Lexigame Community
General Category => Word Games => Topic started by: blackrockrose on April 17, 2021, 03:42:32 PM
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I have recently experienced a repeated problem when playing Chihuahua. After clicking on a letter it gets stuck on its way to the word-building rack (see attached screenshot), and I can't continue playing – the game is frozen.
This happens at both chi.lexigame.com and chihuahua-puzzle.com, not all the time but fairly regularly. I switch from one URL to the other to enable me to continue playing.
The attached screenshot shows me playing a 7-by-many from Your Puzzles. I mostly play 7-by-many, so it may not be happening in the other puzzle types – I can't remember. It may also be happening only in Your Puzzles. I'll keep a note when playing in future, but meanwhile I wanted to find out if anyone else is having the same problem.
I am playing on a MacBook Pro 2020 using macOS Catalina and Google Chrome.
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Thanks for reporting that, blackrockrose. I had this happen to me once, a couple of days ago. I can't remember how I got things working again - maybe just clicking on the rogue letter on the rack. This was in a daily 7-by-many. I'd also be interested to know if this is happening to other people.
It's probably an accidental by-product of the changes I recently made to try to improve play on touch screens. I imagine it only affects the 7-by-many puzzles, because in these puzzles the letter played is not meant to move up to the rack at all, since it should remain available for playing again in the same word.
You mention clicking on a letter. I presume that means you're using a touchpad or mouse. Or does your Macbook have a touch screen? You could try using the keyboard to select the letters and see if the same problem occurs.
I'll see if I can work out how this is happening, and put a stop to it.
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Thank you Alan.
I'm using a mouse. I'll try using the keyboard and see what happens.
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I have been having all sorts of trouble with the last couple of 7 by many games.
Nothing to do with functionality, just my inability to find the words in what i have found to be very tough games.
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It happened to me a couple of days ago on the 7-by-many game.
A letter (the 'S', the key-letter I think) got stuck halfway between the frame and the display screen. Pressing 'Clear' had no effect.
I then played the other six letters onto the screen to form a nonsense word. Pressing 'Submit' got the response 'Must use the 'S'.
I then pressed 'Clear' again and - 'Hey Presto!' - everything was back to normal.
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This has happened to me several times in the past few days. I play nearly exclusively on my mobile phone using the Chihuahua app, no keyboard or touchpad. When it happens, I just drag the miscreant letter circle back to its rightful place and then press clear. That takes care of it.
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I've discovered what's causing this to happen. A further update will roll out over the next few days to eliminate the problem.
In the meantime you may be able to avoid trouble by aiming your pointer or finger at the middle of each letter when playing 7-by-many. Or using a keyboard if available.
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I have noticed similar problems on my iPad in ALL the puzzles. When a word is played the odd letter disappears from the game. I found multiple taps on the MIX button eventually brings all the letters back.
Normally I play on a PC so this does not impact me overly...
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I have a different problem on my Samsung tablet. The forum has stopped showing 'New'.
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Pat, I play on an 8" Samsung tablet. "New" is still showing correctly on mine.
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How do you find the game generally on your tablet, Roddles? The other problems I have are that I can't use the keyboard (I can bring it up but pressing letters on it does nothing), sometimes the entire game plus the forum fit onto the screen but much more often it extends way beyond the size of the screen so that I have to swipe several times to the left to see the scoreboard or the forum, or swipe up several times to see the progress bar, and not infrequently, pressing on a letter makes the whole game shrink to about 3 inches by 2 in the top left hand corner. Most odd.
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'New' has magically started appearing on my tablet again although it's still annoying when the game shrinks up into the corner of the screen!
There are several reasons why I prefer Samsung tablets to iPads but one drawback is that many apps aren't optimised for Samsung tablets as evidenced by 'this app may not be optimised for your device' appearing against many of them in the Play store. I did buy one such app, regardless of the warning, a field guide to the birds of Colombia, having been assured by the developers that it would work OK on my tablet. It didn't. It was usable, but barely, and it was only when I saw the same app on someone's iPad that I realized how bad my version was. So I suspect that the irritating problems with Chi I experience on my tablet are probably to do with Samsung's software.
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My problem occurs with the touchscreen. If I hover over the puzzle area, then the letters are submitted. This is not a problem except in the Challenge where my hit% looks as if I am playing with random words. The biggest dent, of course, is to my pride.
dino
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Pat, you may be doing Samsung an injustice. I have been able to generate a similar distorted layout on my Android tablet, which is made by Lenovo.
I didn't see this happening when I was playing letters, but it happened when I was pressing the button that removes the last letter played. In fact I seem to be able to guarantee that odd things will happen when I place several letters on the rack and then tap on that button repeatedly and rapidly.
For me, this was happening in the Google Chrome browser. From a quick test it didn't seem to occur when using the Firefox Android browser. Are you using Chrome? And have you tried a different browser? That might provide you with a temporary work-around while I investigate further.
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You're right of course, Alan, it could be the Android operating system rather than a problem with Samsung.
I can't be sure what action causes my problems as I'm a fast but inaccurate 'tapper'. I am indeed using the Google Chrome browser - I'll try using a different browser to see what happens. The ideal scenario would be to be able to use the keyboard as I can with the iPad. I can't use the iPad as a matter of course - it's so old that if I accidentally hit on the keyboard a letter that isn't in the puzzle the whole thing freezes and has to be rebooted. Perhaps I should adopt the practice of 'festina lente'!
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You're right about the X button being the one to cause the problem, Alan. I pressed it just once and the screen shrank.
I tried using Samsung's own Internet browser but it did exactly the same thing so I installed Firefox. Fingers crossed - that seems to be working OK at the moment. The game fits the screen as it should with all the words beginning with the same letter wrapping round onto a new line on the scoreboard instead of stretching along a single line to infinity, as is usually the case with Chrome. Also the overall size of the screen seems to be remaining steady. With Chrome, even if it didn't shrink right up into the corner it would often become slightly larger or slightly smaller.
