How do people cheat?

[SpinBlack]

Originally Posted by philhughes

WriteSmith is right in that it's easy to react to someone scoring higher than you by assuming some form of skullduggery has taken place. There are undoubtedly accounts on this site that have been used by cheaters (Viper most obviously) but I have similar suspicions about getback and spinblack. Those users may not cheat on every game but I have seen boards where they have cheated (in my view).

Calm down and stop pointing fingers. You say that you shouldn't assume that people are cheating and yet...

And if you must know, I've played in many Scrabble tournaments before, and this game helps improve my word recognition and memorization.

There are already so many forum posts on potential "cheaters." Stop whining and just play the game.

[RedwoodGirl]

PhilHughes, I assume that Viper and getback are the same person. Viper was miffed when he "left" and immediately getback appeared, with a similar pattern of play (guess he maybe thought he was "getting back" at us).

Personally, I think I'm reaching my limit, though I thought that last year and then had a sudden spurt of improvement. I don't care, though -- while it's fun to improve, it's still fun to play even when I don't.

[theartsyone]

Even if this is way off the subject of the thread, I wanted to add to what writesmith and philhughes were posting. Now I've always considered myself a champion of word games and have been memorizing crazy words for years, but when I first found wordtwist.org I was only ranging between 55-75 per game--and then I started typing the words instead of using the mouse and was finally able to start breaking records on certain puzzles. Now, it's probably about 75-90 words a puzzle although I definitely struggle on the more complicated puzzles. When I hit 100 there is smoke coming off my keyboard, but alas, that does not happen very often. I type 80 wpm thereabouts, but I can't tell you how many times I've hit the wrong key or transposed something which turned out to be a legitimate word

Ultimately typing made a huge difference when it came to word count, as far as points are concerned definitely it's about finding the most number of larger and ultra rare words which is tricky. And I wasn't very great at typing initially, but you do it enough it feels like the mouse is your eyes and your fingers respond to the letters one click at time. It all good stuff!!

[philhughes]

Oh dear:

http://www.wordtwist.org/profile.php?u=72380

311 words? 1,597 points?

That puts that user right near the top of the script kiddies.

[shringeld]

No kidding, philhughes. Not that I was expecting a 562 average to stand up till month's end, but to be displaced by such an obvious cheat ... Argh. I don't really play for trophies, but that was definitely a what's-the-point moment.

[Freemind]

Alas, it's too easy. Go to Boggle Solver. It will prompt you for the 16 letters in your boggle game, then list all the possible words - the longest first. You will score as fast as you can type. But, what's the point?

[bomberrwa]

Maybe the real question is why do people cheat. In the kind way I sometimes think it is people designing their own boggle solver to see if it works- or maybe kids who want to show off. If it is adults- well then it just sad. I play for my own enjoyment and sense of challenge to see if I can best my own scores or get a longest word sometimes. I also have improved my typing speed ( though as my children point out only for letters without having to do any changes to capitals or punctuation I will never be "at the top of the leader Board" but at least it keeps my mind alert . Just one opinion

[Batlover]

Originally Posted by gizmolian

Hi all. I am very new to boggel and to this site as well. I began playing and initially thought, "wow, I suck!" I was getting around 50 points per game. I decided to keep at it and try to improve, but after a week saw that I still rarely reached "average" posting scores of 110 to 120. Do a little quick math...yes many are cheating here. So I decided to figure it out. I did (though I wont say how) and posted several records as a test. Now I have gone back to playing legit and will get my enjoyment from competing against my personal bests. I believe that anyone scoring over 200 is cheating.
Cheaters ruin the fun of any site, and truely are pathetic.

I COMPLETELy disapprove cheating, but I have to object to the statement that anyone scoring over 200 is cheating. A Boggle whiz helped me out and I witnessed her score 279 points without even a reference book to assist her,

[larraine]

Originally Posted by Crilltog

I know. I got one where Wol got 803 points on 156 words. Incredible! Maybe (s)he's a professional stenographer whose really good at boggle?

I do not cheat and my highest score is 125 words and 660 words

[RedwoodGirl]

If you want high scores (legitimately):

1) Memorize short rare words.
2) Practice, especially focusing on common letter patterns.

That's pretty much it, as far as I can tell!

Look at the odd short words other people got when you finish a board. Make lists of "anagram words" for letters that often appear. For example, SNEE gives you:

snee, een, nee, ene, enes, sene, see, esne, seen, sen, ens. My fingers pretty much do that sequence automatically (after a lot of practice). Then if there's an r adjacent there's sneer, ree, rees, seer, ere, eres, sere, ser, res, ers, ern, erne, ren, rens, reen, reens -- you get the idea.