c4countdown

R13 FEROCITY.

Where's the disclaimer?

This guy is really rather good. If I was Jason Cullen, I'd be worried. If I was David O'Donnell, I'd even be slightly worried.

DIOPTASE is a useful equaller in round 2.

He whopped me, i had no chance!Oh well

R5

25 9 9 8 3 2 Target 735

(8 + 2) x 9 x 9 = 810

810 - (25 - 3) = 735

lelb72 wrote:He whopped me, i had no chance!Oh well

Well done though for getting 2 wins .

Does it get easier the more games you win or does it get harder with each game?

EDIT: Were the letters there in Round 7 to be able to make the 2 words Joseph RULES

Am surprised no-one's mentioned this: with the help of that last-gasp conundrum, hasn't the challenger achieved the highest-ever score by a debutant? Correct me if I'm wrong... but I make it that the previous record was 123, and that's stood for more than 6 years!

In any case, mightily impressive performance by him - as Richard said, I'd be worried if I were David O (luckily, he won't have got to see today's game...). Hard luck Lee, this guy's a goodie.

You have to be careful not to relax too much when you've won a couple of times as you never know who you are going to be up against. I blame a spider that was crawling under the desk when i was playing, i lost concentration (any excuse)
As you say he was just very clever. If you watch him he studies the letters first before deciding a word. I cant and didnt do that. Thanks to those who congratulated me anyway.

lelb72 wrote:As you say he was just very clever. If you watch him he studies the letters first before deciding a word. I cant and didnt do that.

You actually scored quite well then, if you didn't pay any attention to the letters when deciding your words

You make me want to call you something quite rude Corby but i know you're only trying to wind me up now.

Corby wrote:

lelb72 wrote:As you say he was just very clever. If you watch him he studies the letters first before deciding a word. I cant and didnt do that.

You actually scored quite well then, if you didn't pay any attention to the letters when deciding your words

Hmm, I really should be revising, but all I can think about now is devising a strategy to play optimally when you don't know what the letters selection is. If I fail I'm holding you directly responsible.

Richard Brittain wrote:This guy is really rather good. If I was Jason Cullen, I'd be worried. If I was David O'Donnell, I'd even be slightly worried.

Who's worried?

Paul Howe wrote:Hmm, I really should be revising, but all I can think about now is devising a strategy to play optimally when you don't know what the letters selection is. If I fail I'm holding you directly responsible.

This intrigued me, I have to say. There's not a strategy that you could employ to win the game, but what would be the word that would leave you with the least egg on your face? For a start, most times your word's not even going to be within the selection, and even if it is, it's probably not going to win the round, unless you get lucky and your opponent declares something invalid.

Based on every letter selection from this series - and assuming your opponent always declares nothing, or something that's disallowed - the best bets are:

ATE/EAT/ETA/TEA would score 3 points in 34.09% of selections, average 11.25 points per game
TE would score 2 points in 48.48% of selections, average 10.67 points per game
ARE/EAR/ERA would score 3 points in 32.24% of selections, average 10.64 points per game
ER/RE would score 2 points in 47.90% of selections, average 10.54 points per game
SAE/SEA would score 3 points in 31.65% of selections, average 10.44 points per game
EN/NE would score 2 points in 45.71% of selections, average 10.06 points per game

Everything else is under 10 points on average.

Best eights are DETRAINS/RANDIEST/STRAINED, INHALERS, MINERALS and ROUTINES, each of which appeared in 0.34% of selections, gaining on average 0.3 points per game.

For the sevens, LARNIES/NAILERS, 1.35% of selections, 1.04 points on average
Sixes: ARISEN/ARSINE/SARNIE, 3.79% of selections, 2.5 points on average
Fives: OATER/ORATE, 8.25% of selections, 4.54 points on average
Fours: RATE/TARE/TEAR, 16.92% of selections, 7.44 points on average

So - assuming your opponent is a tub of lard (as is the classic test of these things), your best bet is to declare TEA in every letters round, which should gain you 12 points on average over the course of the game. The numbers and conundrum are an entirely different problem, however

I realise that Paul was probably thinking along more subtle and nuanced lines in terms of an optimal strategy, but it's best to start with a brute force approximation, I reckon.

jimbentley wrote:
I realise that Paul was probably thinking along more subtle and
nuanced lines in terms of an optimal strategy, but it's best to start
with a brute force approximation, I reckon.

Hah, not really! I'm not sure you can do better than a slight modification of what you suggested, which is to build a table comparing how each word would score against every other word in the dictionary, on average (so this hypothetical table would have N^2 entries, as opposed to just a list of N words) and then pick the word that scores best against all other words. Assuming you knew the number of vowels and consonants in each round, you'd need three separate tables. My intuition is that five vowels would result in slightly higher scoring, but it doesn't matter as both players would play the same word. Kind of a boring game really.

Ithink TEA might still come out as the best play, but I would probably offer ETA as I wouldn't want to be reminded of the slightly disturbing manner in which some Northern folk refer to their lunch as their dinner.