word up gossip

[Cardinal Sin]

Oops. Did that twice. That's what you get for imbibing alcohol

[Istenem]

That's me now officially addicted to Word Up. Even went down the local today, ignored the puggie and made a beeline straight for the Word Up machine in the corner.

But what's the story with missing words? I can understand words like quo not being there (as in status quo), but what about words like zen, ben, het etc... ?

And no swear words?

good news Your Eminence once you get a few clearances under your simar you'll be well away.
when i was starting out i found it useful to work around double LL as it is inordinately high-scoring.
~ILLION~ is very useful: M~(~AIRES, ~THS etc) also B~ Z~ SQU~ TR~ are allowed (but not with all the suffixes) also P~, by extension you can get words like VERM~ (even though it should only have one L) i'm sure you can think of others.

as for the missing words; nature of the beast i'm afraid, but it is minimal. EWQ's website has a few useful dumping words though.

whether a man of the cloth should be using bad swears is questionable but once you get past the 4-letter shockers they become allowable (for example MOXXXXFXXXER would be okay if there weren't so many Xs in it.

Godd luck, let us know how you get on.

[Schuey]

And no swear words?

Not sure if it is still acceptable on the latest version, but a previous version did allow "pissed".

[Cardinal Sin]

Cheers for the advice... ever tried Gazillions?

I'll try and snatch a few more games over the weekend. It really is a triumph for the manufacturers that you (well I anyway) play it to have a laugh and get some high-scores, not just to make money. In fact, yesterday I built up a bank of a fiver with millionaire, then quite happily played off my winnings on Word-Up, in no doubt that I would definitely be losing my money.

[davejon]

your'e allowed 'fanny', 'wanks', 'shitty', 'shitted'. We ventured to the scream pub in angel called the mitre. Got 'razzmatazz' and 'criminalities'. Also in the goose by russell square we got 'vivisectionsists'. The Essex serpant in covent garden, we got 'quintessetial', 'razzmatazz'(again) and 'inequalities'.

[davejon]

why has VB retired from Word up? What a sin.

[Guest]

why has VB retired from Word up? What a sin.

'Twas but a passing fancy - am back now.

Are you two up for meeting tonight or wot? Stop running scared

(PM me)

[Istenem]

re DJ: for someone with such good scores your spelling is peculiar
the machine wouldn't allow three of the words in your post. (not counting you're)
also i trust you are aware that RAZZMATAZZ can also be spelled RAZZAMATAZZ, so potentially another 60-odd points there.
when i saw APPROXIMATIONS with my eye at baker street i nearly fell out of my chair.

re CR: totally agree; playability is very good on WU the money you can win is only really good for reinvesting and trying to get better scores next time. whereas something like bullseye has 0% playability but up to 400% profit potential. depends whether you play for profit or not (and >90% of punters don't)

[Ernest W. Quality]

Hmmm. DJ, I wish you would properly send your scores in. It can't be too hard to write them down surely. Otherwise I might have to start demanding photo evidence or something.

[Nil Satis]

For any of you Word Up gurus based in London, the Famous 3 Kings by West Kensington tube has a machine fixed to the wall by the pool tables where last night the Word Up was set at 700 points for £1 and around 1000 points for £2.

As I'm quite new to the forum, I haven't really worked out if this would be lucrative enough to travel any distance for, but my frankly amateurish efforts of just over 1000 were the top two scores! I play Word Up for a bit of relaxation as I tend to concentrate on the more profitable quiz-based games, which sadly now are a dying breed. In fact the other eight games on this machine were to my mind some of the real dregs of the modern quiz world - Golden Boot, Spot the Difference, a completely empty Hex Appeal plus a Matrix that gave Qx3 (three questions) on only the second row! Frankly none of those would be worth the 20 seconds walk from the tube station!

It may be a relatively new machine (I've only seen ones that size and shape in a couple of other places before) or maybe the previous high scores had been wiped. The only reference in the High Scores table to any of the 'names' on here was one entry someone asking who Hyena was! I left a NOTVAJINAL to prepare the ground for hopefully one of you guys to annihilate the High Scores table...

