Pinnacle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1129
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http://www.lexicant.org/
Play against the computer, trying not to form a word.
You start with a letter, and add to the beginning or the end of it.
It's fun, but I'm not that good at it.

____________________________
Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Neather2
Level: Smiter

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I so much do not succeed to play to us, me seems a po strange to control, a small I succeed to us and I must say badly that not is, I always choose the modality easy, still is before the time that us game, Seems a species of puzzle that I have made, but not memory which. Only a question I can? Where you have found it? Hello and good Game. - Neather2

Ps: Good!

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Nothing to say. I just play the game. And you, sir, should play it too.

Conspiracy, my new hold, has just been released.

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[Last edited by Neather2 at 08-03-2006 06:51 AM]

Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2388
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Wait, you play against the computer and try not to form a word?

Why can't you play xvz?

(I recall this game being a plot point in an episode of Ghostwriter. I loved that show as a kid, although I guess I'd find it cheesy now.)

____________________________
What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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Mattcrampy wrote:
Why can't you play xvz?

From the rules:

Any word-stem you create must form part of a valid English word, without actually being a word itself.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Bunches
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 192
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Mattcrampy wrote:
(I recall this game being a plot point in an episode of Ghostwriter. I loved that show as a kid, although I guess I'd find it cheesy now.)

I watched that episode once. I used to love that show. It got kinda confusing after a while.

Bunches
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 192
Registered: 03-17-2006
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Thw first game i won aganst the computer was on insane!

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3624
Registered: 10-06-2005
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I just beat it on Easy with "jiggs".

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

Znirk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 613
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Wait, you play against the computer and try not to form a word?

Why can't you play xvz?

Because from there you can't get the other player to lose. Call it a draw.

Krishh
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 282
Registered: 06-05-2004
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Actually, if you form a combination that is not a part of any word with your letter, you lose, so there are no draws.

TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
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Thats what I thought, until we ended up with about 20 letters of jibberish that was never going to go anywhere.. let me try again.

Edit, nope, everytime I play this game it just ends up with a random bunch of letters - the computer plays ones that don't form words (according to the dictionary on my computer). What am I doing wrong..

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[Last edited by TripleM at 08-04-2006 07:45 AM]

Znirk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 613
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Krishh wrote:
Actually, if you form a combination that is not a part of any word with your letter, you lose, so there are no draws.

<shrug> You can still call it one. The program doesn't call it anything specific at all, it simply ends the game.

TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1373
Registered: 02-05-2003
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Heres a sample game I just played

H
TH
CTH
ACTH
NACTH
MNACTH
AMNACTH
AAMNACTHI
AAAMNACHTIO
AAAAMNACHTION
AAAAAMNACHTION
TAAAAAMNACTHION
.. at about this point, I got bored, and stopped. Maybe it doesn't work in firefox, or something.

[edit - the next game, in IE, got to MAULXXXXEX when I was told I had won because the computer was forced to make mauled or mauler. I guess I don't understand the rules.]

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[Last edited by TripleM at 08-04-2006 10:52 AM]

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
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TripleM wrote:
Heres a sample game I just played

H
TH
CTH
ACTH
NACTH
MNACTH
AMNACTH
AAMNACTHI
AAAMNACHTIO
AAAAMNACHTION
AAAAAMNACHTION
TAAAAAMNACTHION
.. at about this point, I got bored, and stopped. Maybe it doesn't work in firefox, or something.

[edit - the next game, in IE, got to MAULXXXXEX when I was told I had won because the computer was forced to make mauled or mauler. I guess I don't understand the rules.]

Hi there - I'm the programmer for Lexicant.org (thanks for the links!). Anyway, I tried to replicate your issue above in Firefox and just wasn't able to do so. Any info you could provide on your OS/system would be a huge help.

Obviously, MAULXXXXEX isn't part of a valid word and should not have displayed. I'm wondering if perhaps there's a CSS issue where letters are being repeated on the screen but not in the program itself.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the bug - hopefully we'll be able to sort it out.

