Fruit Machine Chat

Good Hangman style game this. Gives me a good excuse not to leave a pub too quickly after doing a fruit. I have seen lots of answers come up on numerous occasions. Just wondered if any of you Quiz Masters out there have compiled a list of all the answers. Surely memorising the answers can guarantee good wins!!

This issue has been raised several times on here and the general consensus each time is that it would never be worth anyone's while trying to learn the full set of words and phrases used on Hex Appeal, or similar games like Stand and Deliver and Football Crazy, because all these games are programmed to get much harder after a relatively small win, meaning you get longer and longer gaps between prizes and phrases chosen from non-specific categories, e.g. on Football Crazy you get things like 'Football Mad' which might mean anything from any of the other categories.

All of these games are punter-friendly in that the virtual impossibility of ever winning more than about £4 means that they can offer the £1 prize, which is all most punters ever seem to want, more regularly. They are the sort of things that a good player will risk an occasional spare 50p on to see if they are in the right mood but certainly no more than that.

xyz

The alphabetical keyboard is a bit of a pain the arse.

dmac wrote:I prefer Cryptic Clues.

Ditto. Usually good for a £3 win.

I managed a new best of 2375 points on Cryptic Clues yesterday. Then had a rush of blood and lost the £5 I'd accrued thus far, although (and this clearly marks me out as a non-pro) was strangely serene about it because I was so pleased at the points tally.

Incidentally, and back on topic, the Gamesnets seem to have an updated Hex called Hex Maniac. Didn't really get time to play on it, but I think it had 50p and £1 play options.

I enjoy Hex and again find I get more than my money's worth out of it.

My question is, can it be fixed?

Ok it can in the sense that you could win a £1 after 2 'questions' (didnt know what else to call them!) and then it just removes all cash chances.

But could it fix it in terms of for example "countries" when it gives a 5 letter game? It may have say, 15 5 letter countries programmed and the answer could be China. But when you put in 'C' it might change it to (another 5 letter country without a C in it - mind gone blank).

Apologies for the bad example but hopefully you get my general argument. I'd assume the answer is set in stone when the timer starts, I just wondered if anyone knew differently.

The point is that it doesn't need to fix it in that way. It just needs to give (as I said earlier) longer and longer gaps between prizes and more general prize categories. If you genuinely do know 95%+ of all the answers but it takes you 20 minutes or more to win £1-£2 for your 50p stake and you still eventually get killed in the end, would anyone claim that was a worthwhile way to make a living?

I don't think that anything that anyone else has posted here contradicts what I originally said, but then I am a stubborn old git...

;-)

P.S. In answer to ggdr's question, there is indeed a new game on the Gamesnets called Hex Maniac with 50p and £1 variants - I've no idea what the supposed JPs are but then as I've been trying to explain there is no way you are going to ever get to see them anyway...

on your example; for a five letter country i'd go with A first:
kenyA, gAbon, spAin, itAly, wAles, chinA, nepAl, mAltA etc. then depending on where the A falls you have secondary strategies

----A choose N for --N-A (kenya) or ---NA (china)

--A-- choose I for I-A-- (italy) or --AI- (spain)

but it might have been egypt in the first place.

similarly on four-letter elements choose N for ---N, N--N or --N-, failing that it must be gold or lead so choose L afterwards.

in answer to the question, no, i don't think it is fixed in that way but, once the categories disappear and you have a four-letter word, you are up the creek.

xyz

Working as a team of 3 we compiled a list of almost 9,000 Hex Answers across the 102 categories

One wrote down the category number of letters and the answer

One used the list compiled to date to answer the Hexagon

One filled in the letters

Then, back at the office, the list was updated with the day's new knowledge and a new list printed and on to tomorrow's challenges

The list was in subject order and then sorted by number of letters in the answer. Once we had more than 4 answers with the same number of letters I would check what, if any, letters were in all the answers, then as the list got longer the optimum letter(s) to go for to solve it

Discussions with LL representatives were that we were being enterprising and that as we'd paid 50p a time for the knowledge, we were entitled to use it. Their concern was that we'd found a website somewhere and downloaded it, but no

We turn 50p into £3/£4 80% of the time and have to settle for £1 or £2 the remaining goes

Haven't seen Hex Maniac yet but would guess that it's a whole new set of categories and/or answers

Hexpert, that's absolutely phenomenal work - presumably you could empty any ItBox (albeit pretty slowly) with that resource. What percentage of games throw up a new phrase given you've already nailed 9,000 of them?

Can I ask what gave rise to the discussions with LL representatives? Did you approach them or did they somehow find out about you (if so, how)?

I suspect he means that they turn 50p into £3/£4 80% of the time on their first go and the other 20% of the time they get £1 or £2.

After this, you'll probably get £1 back for investing 50p, but it would be a long slow process. And to keep the £3/£4 fresh they'll have to go to different pubs all the time, rather than revisiting the same ones.

9000 eh? Good work. No wonder you prefer Cryptic Clues.

I saw Greek alphabet and Norse God subject areas in Hex Maniac, which were new to me, but also some familiar categories.