98% of the words have been located

[hollygolfs]

I am wondering, when 98% of the words have been located on the board is there a message that appears when the board has been "solved"? Is that still the criteria for boards being retired?

[OpenYourMind]

i played a board earlier and when i got to the scoring page, it showed that i hadn't found any words that hadn't already been found, and it also said that all of the words had been been located ("98 of 98 possible words" or whatever).

since 100% of the words had been found on that board before i even got to it, shouldn't it have been retired already?

[hollygolfs]

wow, I thought the boards would retire. Maybe it was some kind of fluke.

I asked that question more than a month ago and never heard a thing............ is there another place to go to ask questions?:confused:

[admin]

Hmm, yes the retiring of boards seems not to be working at the moment. I'll put that on my "to-fix" list. Thanks!

[OpenYourMind]

thanks for working on it!

btw, i like the idea of having some sort of message show up if you're the one who puts the board over 98% of words and retires it. it would be a fun extra goal... just like you can't always get a high score, but you can still find words that no one else has (it's always fun to see some words in green at the end)... it's sort of secondary reward, i guess :-)

[admin]

I've done some reprogramming this weekend to help improve the "retirement" of boards. I've just now retired about 8,600 4x4 boards and 5,600 5x5 boards, and replaced them with brand new ones that haven't yet been played. So you should start seeing a lot of new games now.

I'm going to try to set this to auto-retire boards once a week and see how it works (i.e. whether or not it will grind the site to a halt, which was the problem in the past). I think if I space it out this way it should work, though. I'll always regenerate a new board for every one that's been retired.

Thanks for your patience -

Stephen

[debbiedoo]

You work really hard to keep this website going and we appreciate it. This is my favorite thing to do in my spare time. Thanks!

[OpenYourMind]

YAY! thanks for all the new boards :-)

[NmbrTheorist]

I just played a board that said had only been played once before. But I played the exact same board (I remember because there were several unusual word combinations and a snaking trail of e's that were all in the same position) a couple of days before when it said many more people had played that board. Are some of the new boards I've been seeing previously used or previously retired boards?

Also, I never see boards with more than 300 plays, even though there are some boards in the 200's I've seen that are clearly far from being 98% completed. Is there a separate criterion for retiring boards that also gets used?

[RedwoodGirl]

I frequently see boards with over 300 played, and sometimes over 400.

I am curious about the "inner workings" though.

[NmbrTheorist]

Not 300 "played", as in words played. 300 "plays", as in 300 attempts at solving the board.

[RedwoodGirl]

Yes, that's what I was talking about.

[lostwords]

I have actually played one board that had been played over 1,000 times,
and two that had been played 800+ times. This site has some amazing
players, though, so most games are retired long before reaching these heights.

My personal "best", so to speak, was finding (and theoretically retiring)
the last two words in a puzzle that had been played 597 times. Curiously,
I have "retired" 3 or 4 other boards with the same 2 words (mzee and
mzees). Those of us who type REALLY slowly become rather fond of those
sorts of words!

Re: finding all the words - theoretically, this would retire the board, but
if not, you could easily tell because the record for most words found
would be the same as total words on the board.

By the way, is anyone else seeing boards they have already played? Just
recently I've seen a few where I already hold the record, which I thought
was not possible ???

[RedwoodGirl]

I occasionally see boards I have played before. Apparently it's unlikely but not impossible.

I recently discovered "mzee" as well - very fun. I also know a few that almost always come up green - I like finding those. "euk" is one of them for me.

[shibui]

Hi - I have also played boards that I have played before. Some of those that were 'retired' are in play again, and it seems that some that weren't even close to 'retirement' are in play again. It seems that way to me anyway. I am happy to know I haven't completely lost my mind. :)