@lefttoeshuffle
If we had a lion pit here, the best thing would be for you to jump into it.

@zoso-thezephead

Yes, and honky, wop, spic, nigger and wetback, please. Plus I'm sure there are lots of others. I'm all for correctness, and I'm sure there are many words that have to go. Thank you Lexulous for policing the language!

I'm confused by the continuation of this thread and seek a definitive clarification. Is it not true that Lexulous uses two Scrabble dictionaries, over the content of which Lexulous has no influence? This may already have been established and I think it has, but in that case the continuing discussion of which words are to be included or not doesn't make any practical sense. Thank you.

@mistertoad said in 'Move Strength' - details please:

However it is not clear to players if any weight is given to the possible replies made by their opponent for each possible word that (s)he might play.

I'm sure it isn't. Changing the name to "Score strength" as has been proposed would take care of this.

@sfbrady1243
@sakamvari didn't reply to your question, and I don't see any reason whatever for you to send a screenshot. You could simply post a word that doesn't have a definition, and one could understand that no definition appears for it.

The reason for the lacking definitions, I imagine, is that the word list is coming from one place and the dictionary from another. Some of the accepted words simply don't have dictionary entries, at least yet.

@betternever1-0
The dictionaries are the dictionaries. I eschew linguistic or sociological discussions here, and I play to get the higher score and win rather than to be morally praiseworthy or politically correct.

@anexparrot said in Medium Paced Arguments:

What about the people who like glacially slow conversations? One sentence every 11 months?

Off with their threads!

I don't think this is a problem, but rather simply a difference between the functioning of the score thermometer when it's your turn and when it isn't. When it's your turn and you enter a valid word, the meter turns green and you can play the word. When it isn't your turn, it will display the point yield and percentage of possible high schore whichever tiles are properly laid, but it won't turn to green as when it's your turn. I see this as appropriate, since you can't play the word when it's not your turn and so it shouldn't turn green suggesting you can. Thus no problem in my book.

What bothers me, @lexulous and @sakamvari, is the Define button's staying black and ugly until a playable word is entered in the Dictionary text field. The change to blue there is superfluous and unnecessary as the text changing from "is not valid" in red to "is valid" in green provides this information immediately and clearly. The change in state when a valid word is entered should not be a change in the color of the button, which is no help, but rather a change in its state to make Define activate so that it shows the definition or definitions when the return key is pressed.

I don't care what it's called, it's crude and ugly when compared to the previous gold star. The most significant thing about this in my book is that the developers either aren't in this forum at all, or they're too lazy or don't have the guts to deal directly with the players and their desires and problems. Or the developers are just not interested, or they expect to be paid for every moment of their engagement and that's not in their contract. The annoyingly boilerplate non-responses of sakamvari are not adequate or satisfying. WHO PUT THE UGLY CROSS OR PLUS SIGN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BOARD, AND WHY? Let's hear from this person, why don't we.

Rather than add a message somewhere saying that "Move strength" doesn't necessarily indicate the strength of the move – which seems a bit silly – why not simply change the problematical "Move strength" label? It doesn't have to be "Score strength", though that would be an improvement over the repeatedly criticized original phrase.

How about "% of possible max"? Can we maybe get a consensus on that, or on something else? There is clearly no consensus on "Move strength", which has come under criticism yet again and will never be acceptably correct as is.

@mistertoad said in 'Move Strength' - details please:

Perhaps I was expecting the reply on the lines of:
"We use an AI to collate player personal behavioural patterns eg if they save high scoring letter for a suitable occasion or whether they prefer to get rid of it early. And that is quite apart from the obvious problem of our suggestions leaving hooks for the opponent!"

Perhaps you were wildly hallucinating.

As you know, we can see all this happening with chess engines that use neural networks!

But this is Lexulous, not DeepChess. These guys can't even get the arrow working again. In any event "Move strength" [sic] was never a mystery to me, because I paid for PRO and have used the post-game analysis. I'm quite sure that all they do is hook into the same max-score thing as for the analysis and just plug it straight into the "Move [sic] strength" score thermometer. If we had anybody other than sakamhari here, this would presumably be immediately confirmed.

@mistertoad said in 'Move Strength' - details please:

@b-birney

I think it IS a 'big deal' - it's a bug in the software which is misleading.

Please, Lexulous, check this problem out!

I think you're being unreasonable, and I assume @ThatGuyThere202 agrees. To mention chess again, it's as if you were demanding that a 1950s chess engine be able not only to beat the top grandmasters, but to make the perfect move every time.

As my grandmother would say, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." And I don't think there's much reason to be disappointed with the score thermometer, which works well enough when it's not broken and going up and down like it was again yesterday (and still today, I just now notice – grr-r). One of the things they could do is fix the bug that causes this recurring misfunction. And if they aren't going to do that (or other reasonable and often simple things that have been proposed to them), they aren't going to painstakingly hone their max-score module either. Don't get me wrong: I agree that something should be done. But I say just change its name and/or visibly document that it isn't precisely perfect, which would be quick and easy. It just now occurs to me that adding "estimated" to the thermometer's pop-up would do it: "Estimated score strength" or "Estimated % of max possible", for example (I prefer the first, but not "Estimated move strength"). But one apparently can't expect even this from the Lexulous team, let alone perfection in regard to the max score.

@mistertoad

I love Dylan's later lyrics, but not his later music.

As for his snappy answers, here's my favorite:

Reporter: How many people who major in the same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the uh, social state in which we live today, the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Dylan: Um... how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Dylan: Uh, I think there's about uh, 136.
[People around him giggle. The reporter doesn't laugh]
Reporter: You say ABOUT 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.

