Fruit Machine Chat

Found one very dead the other day. No prize until Round 5 which wasn't the usual £10 but a rather miserable £1! Choice of Magic Letter was between x, y and z or something silly like that!

Trick, or just an extremely good word player has been about?

This is the default setting round me. Think it's through normal play as played one the other day which on taking a £2 in round 4 (first prize available) then went to the quid only setting next board.

yep, somebody good has been on it Log. this scenario is pretty common (at least in London, as NM says). it is marginally better than the game vanishing after a win but it is a kick in the teeth for punters; not so much the £1 top prize but stupid letter requirements. FWIW, i find secret letter being Y the trickiest, V and X are nasty too, never seen it demand Q.

This seems to be a common protection method for most of the newer word based games. 'Secret Letter', 'Play on Words' and 'Hex it up' (or whatever the latest hex game is called, despite hundreds of plays I can never remember its proper name) all feature the £1 jackpot once they have been taken for a couple of jackpots or consistent smaller prizes.

What I don't understand is why there is a need for the game to subsequently be removed, as this seems a perfect way for them to recover some of their payout, compared with removing the game from the machine and eliminating that opportunity.

I have to agree with Isty that Y is a deceptively evil beast to deal with, and as odd as it sounds I would imagine that given its apparent 'every game must be possible' rule that Q would probably be easier to deal with than X, J or Z. Perhaps that is the reason that it is never the secret letter.

I'd have thought that a reasonable way to combat the pro is to still keep the prizes reasonable (i.e £3 - £5), but make the time it takes to achieve the prize round a function of percentage drift, so it then becomes more profitable for the professional to go after the easier terminals with the quicker returns.

Better prizes for Joe Public, less incentive for John Pro to stay on the unit hammering it.

But I suppose, never underestimate the amount of time someone will spend to earn a few quid !

Managed to get the tenner with Z being the secret letter. Was a struggle though.

Whilst I wouldn't say I'm as good as some on this in some more sleepy locations can be a bit of a boon. To my surprise on Sunday jackpotted it twice in succession, game then disappeared.

logopolis wrote:Found one very dead the other day. No prize until Round 5 which wasn't the usual £10 but a rather miserable £1! Choice of Magic Letter was between x, y and z or something silly like that!

Trick, or just an extremely good word player has been about?

Found one like this very local - highest score was only 3800 but still £1 on level 5. Now thats poor.

Yeah the highest score wasn't exactly out of this world on mine either.

if somebody plays well and gets a the maximum prize, they might come to feel a bit coy. if so, they can forfeit a name on the scoreboard by entering a blank. but they still get a tenner.

rather than default to (eg) GWHL, the score isn't registered. but internally, the game remembers that a wandering pro has spanked it.

Yeah that sounds about right Istenem.

my darts took me to shepperton today.

there was a gamesnet which had secret letter on the main screen.
so i played it.

it had a different prize structure but after £2, it offered me an impossible game.

tut, tut. hmm. .

koff. ahem. koff.

bit shady that "reflex" to a win

on a fruit machine, the prizes are still visable, not obtainable but they still show..

surely the quiz should just give impossible answers ikn the higher rounds?

theres got to be something you guys dont know the answer to?

Some of us are omniscient. Which incidentally, scores well in Word Slop.

a faceful of beer didn't help with clarity on my last post.

suffice it to say that the matrix of letters the game offered on round five, (even with perfect play) had too few of the secret/bonus letter to reach the points target.