Displayed Word Strength
-
jrp32 wrote:
AND, when the play button turns green, it also has a colored edge on the right, which, when clicked, shows the word-to-be-played "strength" as a percentage. IOW, 100% is the best possible play determined and less than a 100%, not so much.
This is an interesting feature, but I don't know how interesting. Does it mean there is a built-in cheater that absolutely knows if there is or isn't a better word than the one presently entered? If it's showing, say, 50%, does that mean that a 100% word is definitely available and playable? Can you always get it to 100% if you're patient enough and shuffle the tiles long enough? Or is a 50% word sometimes the best that can be made, despite the suggestion that a better one is attainable? This feature changes the game in any event, but more drastically if it's always possible to get an entirely or almost-entirely green bar. Thanks.
-
I didn't know this until I read your statement. So I tried and tried to get a word that would register as more than 35. Just couldn't do it...at least I couldn't get one that would fit on the board. Perhaps in some arbitrary universe, the 8 letters would have made a word that would register as 100%, but not on the board I was playing. At any rate, it sure does take the challenge out of the game.
-
@roymccoy
I'm an unreconstructed shuffler and I like to move the letters around to see if I can maximize my score. I play the 'email' scrabble and so I can enjoy shuffling to my heart's content.Whether or not this is ethical, I don't know. What does everyone think?
One solution would be if 'Move Strength' was only shown if both players agreed to it.
-
I don't think there's anything unethical about taking your time to make a move, unless there's some explicit understanding that moves are to be made within a certain period of time. I think patience can even be regarded as a winning quality, a virtue. As for the word strength, if the maximum is unknown I'm not sure its use or nonuse makes a lot of difference. If both players are using the new version and they both have it, then I wouldn't think there would need to be any particular understanding about it. The only sneaky thing I can think of is being aware of it and not telling your opponent – which is what I'm doing right now, lol.
-
@mistertoad I'm pretty sure that if it's on the board, both players have access to it, and if it's on the board, it's legal. Does sort of take the challenge out of it, though.
-
@57chevvie
Thanks for this. I just played TINSELY for 78 and it was only showing at about half. I still haven't seen a single 100%, and I'm looking forward to it.
It occurred to me that if it's showing 100 only relatively rarely and it's showing best words at only 50-75, the programming could bump it up. -
It has certainly improved my email game. Just put any word down, check its percentage strength, and from that it's possible to work out what the 'best' score is, although I know from doing the puzzles that there are sometimes words with higher scores that the system misses.
Once you know what the highest score is, you can often work out, from the tiles in your rack and the openings on the board, what the word has to be, even if it's one that isn't in your vocabulary.
One thing it does not take into account, though, is defensive tactics: the highest-scoring word might leave your opponent the chance of a bingo, a treble/treble combo, or something like that, while the lower score gives you a better chance of winning the game. -
I like it a lot. It's most useful for me towards the end of a close game. It's a little game in itself finding the higher scoring words. I think it should simply be renamed 'Score Strength' though to save confusion. It currently implies that the highest scoring move is the smartest move which often isn't the case (tactically, positionally etc). Of course, there are certainly times when it is.
-
@rayger I'm not sure I quite get this. If you put down a word it will tell you the number of points it is worth, yes; and on a rough color-coded scale it will give you its "strength" as compared to all possible moves with the letters as they now stand. I'm not sure how you translate that into an exact percentage, but I presume that, given enough time, you can work it out. As for myself, with the speed of game I play (2/1) I am not likely to spend a lot of time fiddling with this to find the best possible move (and, as Dan points out, the highest number of points doesn't necessarily make it the best move for the situation).
It's not at all unlikely that one will often get the "100%" (or "best") word. At the end of the game I will get a message telling me how many times I hit the "best," and even with the hasty moves I make, it is often around 3 or 4 times out of all the moves. -
@thatguythere202 Well, I only play e-mail, and I find that, by hovering over the edge of the play button, as well as getting the rough colour code, I am given an exact percentage of the highest possible score (according to the lexulous bot/algorithm). From this I can calculate the points available for the highest score, and from that sometimes what letters need to go on what coloured squares to achieve it. It sometimes leads me to look for, and find, bingos that I missed. Of course, the highest scoring move isn't always the best in game-play, as you may want to defend, manage your rack, or set up a future move, but I enjoy working out what it is anyway.
As I'm more interested in puzzles, anagrams and word games than I am in competing, I find the new protocol suits me very well, but I can see how it might get in the way if you're interested in playing with a ticking clock. -
@thatguythere202 Ohhhhhhhhh THAT'S what it means by best, that notice at the end of the game! I thought it meant best (but should be 'better' in that case) vs my opp! I always wondered why the total # of best moves didnt add up to the total number of moves! lol @ me.
-
@rayger said in Displayed Word Strength:
Well, I only play e-mail, and I find that, by hovering over the edge of the play button, as well as getting the rough colour code, I am given an exact percentage of the highest possible score (according to the lexulous bot/algorithm).
Whoa! I hadn't noticed that. I'll try hovering and see if I get the percentage. Thanks for pointing this out.
-
@roymccoy Well, that's quite true. And of course you're aware that the word with the highest strength isn't always the smartest word to play. I used a 100% strong word knowing it opened up a 3x opportunity for my opponent. I checked the "unseen" tiles and calculated that she had only a 20% chance of being able to use the 3x. In the end, of course she could. Fortunately, I'm playing with an old, old friend and we just laughed about it.
-
@rayger yes, that makes perfect sense. I just checked on the hover function during a game and found those percentages showing up, just as you said (I had never taken the time to look into it before). Thanks for pointing that out.
I don't mean to contradict anyone but I have the feeling that (contrary to what some have said), there must always be a "100%" move available on the board. It's not unlikely that it would be an extremely obscure word, but the algorithm doesn't care. If there were not a 100% word available, the displayed percentages would make no sense. -
@thatguythere202 You're right, there's always at least one 100% word.
-
@dan-mitchell
and sometimes - well, once so far - you can find a word that scores more than their 100% word, and that immediately gets upgraded to the new maximum strength.