@lexulous said in Recommend addition/removal of words (2 May 2020):

You may use this topic for recommending words to be added/removed from the Lexulous Word Lists.

I'm growing increasingly annoyed at the endless continuation of this discussion, based on the initial stated premise, by lexulous, that Lexulous word lists exist that are open to modification and thus presumably have been and can continue to be edited.

Is this the case or not? I believe we've established that it isn't, and yet there continue to be messages such as @jpcoh1's yesterday expressing the belief that words can actually be added or removed from the Lexulous lists. The situation could be corrected if it were only acknowledged and addressed. I suppose various solutions are possible, but one might be that @lexulous edit the original message to correct the misimpression, that this thread possibly be closed for further comments (if that's possible), and that a new thread or section be initiated with a less misleading name – "Discussion about words", for example, or anything avoiding the erroneous implication that exceptional changes to the Lexulous dictionaries can or will appear.

@57chevvie said in Displayed Word Strength:

@roymccoy It seems the good folks at Lexulous have inadvertently created a new game. The heck with your opponent. Just find words with 100% strength.

I strongly remembered this comment as I was playing tonight. You nailed it: a new game and you're just looking for the big one. I had DEEIOSST, which looked like a likely bingo and there were various spots with room where I could start with just about any of those letters. Yet I couldn't bingo. Ordinarily I would have just played five or six letters and moved on, but this time I knew a bingo was available because the percentages indicated the possibility of a 75-point word. So I hassled with the rack for longer than I care to confess, finding two places where a 75-pointer was possible and trying everything I could imagine at these spots. But finally I had to give up and play the shorter word for far fewer points. When I checked the rack at https://www.wordplays.com/anagram-solver/deeiosst, it turned out there was no 8-letter bingo and the only 7-letter one was ISOETES, "sole extant genus of the order Isoetales". As I wrote to my friend and longtime opponent, I'll be beating myself up over this one for weeks, lol.

I note the upvotes for @Dan-Mitchell's suggestion that "Word Strength" be changed to "Score Strength" and that other players share his view. Nobody is defending "Word Strength", so I propose the change be made immediately, thanks.

@sakamvari

(I had to reduce the Mac 13" screenshot in Photoshop. It was only 600+K, half of the indicated maximum file size 1000+K, but I couldn't place it regardless.)

The old layour is on the left, the new on the right. Somebody might think that the new layout looks better, but somebody else may prefer the old one. There is, thus, no remarkable improvement.

The square numbers are smaller in the new layout. Why? Was anyone complaining about their size in the old one? I wasn't. The new ones look spindly, like the tile letters themselves.

A screenshot wasn't or shouldn't have been necessary for these particular two things, but okay, you can see that the rack tiles have a different form than the board tiles in the new layout. I can admit that the rounded corners are nice, but then you have to make them identically rounded on the board also.

So those are the two things for which you requested a screenshot, but now that we have one up:

– I don't like having to mentally reinterpret the shuffle/pass/swap icons. It doesn't require a major mental effort and of course one can get used to it, but there was nothing wrong with the text buttons and I prefer them – again, with the previous "Undo" rather than "Recall", which latter sounds pretentious and I don't like it.

– The blank letters on the board are now blue rather than red. I vastly prefer the red. The blue are no improvement. Please revert to red, the way it was. I don't like the fatter blue letters. Why are they bold, anyway? Was anyone complaining that they didn't stand out enough before? Why should they stand out?

– "Chat" sticks out into the board.

– Can't scroll to right.

– Arrow keys don't work.

– Can't see Settings icon, which should be on the left and the game number should link to something else having to do with the particular game or with numbered games.

– Text-size icon intrudes on chat space (can't see collision here, but they occur). Undesired, as was no problem with size of chat text before. If you want to provide different sizes, this could be changed in preferences rather than constantly taking up space with the undesired icon in the chat pane.

– The two-letter shortcut buttons are 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 undesired. Please eliminate or make optional via a preference.

– "Type reply here..." has disappeared. Why? Was anyone complaining about "Type reply here..."?

– "Scribble notes here..." has nonetheless appeared. I'm sure nobody requested this joke, which is not funny after the first time it's seen and not really even then. "Notes" would suffice.

– I have previously commented on the capitalization inconsistency with lowercase "unseen" and uppercase "V". I previously mentioned the possibility of "vowels", but you could also simply eliminate the vowel percentage, which often isn't going to be useful because it doesn't say 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 vowels and if someone wants to see which letters are left he/she will generally want to do that without being immediately concerned with the vowel percentage.

The new version is playable and I accept it sometimes, but I prefer the old one, will generally continue reverting to it, and hope it remains possible to do so.

Thanks to everyone for their interesting and helpful comments. In addition to these, what has cleared the question up for me has been (1) the announcement at the end of the game, and (2) the realization that Lexulous always has the highest-scoring possible word available, since it appears at the top of the list in the game analyses. Up until now I've generally been getting one 100% word per game while my opponent hasn't gotten any, but I'll try to improve that now that I finally know that the 100% words are always there. It remains curious, however, that though I've scored 100% words, I've never seen the vertical bar completely filled.

@betterlate1-0

I already said. Specifically about the ugly black arrow, I would expect to hear something like "We'd like to keep the same green arrow but we can't, because..."

On the tile letters, another possibility (than the one already proposed, to use a size midway between the old one and the new one) might be to use a slightly bolder version of the typeface if one is available. Some typefaces have a wide range of weights, and perhaps this typeface is one of them.