The only thing that Firefox still won't do is allow me to use the keyboard. But a good result so far so thanks for the suggestion.
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My problem occurs with the touchscreen. If I hover over the puzzle area, then the letters are submitted.
Dino, I would interpret hovering to mean that your finger is close to the screen but not actually touching it, in which case I wouldn't expect the screen to respond in any way.
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Dino, I suspect your hovering problem is similar to the problem I have where I get a premature submission after I have touched a letter. It appears to be because my finger stays too long on the spot. It doesn't need much pressure to activate, and then the green submit arrow appears and any further delay activate that.
Alan, I jumped the gun when I said the problem was fixed. Still getting it. Is it possible to put a longer delay before the submit arrow appears?
(Pat, I like playing on the Samsung tablet, except for the problem just mentioned, which I thought originally may be just a Samsung touch-sensitivity problem. I do not use the keyboard. All touch or drag) .
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Pat, I like playing on the Samsung tablet, except for the problem just mentioned, which I thought originally may be just a Samsung touch-sensitivity problem. I do not use the keyboard. All touch or drag.
Which browser do you use, Roddles? All the problems I had with the Chrome browser have disappeared with Firefox (apart from being unable to use the keyboard).
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Pat, I use Chrome, and always have on the tablet as it is basically the default browser. After many years using Firefox on the computer I have switched to Chrome there also, as Firefox was not behaving nicely with online forms. But I am beginning to dislike Chrome on the tablet as it now groups tabs, and it is too easy to close the wrong tab. I switch back and forth between the puzzle and the forum discussion and I am getting sick of accidentally closing the puzzle and having to log back in. Might give Firefox a whirl.
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Hi Roddles,
Forgive me if I am teaching Granny to suck eggs, but you said you are sick of logging back in each time.
There is an automatic log-in feature which Alan explains much better than I could
Have you set it up to sign in automatically? If not, when you're signed in, click on the Details button just below your player name. Then in the panel that appears, enter your password as "Current password" and put a tick in the box labeled "Sign in automatically on this computer". Then click on OK down the bottom.
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Roddles, your issue might be related to a change I made in March last year to allow your word to be submitted by holding your finger (or mouse button) down on the last letter. See New way to submit a word (https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php?topic=4172.msg63967#msg63967). Do you recall if your problem has started since March 2020?
The length of time your finger has to be in place to submit the word was originally 0.6 sec, but I increased it to 0.8 in the recent updates. I thought this would be long enough because Android devices generally respond differently to a "tap and hold" of around half a second by default. For instance if you tap and hold on a link, you won't be taken directly to the page linked to, but will be presented with a list of options.
I could drop this feature - I don't know whether anybody is actually using it. Or I could make it optional.
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Thanks for digging up those instructions, Jack.
Roddles, it's preferable if you do occasionally close the Chihuahua tab, because that allows your browser to get the latest version when I release updates.
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Thanks Jack & Alan for the replies. Jack, I hadn't noticed that I didn't have that checkbox checked.
Alan I honestly can't tell you when this problem started. I know I didn't have it when I first started years ago, and used to see if I could sustain a 100% hit rate. I suspect it was more than a year ago when I had to give that away, but I do know that I have been complaining to my wife about it much more in recent times. She (pattiecake) uses a stylus on a Samsung phone and doesn't have the problem because of the precision of the tapping.
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Thanks for digging up those instructions, Jack.
Roddles, it's preferable if you do occasionally close the Chihuahua tab, because that allows your browser to get the latest version when I release updates.
Thanks for this suggestion Alan. It has completely fixed my problem on Chrome where pressing the MIX button resulted in some of the letters doubling up with a consequent number of letter position(s) appearing blank. ;D
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I've now further increased, to one and a half seconds, the time your finger has to be held down on a letter to signal you want to submit the word. This should surely eliminate most cases of inadvertent word submission caused by a long press. However, it doesn't rule out the risk of inadvertent word submission due to an accidental double tap. But perhaps such a problem will be less likely now because there's no need to jab a letter sharply - the player can tap a letter slowly and deliberately and, as long as they lift their finger before 1.5 sec has passed, all will be well.
Let's know how this works out, Roddles and others with similar issues.
Pat, I think I've also fixed the problems of the puzzle shrinking in Chrome. Give it a try.
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Looks good, Alan. So far the game has stayed 'anchored' instead of wobbling around the screen and, touch wood, the size has stayed constant. So it looks as if I might be able to go back to using the Chrome browser. I used the recently downloaded Firefox browser only to play Chi as it has a, to me, retrograde function. Instead of having the tabs in a row along the top of the screen there's a bar at the bottom that you have to hit to show all the tabs you have open. One thing that was always stressed back in my (long gone) days as a developer was that the user should have to do as little as possible to get to where they wanted to be. I guess the Firefox developers wanted their browser to be a bit different, but whereas in Chrome (and any other browser I've ever used) if you want to close a tab it's a single click on the X, in Firefox it's 3 clicks; one to bring up the list of tabs; one to close the one you don't want and one to return to where you were. A strange 'improvement' and certainly one that would have earned me a severe b******ing!
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I've now further increased, to one and a half seconds, the time your finger has to be held down on a letter to signal you want to submit the word.
I noticed that on my phone earlier today. Thought something was wrong with the browser so I closed it and restarted it. I had got used to using the hold to submit words, but now find it quicker to double tap the last letter.
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Alan, thank you. For the first time in a long time today I managed to get most of my words without an accidental miss. That is, until I started to get desperate at the end. But that was my own recklessness!