Cheatswithjavascript has taken over

[negativeneil]

Really, bigbells? You see nothing wrong with cheating, and robbing others of their honestly, hard-earned scores? Well you'd be in the minority, or these forum threads probably wouldn't exist:

[URL="http://wordtwist.org/forum/search.php?searchid=198209"]http://wordtwist.org/forum/search.php?searchid=198209[/URL]

Cheating is highly unethical and grossly unfair to the rest of us... not that I even care about scores, personally. I play for the enjoyment and challenge of finding as many decent words as I can in each grid. I don't care how I rate or compare to anyone else... this isn't about "competition", to me. That said, it's very unfair to those who want to compete and have worked (played) hard to achieve their rankings, when someone blatantly cheats using some kind of bot or script, to attain their ridiculously high scores. Maybe there aren't (or are?) rules re: cheating somewhere on this site, I don't know.... but it's pretty much a given on any game site, that this isn't acceptable.

And ShirleyMarquez... aside from his ridiculously high scores, the individual in question had the username "Cheatswithjavascript". Enough said!

[Brisul]

Aside from the person in question having the name "cheatswithjavascript", the scores being tallied were nearly impossible to obtain. He'she had a per game average of 999.99. Mega Word and Thunder Rock are players that I consider to be two of the most prolific scorers on this site, and cheatswithjavascript was doing in his/her first month on this site something neither of those two had done in their entire time here. That in itself was a giant red flag. I also took it personally because I was having my own best month ever and was sitting in 3rd place with my 672 mark when this thing came along.

[ShirleyMarquez]

I was referring to the one mentioned in the post by bigbells, where he or she spoke of a user with a ridiculous number of longest word and highest scoring word awards, but not very high scores. I think that was somebody other than cheatswithjavascript. Although it's likely that other accomplishment was also a cheat, it could have been a case of somebody with a singleminded purpose of getting those records.

[bigbells]

Originally Posted by negativeneil

Really, bigbells? You see nothing wrong with cheating, and robbing others of their honestly, hard-earned scores?

Is anything accomplished attributing to me something that doesn't remotely resemble what I actually said?

Shirley has identified the difficulty of establishing a yardstick by which cheaters could be absolutely identified, by pointing out that it's at least conceivable that the member I referred to could have achieved what he did without cheating. To me, it's impossible, but to Shirley it's possible.

Where does one draw the line? I have no doubt that the person you're talking about, with the guilt-admitting username, is a cheater. However, what rules do you think should exist to thwart cheaters but never punish legitimately awesome players? If each of us were to independently submit our proposals for the absolute upper limits at which scores could be considered legitimate, it's not likely that any two of us would choose the same numbers.

I'm a guy, a retired postman, Shirley. I'll see if there's some way to edit my profile to add my gender.

[bwt1213]

I draw the line at the point where the player is "typing" faster than the world record typing speed.

[bigbells]

Originally Posted by bwt1213

I draw the line at the point where the player is "typing" faster than the world record typing speed.

According to Wikipedia, that's 212 wpm during bursts, 170 wpm for longer periods, and 150 wpm for the entire duration of a 50 minute speed test.

There are 5 all-time high word totals that exceed that top pace of 212 wpm. All of them are on the 5 x 5 boards. No person has ever gotten 636 words in a 4 x 4 game.

Do the 4 x 4 boards have the same 3-minute timer as the 5 x 5 boards?

How many wpm exactly do you want to set as the upper possible limit during a 3 minute Wordtwist game?

It's one thing to express a universally desired outcome, it's another to propose actual means for achieving that outcome.

Further, if a wpm limit were to be established, it would be necessary to count keystrokes rather than number of scoring words entered, because a "word" is considered to be 5 keystrokes for the purposes of measuring typing speed.

[ChiliCheesecake]

bigbells: The 4x4 board has 2 minute rounds. This player easily has speed faster than any human world record.

[bigbells]

Again, I take no issue with it being a given that the player in question is cheating. He or she is using a software program to play the games.

Since no one else is willing to offer parameters, I'll suggest that first, a rule be established outlawing cheating and second, that it be enforced as follows: any time a player averages 1000 keyboard strokes per minute during a game, the player will be presumed to have cheated and the particular game score will be automatically discarded. Further, any player found to be in violation on two occasions would be banned. Any and all scores ever posted or accumulated would be deleted.

For these purposes there are 27 possible keystrokes: each of the 26 letters plus the Enter key.

The above would not be able to thwart a player who uses software to find just the top few longest or highest-scoring words and then enters those words manually.

I don't think that any legitimate player would ever be victimized by the above rules, but I don't think it would take long for someone to create a cheat program that kept keystrokes at the maximum acceptable limit. A cheater could also make sure they elected only those games which had no possibility of exceeding the limits, meaning they would avoid those games with the very highest possible word totals.

[ChiliCheesecake]

bigbells, this guy has "cheat" right in his name. This guy is not only cheating, but flaunting it.

[bwt1213]

When I was a kid, one of my friends had a mother who was, for a time, the fastest typist in the world. For a short (one minute? two? three?) timed test she hit 256 words per minute. Anyone exceeding that is a cheat. As a matter of fact, anyone getting even close to that is cheating, because it takes time for a human being to find legitimate words in the grid. I wouldn't want to disallow someone who is merely very, very good. If it's possible to type that fast and find words that fast, allow it. But if it is not, toss it. My friend's mother was in demand as a typist and earned good money for it, which was a good thing -- her husband had a fatal heart attack when my friend was a junior in HS, and she made the family's income.