Lexigame Community
General Category => Word Games => Topic started by: Alan W on March 04, 2011, 01:36:48 PM
-
I'll be implementing an upgrade to the Chihuahua site soon, with some new features.
The main innovation will be ten-letter puzzles. There'll be a new daily puzzle, using ten letters, alongside the Standard and Challenge puzzles. Naturally, there'll be a ten-letter word possible in every puzzle. Ten letters will also become an option in "Your puzzles".
I'm thinking of giving the new daily puzzle a starting time 12 hours different from the current ones. So it would start around the middle of the day in Europe, very early in the morning in the Americas and in the evening in the Asia-Pacific region. Currently there's a huge upsurge in activity on the site every 24 hours when the new puzzles are up. But the time when this happens - midnight GMT - was an arbitrary choice, and presumably isn't the most convenient time for everybody. So I thought having a series of puzzles starting at a different time would probably suit some players quite well.
Any thoughts?
-
I like the idea of a different starting time for each puzzle - like (pick a location) Midnight for standard, 8 AM for challenge, 4 PM for 10-letter. That way you can come to the site multiple times and find a new puzzle. I generally get to the puzzles about 2 hours before they close at which time my wife interrupts me for dinner. It'd be nice to have longer on a puzzle.
Thanks Alan. Grand idea.
-
Dear Alan,
Personally I think that 11am is too late for the Chihuahua games in Australia.. If I'm going out I cant play them till I come home and I cant play them before I go out either which is usually about 10am.
Otherwise I do enjoy you're games and find them a challenge. Im sure the 10 letter one will be an even bigger one.
Lynne Elliott
Blue Mts
NSW
-
Ours, in the YUK change at Midnight [or 1 a.m.] which is infinately more inconvenient than 11a.m., because i am either in bed or when i'm working [monday - friday] i seldom get the chance to devote any real time until my lunch break at 1 p.m. , but whatever time it comes on we all still get 24 hours to do it....
So Alan, staggering the start times is a great idea...and i don't mind either way...
10 letter words?? Oh Lordy...where will i find the time???
Keep up the good work Viral....and thanks for everything. :)
-
The current start time (1800/1900 local for me) is great for me, but I know it can't be for a lot of people. Thus, spreading out the new time would probably be more fair and convenient. It would also probably spread out the server load. (I sometimes have problems with accessing the puzzle right at 0000 UTC.)
The down side of another Chihuahua game is the temptation to spend even more time at it instead of doing more productive things! (Entirely my own fault, though!)
Slightly off topic -- I was wondering if something could be introduced where players who were the first to get a star or rosette or trophy might have those icons rendered in a different colour or somehow distinguished as a reward for being the first? (Probably way too much work, but an idea anyway.)
I also want to express my thanks for such a wonderful place to exercise the grey cells. It has become the only game I play and I look forward to it each evening.
-
Alan, that is a brilliant idea. Better times to play, more letters to play with .... and more new words to add to the lexicon! YAY! :-V
-
Great idea Alan. And the staggered upload times will reflect the true world-wide participation in and appreciation of the game.
Keep thinlking up new challenges for us ...
Rhino :o
-
I guess if we all had a best time to start the puzzles there would be 200 different start times. First past the post is hardly fair when our English friends currently have to be up at midnight to compete. Chihuahua is addictive fun; far superior to the paper versions of the letter game. I am grateful to Alan for creating it and doing such a wonderful job.
We don't really need to go to work, shop, garden, cook, do housework or study, do we? Hours often fly by when I should really be doing something else. Good thing now then that I have to go to work and only get an hour to play before I leave.
A ten letter Chihauhua? (And what is this going to be called: "Chihauhuas" in line with the 10 letters?) Oh, no Alan no Alan no Alan no......
Ada
-
With 24 hours to complete a puzzle, the start time doesn't really make any difference to me. It doesn't matter to me if I am one of the last to begin. I will probably still only come once a day and have a go at all the available words at once.
Often being a late comer means that others have hit the top of the leader board, but can also let me know if there are any rare 9 letter words available. It also sets more of a target for me, knowing that others have easily exceeded my score often prompts me to keep looking for words that I have not noticed.
Can someone explain why it is important to them to be here when the puzzles first open?
The ten letters sounds like a great addition and should prove challenging.
-
Whatever the reason, there certainly is a surge of players at the hour of the new puzzles. The attached chart shows the traffic on this website over the past seven days. The seven evenly-spaced spikes are at the release of the daily puzzles.
One of the considerations in my mind is the spreading of the load, as TRex mentions.
-
I understand the need to distribute server load, but I don't understand why so many players are opting to hit the boards as soon as they open.
The answer to this questioin may help to determine the best course of action, particuarly as having the 'my puzzles' section, where one can play a new game at any time, doesn't seem to have had a significant impact on spreading peak times.