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
IP: Logged

Also if you could let me know what encoding your browser is set to, that could be a big help. Thanks!

coppro
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1308
Registered: 11-24-2005
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lexicant wrote:

TripleM wrote:
Heres a sample game I just played

H
TH
CTH
ACTH
NACTH
MNACTH
AMNACTH
AAMNACTHI
AAAMNACHTIO
AAAAMNACHTION
AAAAAMNACHTION
TAAAAAMNACTHION
.. at about this point, I got bored, and stopped. Maybe it doesn't work in firefox, or something.

[edit - the next game, in IE, got to MAULXXXXEX when I was told I had won because the computer was forced to make mauled or mauler. I guess I don't understand the rules.]

Hi there - I'm the programmer for Lexicant.org (thanks for the links!). Anyway, I tried to replicate your issue above in Firefox and just wasn't able to do so. Any info you could provide on your OS/system would be a huge help.

Obviously, MAULXXXXEX isn't part of a valid word and should not have displayed. I'm wondering if perhaps there's a CSS issue where letters are being repeated on the screen but not in the program itself.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the bug - hopefully we'll be able to sort it out.

I managed to get a game with one-letter additions throughout that went like this:

U
US
USU
USUC
USUCI
USUCION
USUCIONE
USUCIONER
LUSUCIONER
ELUSUCIONER
RELUSUCIONER
PRELUSUCIONER
OPRELUSUCIONER
LOPRELUSUCIONER
LLOPRELUSUCIONER
FLLOPRELUSUCIONER
EFLLOPRELUSUCIONER
FEFLLOPRELUSUCIONER

I added an A, having no idea whether there actually existed a word like this, and then was informed that:

The computer can't make a move without spelling efflorescing ... You win! The final word-stem was 11 characters long, and your game lasted 365 seconds, for a total of 0 points.

BeefontheBone
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 184
Registered: 05-11-2006
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I get the same thing - I thought I wasn't getting it somehow

In IE it works as intended the first time, then when I click the "start over" link I get the same strange behaviour.

____________________________
Braindead's Mordor Site - Dungeon crawling having nothing whatsoever to do with LotR. Plus a freeware remake in-progress, featuring descriptive text written by yours truly!

Beef Row wrote: Actually, it doesn't really matter because the soap is a lye.

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[Last edited by BeefontheBone at 08-05-2006 02:48 AM]

coppro
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1308
Registered: 11-24-2005
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BeefontheBone wrote:
I get the same thing - I thought I wasn't getting it somehow

In IE it works as intended the first time, then when I click the "start over" link I get the same strange behaviour.

Come to speak of it, the first game was correct.

Tim
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1979
Registered: 08-07-2004
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I only have problems when I'm using CAPITALS. It seems that my game is neglecting them...

BeefontheBone
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 184
Registered: 05-11-2006
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Ahhh, that's it - it breaks if you type in capitals. Good spot Tim.

____________________________
Braindead's Mordor Site - Dungeon crawling having nothing whatsoever to do with LotR. Plus a freeware remake in-progress, featuring descriptive text written by yours truly!

Beef Row wrote: Actually, it doesn't really matter because the soap is a lye.

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
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aha! Capitals are indeed the problem.... can't believe I didn't catch that before.

Thank you so much for the help in tracking down this bug. I'll put some time in today to fix it and will post the results when ready.

Thanks again!

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
IP: Logged

One dinky line of php code was all that was needed - seems the capitalization problem is now gone on www.lexicant.org

If you run into any other bugs, please let me know - this feedback has been a huge help.

Cheers!

Niccus
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 308
Registered: 07-02-2006
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More of a complaint: The explanation texts are in the exact same size, color, and format as the Google ads... at first I thought there were no instructions on the site.

Make it look different somehow

--

Many games and losing, losing, losing...

EDIT: "Rutile" isn't in its dictionary... That or difficulty level doesn't do what I think it does.

EDIT2: While playing around: "There are no valid words containing the word-stem qo! Your opponent was building the word --opening--"

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[Last edited by Niccus at 08-05-2006 10:35 PM]

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3624
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

Okay, the first game I beat the computer on normal by forcing it to spell "motivating".

