Word Up Tournament

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:38 pm

mmm. i saw the leaderboard very briefly on day one and it has been inoperational ever since

. not that my scores would be any great shakes. for some reason i've been taking an ultra cautious approach to the games. doesn't help that they tend to be stinkers with too few vwls.

angie · Post by **angie** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:44 pm

I had my first go at both the revamped normal and tournament versions yesterday. Neither of the grids I tried for tournament play were any good so I've only posted 1202 - and I didn't find the JPs noticably lower than normal on the machine I used either.

But the main issue is the ridiculous new vocab! As someone pointed out earlier - if you're stuck, just make words up (VAV, anyone?! A good way to burn Vs, but patently not a word!!). It takes a bit of the skill out of clearing, but probably won't have as big an effect on the overall national leaderboards as I first thought, seeing as the weird words will almost exclusively be 3 & 4 letters long. I wonder if it'd now accept QUINQUENNIAL though? I'm still a bit pissed off about that one!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:51 am

angie wrote:But the main issue is the ridiculous new vocab! As someone pointed out earlier - if you're stuck, just make words up (VAV, anyone?! A good way to burn Vs, but patently not a word!!).

Oi vei! 'Vav' is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. You would deny us Hebes our native tongue - shameless anti-Semite!!! :x

angie wrote:It takes a bit of the skill out of clearing, but probably won't have as big an effect on the overall national leaderboards as I first thought, seeing as the weird words will almost exclusively be 3 & 4 letters long.

Believe me, there are more than enough weird words greater than 4 letters long in the game now! (Schmuck :wink

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:59 am

i had an epiphany.

perhaps the reason why americans have embraced all these ridiculous short non-words is so that they can make those ugly blocky crosswords of theirs work. the only publication i know of over here which has similar 80% white crossword grids is the evening substandard which is a comic anyway.
i realise it is horses for courses but they don't have WU in the states so i'd prefer it to have more britcentric qualities of stylishness over dumbing-down to make it easier to finish.

i do hope that, once the tourney is over, the game reverts to the previous wordlist. although smaller, it does maintain WU's status as a (very good) word game rather than a game of strategy with letters as the building blocks.

to take Angie's example, i think even the most browbeaten scrabble player would question VAV's status as a word but when it is numbers that count, it is a useful tool. the same goes for mistransliterated Q-U words. which should imo almost universally be spelled with an initial K (that is if they can ever be considered English adoptions in the first place). i would consider TRANQ and QWERTY real words but QIVIUT

: QOPH

: i mean honestly do they have any value as words anywhere but an overly permissive wordgame?

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:04 am

vaginalbob wrote:

Oi vei! 'Vav' is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

IOGONEK is the 14th letter of the lithuanian alphabet. should that be allowed too?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:09 am

unknownpseudonym wrote:i would consider TRANQ and QWERTY real words but QIVIUT : QOPH : i mean honestly do they have any value as words anywhere but an overly permissive wordgame?

There are more things in heaven and earth etc etc

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:19 am

unknownpseudonym wrote: IOGONEK is the 14th letter of the lithuanian alphabet. should that be allowed too?

Obviously, if some English people start using it a lot (I'm assuming that the Hebrew influence is stronger than the Lithuanian one here), then dictionaries will have to include it to explain what it is to other English people.

IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK!
IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK!
IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK! IOGONEK!

There, that should do it.

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:37 am

i don't understand shakespeare. sorry, it is probably my bad but i just never understood the relevance of it. call me a philistine.

but re. iogonek, surely that is the point. i doubt that vav has entered the language (by which i mean indiscriminatory wordlists, not reputable dictionaries) because of common usage, rather more because of people needing a new word to make their word games (whether crosswords, scrabble, wu or whatever) easier.

i challenge you to find a contemporary reference to vav which has anything but a purely explanatory function or a word gaming context. (rhetorical challenge.)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:42 am

unknownpseudonym wrote:i don't understand shakespeare. sorry, it is probably my bad but i just never understood the relevance of it. call me a philistine.

