Allegations of cheating have been the most contentious issue surrounding Chihuahua. I probably shouldn't have raised the issue in a flippant way.
What I would call cheating is opening the game up anonymously and looking at the solution to the Standard puzzle, then going to the game in another window under my normal player name and copying all the words in.
Or, using some kind of software tool to generate a list of words using the day's letters, and copying them in.
You may find it hard to believe that anyone would bother doing such things, but I know it has happened, because one player admitted to it. About a year ago I got a message saying:
Thanks for the fun in the last few days Alan. I CHEAT. Solutions should only be avalible the following day then nobody can cheat.I'll behave now.
The writer seemed pleased with his efforts, because he provided his player name, actual first name, and email address. I replied:
Thanks for coming clean. I've never been particularly bothered by cheats and alleged cheats, but I know it gets some of the players hot under the collar. That was the original reason I created the Challenge puzzle - as a refuge from at least one kind of cheating, the kind I gather you employed.
What I can't understand is why you would bother. Maybe it's just to draw a reaction?
Anyway, I hope you keep playing and having fun in one way or another.
Incidentally, this player seems to have been as good as his word, since he, or someone using the same player name, has played from time to time since this exchange, but without spectacularly high results.
And on at least one occasion, when someone seemed to have got a very high score very fast, I found that they had played their words in strictly alphabetical order, and with each word coming only a couple of seconds after the previous one, regardless of how obscure the word was. This seemed to point to someone copying from a list. (Interestingly, there were a handful of words they didn't get, suggesting the list had been generated with the use of a different base word list. Or else, they were just careless.)
But in most cases when I've looked at the records for a game, I've found the highest scorers have played in just the way you describe, Technomc, taking a long time to get there, playing the more common words very quickly first, and then getting the rarer words gradually.
I think it is a normal part of our self-regard (or vanity if you prefer) that we find it hard to accept that someone else could be, say twice as good as we are, at some task we think we are quite good at. That's why I wasn't expecting people to get 100% of the words - because I can usually get only about 50% of them!
But knowing, as I do, that most of the top scorers do it through honest effort and brainpower, I can only feel awe and admiration. So, anyone who does manage to get 100% of the words certainly deserves some form of recognition.
And Mandy's idea of recognition for the player who gets 100% of the standard words is a good one too. I might even be able to get that gong occasionally!
As some players have said in another topic, you find your own level, and strive to do well in comparison with players whose score is usually similar to your own. The scores way above and below your own are not so relevant.
I certainly wouldn't class studying words as cheating, Technomc. And it's very gratifying to know that Chihuahua is inspiring you to learn meanings and origins of words. The principal purpose of the game is to provide the world with some innocent fun, but it's nice to know it has some educational effects as well.