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Author Message
25 new of 1578 responses total.
remmers
response 250 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 02:21 UTC 2003

crest
jep
response 251 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 02:40 UTC 2003

freak
janc
response 252 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 03:08 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
jep
response 253 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 03:17 UTC 2003

blank
janc
response 254 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 03:45 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
gelinas
response 255 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 03:50 UTC 2003

skink
russ
response 256 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 04:08 UTC 2003

think
janc
response 257 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 04:18 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
-----
skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ

(I think one way to get high numbers of guesses is to score
infrequently. I could have let people guess words ending in "k" a long
time.  As it is, this one is almost solved.)
jep
response 258 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 04:52 UTC 2003

flash
aruba
response 259 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 04:57 UTC 2003

flare

russ, if you'd like a copy of my scoring script, let me know.
jep
response 260 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:07 UTC 2003

Scoring script?  I can imagine Russ writing such a thing, but didn't 
think anyone else would.  I'd like to see it, too, Mark!
aruba
response 261 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:11 UTC 2003

Well, you gotta remember, I've been playing since 1994.  And at various
points during the last nine years, feathers have been ruffled because of
scoring mistakes, so it made sense to do scoring automatically.  kentn wrote
a system that several people have used, and I wrote a simple awk program
that does much the same thing.  I'll mail it.
jep
response 262 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:13 UTC 2003

Thanks!
gelinas
response 263 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:23 UTC 2003

There is one ~gelinas/Public/do.mm, but it would need some tweaking.
janc
response 264 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:32 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
-----
skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
-----
flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
gelinas
response 265 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 05:38 UTC 2003

crumb
janc
response 266 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 06:45 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
-----
skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
-----
flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
-----
crumb 0 gelinas
other
response 267 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 08:20 UTC 2003

The scoring script I use is in HyperCard, and includes the utility I 
wrote to keep track of what letters have been eliminated and crosscheck 
against a list of 5-letter words.  I keep considering writing it again in 
BASIC so I can compile a faster version, but I'd have to write a whole 
interface for it, and I just haven't felt motivated to do it.
other
response 268 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 08:21 UTC 2003

scrip
janc
response 269 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 14:23 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
-----
skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
-----
flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
-----
crumb 0 gelinas
-----
scrip 0 other

(I sometimes try to figure out other player's strategies based on the
guesses they make.  Usually I can make some sense of it, and even draw
some conclusions about what kind of analysis is behind it, but those
last two guesses are a mystery to me.  "Scrip" for example, contradicts
six out of ten previous results.  It does eliminate one possible
solution word, but if you wanted to eliminate that, the guessing it
would be the better course, since it might be right.  "Crumb" is pretty
much the same, contradicting 4 of 9 previous guesses and eliminating
only one possible solution.  Probably I'm over-analysing.  Some people
are just guessing words as they pass through the conference, without
playing very seriously.)
jep
response 270 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 15:44 UTC 2003

flair
jep
response 271 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 15:50 UTC 2003

Generally I just look at the list of words and try to find a new word 
which might fit all the criteria.  My early guesses are just whatever 
word I think of first.

Once in a while I try to get more analytical, and list all the letters 
which are possibles, and the ones which are eliminated for each 
position, and use pattern searches in on-line dictionaries, and all 
that.  I'm not very good at doing that.

No, that's not true, either.  I'm pretty good at it.  It's just that 
several others here are much better.  Jan seems to be the most 
successful, but I suspect aruba is the real master.  He never makes bad 
guesses.
gelinas
response 272 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 16:18 UTC 2003

Jan, it may be they are playing a different game.  For instance, I don't want
to be "it", but I enjoy playing.  I am fairly certain I know which three
letters are right, so the game now is to be first to the other two.  :)
bhelliom
response 273 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 16:24 UTC 2003

I never seem to get to this item at the beginning of a round. :p
janc
response 274 of 1578: Mark Unseen   Jan 7 16:28 UTC 2003

servo 0 lastword
-----
awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
-----
skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
-----
flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
-----
crumb 0 gelinas
-----
scrip 0 other
-----
flair 3 jep

(Why do you want to be there at the beginning of a round?  The time to
be here is near the end of a round, when the odds of hitting the word
are good.  IE, right now.

Yup, I'd guessed that some people were trying to avoid winning. I only
do that before going on vacations.  My instinct is to play all games to
 win.

"flair" is the word "scrip" eliminated.

In early game play I guess words likely to give information - mostly
words using a lot of unused letters.  Mark is usually trying to locate
all the vowels, so sometimes I collaborate.  Once there are a few hits,
I get a scrap of paper, usually an envelope and do a combinatorial
analysis.  This results in a set of possible patterns like ?er?? that
cover all possible solutions.  (The question marks can be filled with
any letter that has not been guessed for that position).  I then
manually try to come up with words that fit the patterns.  All this is
done by hand, sometimes with many distractions and in a rush (since if
there are few remaining possibilities, I have to guess fast), so I screw
it up sometimes.  When I was playing more aggressively, and we'd have
games with lots of negative information (lots of zeros) then I'd
sometimes use the computer to do a word list search, because otherwise
Eric would pick off all of those, and I was trying to win everything
that I wasn't scoring.  I've relaxed a bit now, and don't do that much.
 The analysis is fun.  Searching word lists isn't so much.)
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 1575-1578          
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