Second game I started with "h" and it went to "hatm". I play "whatm" because I can't figure out a word with that stem and I get "There are no valid words containing the word-stem whatm!" and the game ends.

Could you potentially re-query for a new input at this point?

EDIT:

The best way to beat the computer is to force it to play "i", and then you can play "n" forcing it to complete the suffix "g" ending the word in "ing".

EDIT #2:

Your game is too easy: I beat it with difficulty 300,000 by forcing it to spell "pyromancer" and earned 2,099,720 points.

Just joking, it took me about ten tries to get that result. Does the game really get a lot harder after about 100? Because I could just up it to 1,000,000 and earn a ridiculous amount when I win.

EDIT #3:

Oh, I see how it works. I put the difficulty all the way down to 10, then started with "T" - and get told there are no words with the stem "T" in it. Therefore, the harder difficulties utilize longer words - and the words stop getting longer at some point, so you are then free to increase the difficulty (and thus the points) without the game getting harder.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 08-06-2006 12:31 AM]

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
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Thanks for the continued input! :-)

Looks like I'll have to make the game a bit more hacker-proof... the difficulty ratings are based on a score that's applied to each word in the dictionary. Words around 30 and lower are "common knowledge", 30-55 are more advanced, and anything more than 60/70 are words that most folks have never heard of (specialty scientific words mostly).

Entering any number higher than 70 won't affect the difficulty of the game, though apparently it will give you an insanely high score.

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3624
Registered: 10-06-2005
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Nah, don't thank me. I was just trying to figure out what made Insane harder, so I figured I'd mess around with the numbers. Now I know!

Back to beating computer on Insane mode I guess...

EDIT:

I just lost with "leats" trying to force it to play "cleats" - but Dictionary.com (your source) says "leats" and its variants "lea ts" and "lea-ts" do not exist.

EDIT #2:

Oh, wait, plural of "leat", which is apparently a water mill. Duh.

EDIT #3:

After playing "paked":
The computer can't make a move without spelling spaked ... You win! The final word-stem was 5 characters long, and your game lasted 22 seconds, for a total of 224 points.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 08-06-2006 03:27 PM]

coppro
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1308
Registered: 11-24-2005
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Could you add a two-player mode for playing against a friend? I don't think that playing this game with just a dictionary would work nearly as well.

lexicant
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 11
Registered: 08-04-2006
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A two-player version would be easy to do if you're both using the same computer.... but two player over the internet, between 2 computers would be pretty difficult I'd think. But I'll mull it over - thanks for the idea!

michthro
Level: Smitemaestro
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Fun game!

For interest sake: what sort of strategy does the computer player use? Theoretically there's a winning strategy for either the first or second player, and I don't think it's unfeasible to find it by brute force. (It would be interesting to know who has the advantage.) Do you use some degree of brute force search to determine the difficulty, or just more obscure words to increase the difficulty?

One minor gripe: In word games the -er and -ness suffixes can be very useful, and in this game particularly. (You can form a noun ending in -er from any verb, and there are no exceptions. Actor does not preclude acter, for instance. Similarly for -ness, there are no exceptions. So humbleness is a word, although you'd always use humility, unless you're playing a word game ) Anyway, the point is that your dictionary does not allow for this, which can be a litte frustrating.

A two-player option would be great. I think playing a human opponent would be very different from playing a computer, but I can see how implementing that is a little tricky.

eytanz
Level: Smitemaster

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The game uses a pre-prepared dictionary, which doesn't allow for productive nonce creations like "Acter". That's perfectly reasonable; you wouldn't be able to play those words in a game of Scrabble either. The fact that they're allowable in English is pretty irrelevant here.

____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!

michthro
Level: Smitemaestro
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Those words are perfectly legal in Scrabble, since they are completely legitimate English words, just like any other English words, which is rather the point. What's irrelevant here is how these words happen to be formed. It's no more reasonable not to allow "acter" than it would be not to allow "acting".

The problem is that most dictionaries do not explicitly list them, for a number of obvious reasons, such as that these words are determined by universal rules, and the dictionaries are aimed at defining words, not listing every possible one, i.e. we're talking about dictionaries, not lexicons.