Personally, I am just curious as to the psychology behind the peak, it is not the way my mind works apparently, but something does drive others to schedule their days in such a way as to be here for the opening of the puzzle.
I find that interesting.
-
I wonder if the spike is caused by the people who come to the game just before it changes, hoping to think of just a few more words before it closes, and then they stay on to start the new game. I've done that myself.
-
As there is no chance of my joining the clever folks at the top of the leader board, the timing of the puzzle is not an issue for me. I count myself lucky when I get a rosette! I agree with Ada - Chihuahua is addictive fun. I man (should that be woman?!) a reception desk at work so when things are slow and no patients are coming along Chihuahua is a very welcome diversion! I can dip in and out during the day.
Keep up the brilliant work Alan. :-C I drive a Toyota IQ which is a bit like a Noddy car. When I'm driving I pretend I'm really in a red convertible sports car. That's why I love the little guy in the red car!
-
Dear Alan:
I like the idea of the staggered start times. Right now, the new Chi appears at 4pm, in a few weeks it will be 5pm. This means that dinner preparation gets short shrift at our house unless I am able to use serious self-restraint and wait until the evening to play. :) I think the reason some of us enjoy playing just as the puzzle appears is the feeling of being 'in the chase,' at least that is sometimes true for me.
I am lukewarm regarding the 'super-sizing' of the puzzle to ten letters. Not sure what would be the point of this. Just think, if the puzzle allowed 45 letters, we'd at last have a reason to use Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. and develop repetitive motion disorders.
Ha! Just my ha'penny's worth of opinion.
Thanks, Alan, for your wonderful work and creativity.
nineoaks
-
Nineoaks, I've been trying out some 10-letter puzzles, and I don't have any strong impressions about how they compare with the 9-letter puzzles, as a playing experience.
They will tend to have more words, but this won't necessarily mean they take longer to play. I suspect most of us spend a lot of time looking for those last few words. This may not change very much.
One thing that some regular players might appreciate is seeing some new words: the 10-letter words obviously, but there will also probably be some shorter words appearing in puzzles for the first time.
Those who try the new puzzles once they start will make up their own minds about them. All the existing 9-letter options will continue of course, with 10-letter puzzles as an extra option.
TRex, are you crazy? You want to bring in a new award that will give more incentive to people to pile onto the site whenever a new puzzle starts up? ;)
Actually, the first to get a rosette or trophy do get a reward now - they will be on top of the scoreboard for the life of the puzzle. More precisely, the first trophy winner is on the top of the board in the rare-words-inclusive view, and the first rosette winner is on top in the rare-words-excluded view. Perhaps this is one of the carrots that gets people to the site at puzzle start time.
-
And the new 10-letter puzzle game will be Chihuahuas? :-R
-
No, that's a plural made by adding an ess, so it wouldn't be allowed. :D
-
Might I suggest 'bloodhound?' It is, after all, used for searching...
But perhaps, Alan, you are planning to move on to some other life form? Since you came up with Chihuahua, I trust you to find the perfect ten-letter word for the Big Chi.
nineoaks
-
I hadn't actually been thinking of giving the 10-letter puzzles a name, other than "10 letters". Obviously, marketing isn't my strong suit.
If we follow the process that led to the name Chihuahua, the new puzzle would have to be called Excellence, Immunizing, Invincibly, Politicize or Zoological. These are the 10-letter words classed as common that, with a suitable choice of mandatory letter, can produce only one common word each - that being of course the 10-letter word itself.
The only one of these that could be remotely suitable is, I think, Zoological. But that would probably lead to all sorts of confusion, with people expecting the puzzle to specialize in animal names.
Alternatively, we could look to words that make a lot of other words, rather than few. The champion here is Pedestrian, with E as the mandatory letter. This puzzle would feature 347 common words, and a whopping 841 words in total. But the word has connotations of being humdrum and unimaginative, so I don't care for it as a puzzle title.
So perhaps Nineoaks is on the right track in looking at dog breeds. There are quite a few ten-letter words with dog-related meanings. Such as canophilia and cynophilia, both meaning a love of dogs (and there's also cynophobia). Quickly passing over dogmatical and dogcatcher, I turn to the dog varieties. In addition to bloodhound, there's rottweiler. But the one that appeals to me is Pomeranian. Admittedly, it's not even one of the ten-letter words I'm planning to add to the game, since it's rarely written without a capital P. But it is a small dog - just slightly bigger than the chihuahua, as the 10-letter puzzle will be slightly bigger than the 9-letter variety. (And, like the chihuahua, it is named after the region it comes from.)
Any other ideas will be welcomed.
-
Don't be modest, Alan. Given how much enjoyment we all derive from playing Chihuahua I don't think it would be at all inappropriate to call the new game Excellence.
But if you want to stick with dogs' names, Pomeranian sounds good.