[Istenem]

i was in that pub to watch a football match many years ago and played a standalone hangman v1. as for the WU; it would certainly be doable for some of the people here but (like all the games) it probably wouldn't be very profitable. Especially since it sounds like you were playing on an old gamesnet (or possibly you haven't seen many paragons in your neck of the woods). But if it were the old, old gamesnet it might be very very interesting.


good on you for being called NOTVAJINAL, if ever i get a low clearance to top a table in a new pub i tend to call myself FRUITCHAT to spread the word that there are a few geeks who spend far too much time checking these pages.

and for the mucky-minded i got CRAPPING yesterday and it was allowed.

you may know all this already but HYENA is a one-man-band, about 40, greying, plays all over the south west, sits on a stool at the machine, i guess he does it as a job but don't know for sure.

not sure about "HYENA XTC" and "HYENA REGD" which i have noticed lately, maybe he has found a sidekick?

[davejon]

you may know all this already but HYENA is a one-man-band, about 40, greying, plays all over the south west, sits on a stool at the machine, i guess he does it as a job but don't know for sure.

not sure about "HYENA XTC" and "HYENA REGD" which i have noticed lately, maybe he has found a sidekick?

I think I've seen him before in the Rocket, pretty crazy looking with a great late 70's haircut, he was on word up for quite a while whilst I was working one night but noticed afterwards he hadn't managed to get onto the board :mrgreen:

[Istenem]

from your description, it sounds like you have been blessed with the presence of STEVE W

[Istenem]

MEESKITE bowed out yesterday with another boring but functional MILLIONAIRES at the green man and french horn on st martin's lane london.
n.b. for the record EWQ: the old itbox has been replaced with a gamesnet machine so all preious scores from that pub have either been relocated or lost.

[Ernest W. Quality]

VAJINAL BOB EMPIRE UPDATE

The streamlined yet elite squad of VB and EWQ ambled around the usual hotspots of the London Word Up scene this afternoon. For some reason we decided to go to Uxbridge first, but there weren't as many machines as we thought, so not a great use of time... we also expanded into Mahjong and Hex Appeal to relax between WU games, and won money on them surprisingly often (but only £1 or £2 a time, so not much help really).

The main high-points of the outing were that we leapfrogged Dave Jon at four of their favourite pubs, and that we almost broke the WR, with a 1610 non clearance, 4 letters left (too many Ks at the end...). No low points, but getting £10 jackpot for a 1240 score at the Lloyds was just weak - shame on the locals. Some nice work from Unknown on the words board though, but the thing was gagging to payout.

Also an amusing VB fan story... one of our occasional tag-alongs was playing a pool match in Oxford and mentioned WU, then someone else piped up that he'd seen VB all over Colchester, and a second guy said "don't be stupid, VB is from Oxford", because of our scores there. Hmm...
I suppose the name VB is at least memorable, if not as elegant as Unknown's considered monikers.

Full stats of the outing below, only for places with new top scores (for posterity, included previous owner of each venue, and categorised nicely by address so Dave & Jon will be able to find the pubs with machines in). We also went to a few others along the way to check we were still top.

<pre>
Uxbridge:
Hog's Head - 1703 (was LloydJon 1690)
The Old Bill - 1651 (was SANDS 1624)
- Acclimatises 312
The Ostler - 1889
The Good Yarn - 1687

Leicester Square:
The Moon Under Water - 1809

Charing Cross Rd:
[Formerly the Moon Under Water, now the Montagu Pyke, part of Lloyds chain]
Lloyd's - machine 1 - 1902 (and 1610 non clearance)
- Quizzers 304
- machine 2 - 1959 (b4 was Dave Jon 1840)
- Metalworker 264
- Nationalizing 468

Newman St (off Oxford St):
The Blue Posts - 1814
The Cambridge Arms - 1916 (b4 was Dave Jon 1876 & 1800)
- (DJ: Quintessentially, -ial, -ence)

Tottenham Court Rd:
The Court - 1998 (b4 was Dave Jon 193
- Elephantine 264

Marchmont St (Russell Square):
The Goose - 1859 (b4 was Dave Jon 1847)
- Rationalize 319

</pre>