Philistine. My point is that 'weird' words' weirdness is determined by one's experiences and interests. 'Strangely' broad word lists are an indictment of the (inevitable) narrowness of one's concerns.

unknownpseudonym wrote:but re. iogonek, surely that is the point. i doubt vav that has entered the language (by which i mean indiscriminatory wordlists, not reputable dictionaries)

You flittergibbeting fudgebangle - wordlists are taken from reputable dictionaries]www.isc.ro[/url], that combines a few languages' scrabble lists (which themselves are all based on reputable dictionaries).

Btw, surely 'vav' would have come into use through repeated use in Anglophone Hebrew scholarship? For English-speaking Hebrew scholars, vav/waw etc would be in regular, daily use!

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 12:11 pm

MrVB wrote:Philistine

well, yes, i don't think we are really disagreeing about anything here. by extension you could include every word in every language (including multiple transliterations from foreign scripts) and you would be left with a hideous mess which required players to press the screen 117 times on any letters they pleased to clear the grid.

no language has any more value than any other but if it is a game played with English English, there shouldn't (imo) be crass free words which have been embraced because they are helpful to the player. (are all the hebrew letters are allowed in multiple spelling variants? and why stop there? there are large indian communities in this country, so that is at least 20 more languages to add to a list and they will need creative transliteration too...)

vav undoubtedly has usage and meaning within relevant circles. i'm not sure that anyone who doesn't speak hebrew would ever have occasion to use it other than to tidy up an otherwise tricky situation in a word game.

i'm a colossal fan of foreign cultures but i don't see the relevance of borrowing their words purely so as to dilute any cerebral challenge of a skill game.

i realise that there is always going to be a grey area but, for my two sheqels*, vav should not be allowed on word up.

* i realise that sheqalim would be a more accurate plural

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:36 pm

unknownpseudonym wrote:i don't see the relevance of borrowing their words purely so as to dilute any cerebral challenge of a skill game.

All they did was think, 'Hey, let's use SOWPODS instead of the list we were using before.' I don't think the designers were feverishly scouring foreign dictionaries for words to make the game easier. If anything, it's made the game harder, as the extra vocab gives extra scope which allows greater variation in performances (especially amongst the best).

In other words, you're just sore because you don't know any of the new words.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:06 pm

My bro and I played the first Word Up World Title Belt match with the new word list today:

VB vs S

1) VB: 1825 - S: 2140 S leads 1-0

At last, S manages to translate scintillating Puzzle Word form to the big stage. Having reached 1000pts in about 8 words, slight bottling left the WR unbothered.

2) VB: 1390 - S: 1953 S leads 2-0

Cacking myself at this point. Outclassed.

3) VB: 1774 - S: 1294 S leads 2-1

Mediocre clearance as I begin to claw my way back.

4) VB: 2029 - S: 1160 2-2

VB beginning to unbottle. S busy tightening his corks.

5) VB: 1793 - S: 1723 3-2

Whiskered.

6) VB: 1304 - S: 1558 (non-clear) 3-3

Should have stabbed out a safe clear. Instead, stabbed out a mediocre non-clear to let bro back into it.

7) VB: 2050 - S: 1141 VB retains belt 4-3

S fails to keep cool.

Clearances: VB: 5 - S: 3

Ave score (not including clearance bonuses): VB: 1395 - S: 1353

Ernest W. Quality · Post by **Ernest W. Quality** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:39 pm

Poor.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 8:38 am

Ernest W. Quality wrote:Poor.

Better scores in 30 mins than you get in an evening's session.

Ernest W. Quality · Post by **Ernest W. Quality** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:06 am

EWQ+Fo with VB: 2318
EWQ+Fo without VB: longest word record
EWQ without Fo/VB: 2219
Fo without VB/EWQ: 2210
VB without Fo/EWQ: 2137

Weak Twat.