-
Congratulations on the new puzzle and I am sure it will be highly successful.
As for names, I do like 'bloodhound'.
However, Chihuahua is now a 'brand' which is priceless and is maybe well-worth retaining.
So, my pitch is for 'CHIHUAHUA XL'.
Why?
1. XL could be the initials of 'Ten Letters'.
2. XL sounds like 'Excel' indicating a higher level.
3. XL is a commonplace 'size' for something, maybe clothing, which is larger.
Whatever name you choose Alan, it will be good I am sure.
-
Clever idea, Steadyguy.
Another thought came to me last night when someone said the word chinchilla. Here is a ten-letter animal name that can use the same Chi diminutive. And the word has a similar flavour, both being from native American languages via Spanish.
(https://theforum.lexigame.com/Chinchilla-small.jpg)
(The picture is from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinchilla-mange.JPG (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinchilla-mange.JPG).)
Another ten-letter animal name staring with chi is chimpanzee, but that doesn't appeal somehow.
-
Yes! Perfect! Chinchilla gets my vote!! (not that we're voting...)
nineoaks
-
I thought it was about time I congratulated you, Alan, on the plan for a new puzzle – in one way it's pretty much what I don't need (because my addiction is proving time-consuming :)), but it's a great idea and should generate some mind-blowing puzzles.
I have given a bit of thought to the name, too, and I reckon that you have hit the nail on the head with "Chinchilla." It does go very nicely with Chihuahua, as you say, and has the additional property of being pretty much equally impossible to rhyme (have to give that more thought!).
Cheers,
Dave
-
Chinchilla is a perfect name, Alan! Congrats!! >:D
-
Yes please! Chinchilla. It is not pedestrian.
ada
-
Alan says in his notes/ introduction to the game that the reason it is called 'chihuahua' can be seen by looking at the nine letters of the word arranged in a grid. So what form of grid is he planning to use for the ten-letter version and how will the letters of 'chinchilla' look when they are laid in such a grid?
MK
-
I like both Chinchilla and Chihuahua XL - but will probably play it whatever it's called. As for the design - I think we might need a little typewriter art competition here, since I assume the layout doesn't really matter as far as the computer is concerned.
-
I like Chihuahua XL.
Is it going to be in the same set of tabs? So if Alan went with Chinchilla, it would say "Standard, Challenge, Chinchilla, Your Puzzles"? Standard, Challenge, and Your Puzzles easily tell the user what they will see when they get to the screen. Chinchilla gives me no idea what will be there. I think a good, short descriptor would work best. Perhaps extreme, super size, or challenge+. The plus might work well because you could have a Standard+ and a Challenge+.
-
Alan says in his notes/ introduction to the game that the reason it is called 'chihuahua' can be seen by looking at the nine letters of the word arranged in a grid. So what form of grid is he planning to use for the ten-letter version and how will the letters of 'chinchilla' look when they are laid in such a grid?
MK
The secret of the name Chihuahua is not in the arrangement of the letters, but in the fact that no words could be made other than chihuahua. This wouldn't be the case with a CHINCHILLA puzzle, but the number of words possible with those letters is unusually low, because of the small number of different letters. So, the way things are at the moment, a puzzle with chinchilla as its big word would not naturally occur, because the smallest possible puzzle is a "Medium" in Your puzzles, with 21 to 40 common words, but the letters of chinchilla can't make that many common words, no matter which letter is picked as the mandatory one.
For the letter layout, I tried a triangular pattern first, but it seemed to be taking up too much horizontal space, so I'm currently working on the shape you see below.
Your point is a good one, anonsi. Maybe the tab should labeled "10 letters", but once you get there, the name and picture in the middle of the playing area could be chinchillafied.
-
Going back to start times, Alan, and your request for our opinions, I'm happy with the current start time. My first visit to the site each day is usually at about 08.30 so I have two new puzzles to start the day with. Suits me, sir.
-
I am loving the whole idea of big chi, and don't wish to appear presumptuous, but was just now wondering if you had considered a small chi too Alan?
Puzzles organised by size, with differing times to complete each puzzle.
A small puzzle could have an hour time limit - say less than 60 words. With the monsters having the full 24 hours - say 250+ words.
This might help to displace server load as well as allowing people to opt for puzzles that suit their schedules better.
Puzzles could also start every hour.
Some players have already instituted these types of limits upon themselves in the 'my puzzles' section, giving a time limit of ten minutes, so it would seem that there is already some interest from site users.
-
I can't see how a time limit could work, ilandrah. Apart from the work that Alan would have to do to register players' start times there can't be many people who sit down and work on a single puzzle for a solid hour, and to display the puzzle 'live' for only an hour would mean that people who weren't at their PCs when it opened wouldn't get the full hour or, more likely, would miss it altogether (as would be the case if a new puzzle opened every hour). Chaos would ensue!
