buzzing in.

Hugh Binnie wrote:You could always look at which letters are there before buzzing in.

What a bizarre notion, that the onus should be on the player to have an answer before buzzing in to give their answer.

Jon Corby wrote:

Hugh Binnie wrote:You could always look at which letters are there before buzzing in.

What a bizarre notion, that the onus should be on the player to have an answer before buzzing in to give their answer.

GTFO, freaks!

Michael Wallace wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:I seem to have deveolped the habit of forgetting the spelling of certain conundrums, so I used to look at the screen as I typed which I now cannot do.

Okay, that doesn't make sense to me. They're not "conundrums that you have to remember how to spell", they're just... words. Knowing the spelling of the word is kinda key to solving the anagram, isn't it?

(I'm not saying you're "wrong", just it seems weird to me)

I tried to explain this before, not sure what happened, but I'll try again.

Consider WAKIZASHI. You see the shuffle, and you're not sure if it's spelt WAKAZASHI or WAKIZASHI, but you know it from AAHIKSWZ?. On the show it wouldn't be an issue, but on apterous it is. You can then debate whether it matters if it's like the show, or whether the handful of conundrums that are like this make it enough of a problem (probably not, given the rife Handsfording that was apparently going on). But that's the principle, at least from my perspective.

Whatever, douche.

Jon Corby wrote:

Hugh Binnie wrote:You could always look at which letters are there before buzzing in.

What a bizarre notion, that the onus should be on the player to have an answer before buzzing in to give their answer.

Oh for crying out loud. My only point is that on the show it wouldn't matter. I'm not claiming that this is even relevant when apterous != Countdown, and nor am I claiming that the new system is wrong or unfair or whatever. I was just trying to explain the principle behind why it can be a bit annoying.

I get you, Mr Raccoon. Can we all be friends now (except Alec Rivers)?

Michael Wallace wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:

Hugh Binnie wrote:You could always look at which letters are there before buzzing in.

What a bizarre notion, that the onus should be on the player to have an answer before buzzing in to give their answer.

Oh for crying out loud. My only point is that on the show it wouldn't matter. I'm not claiming that this is even relevant when apterous != Countdown, and nor am I claiming that the new system is wrong or unfair or whatever. I was just trying to explain the principle behind why it can be a bit annoying.

Sure. But on the show you also can't go "C...........ON............DEMNED!" so you know, it's swings and roundabouts, innit.

BTW FTR I don't particularly like the 'crazy' conundrums like WAKAWAZA-whatever-it-was-you-said, as I can't imagine they'd ever be used on the show (although they are getting slightly further out in series finals/CoC), but isn't it only the leet who get them now? Regular conundrums for regular Joes now?

Jon Corby wrote: BTW FTR I don't particularly like the 'crazy' conundrums like WAKAWAZA-whatever-it-was-you-said, as I can't imagine they'd ever be used on the show (although they are getting slightly further out in series finals/CoC), but isn't it only the leet who get them now? Regular conundrums for regular Joes now?

I only put in conundrums which were in my vocabulary. Obviously my vocabulary is weird for various reasons but there was a surprising shortage of people willing to read 16000 words four times (and I'd be happy to send the rejected ones to anyone else to review). You might say WAKIZASHI is crazy but I've seen and used it more than, say, GRIMALKIN or ALLOTROPE, which would also have been considered crazy a year ago. Damian has caused a kind of arms race on this so I'm just responding to the demand for more difficult practice conundrums.

The difficulty balancer shields most players from the nastiest offerings, for the most part, so I think this is the best compromise.