I think the addition of a 10-letter puzzle to the two daily puzzles we already have will be more than enough to tax anyone's brain every 24 hours, and those who want more will still have the option of creating their own puzzles.
>:D
-
Ilandrah, I have given some thought to puzzles with shorter time limits.
I had thought that players might use the "Your puzzles" tab to create a quick puzzle competition, but almost all of the published custom puzzles have a duration of 1, 2 or 3 days. There have been only a handful of published puzzles of one hour's duration or less. Yet I find, looking at the data records, that quite a lot of unpublished puzzles have had a life span of 10 minutes, 15 minutes or 20 minutes. So some players set themselves a time limit, but don't open the competition up to others. In this, players are probably being realistic - if you published a puzzle with a life less than one hour, you would probably be the only person to play it anyway.
An illustration of what can be done with a short duration word game is some of the online implementations of the Boggle concept: WEBoggle (http://weboggle.info/) and WordSplay (http://www.wordsplay.net/). On each of these sites there is a continual stream of 3-minute games, with a gap of a minute or so between the games. There seem to be enough people playing at any given time to make it interesting.
Three minutes is probably too short for Chihuahua, but I think one hour would be too long. If you came to the site, found a one-hour game that had been going for 20 minutes and played it until you had run out of words, would you then wait around till the puzzle closed, to see what words you missed, and how you were placed on the final scoreboard? I think the key to a time limit is that it be not long enough for most players. So, when the competition stops, you will be still frantically looking for words. For Chi, this might be around 10 minutes, maybe even less.
If we had an ongoing series of 10-minute games, would there be enough competitors to make it interesting? Possibly not.
One idea I came up with a while ago was a time-trial competition, as they have in cycling. The puzzle might be open for 24 hours, but each player would be limited to 10 minutes of play, or whatever limit would make it exciting. You would see the scores of those who have already played, and maybe there could be a display comparing your performance so far with that of previous players at the same point in time. There could be separate rankings for common words and all words, and for players using keyboard or mouse. Maybe wrong words could be deducted from your score, or there might be a limit of how many wrong attempts you were allowed before being disqualified.
-
Pat, time stamping users is very easy to do. Most web servers are set up to log this information by default. This is designed to detect how long users are on sites to provide web designers with the necessary statistics to make improvements to drive more interest in their sites.
This is readily incorporated into code to allow timed log-in such as Alan has suggested above with the time trial puzzle.
The time trial puzzle was mostly what I had in mind when I originally made this suggestion - a puzzle or even a series of puzzles that have a built in time limit to see how many words one can attain within a certain time limit. Web boggle certainly employs this method, as well as providing higher scores for rare words.
Comparisons can also be made between the words that are more readily found or missed by players, which are usually hit or missed dependant on the layout of the puzzle.
If a player is the only person who answers one of these unique words, they receive additional points.
There would not need to be a puzzle starting every ten minutes, or every hour, but could be started once the player logs in to that particular puzzle.
A ten minute time trial where one MUST get an eight letter common word for their score to be allocated to the leaders board would certainly be exciting. At least I think it would be.
Thanks for your consideration Alan, it was an idle thought that I figured was worth tossing in to the forum to see what others might think of it.
-
Another approach to quick games of Boggle at http://www.wordplays.com/fcgi-bin/wc.pl
Here, you click to start a new game and get the full time allowance, and your name goes on to the high score *for that puzzle* and stays there for 60 days. You can start a new game at any time.
So it seems to me there is a library of possible puzzles and they cycle through them, but each player gets a short challenge whenever they want it and you can still play "against" other players - just by comparing your place on the high score table when it appears.
Just another thought - I don't know when I'd find the time to play any more!!!!
-
There was another online boggle that I used to play, but can't find the link to right now, where words were only revealed as they were found by players, with a display at the end of words that had been discovered and a list of how many had not yet been found.
With bonus points for being the first to discover a word it made for an interesting strategic take on the score boards - go for rare words that are usually more difficult to hunt down and therefore take time or go for easy words that will only earn a single point each.
Time was limited to 3 minutes with game boards being generated at random, so you could not immediately replay any board.
Something along these lines could also be fun.
As to time cb, it does provide greater tempation to have these types of puzzles on the site, but with such variety a player can choose which puzzle suits their time constraints and not be at the bottom of a score board simply because they only had a ten minute break in which to play. There would be no need to spend more time on the site than you currently do, which is one of the things that prompted my thoughts on a mini puzzle to begin with - as much as I love the idea of a big chi, and really look forward to the challenge, I don't know that I will have enough time every day to have a really serious attempt at finding the words. Even now, I reguarly find I have to abandon a puzzle due to other responsibilities.
-
I like CHINCHILLA...great companion name...in fact i am liking all the recent suggestions...so not really much help here am i?? Going to go to a different topic now....