A question

[pat]

Or rather a mystery. I've just spent three days in a remote Amazon lodge with no Internet, yet I managed to get the current games. I was the only one on the scoreboard, unsurprisingly, but how did I manage to get the games?

[yelnats]

Brazilian or other Amazonian jungle?

A while ago there was discussion about a player who scored extremely quickly and Alan explained puzzles are preloaded. I switched internet off, put time ahead and was able to play a puzzle hours before it was generally available. I was also able to see the solution hours earlier.

My score showed up on the board at the appropriate time when I switched Internet connection back on.

[Alan W]

Yes, pat, I've set things up so a player who has no internet for a while can still play. This is how I explained it in another topic a while ago:

...However, from time to time there were problems because of server outages, network outages, server overload, etc. This caused situations where people couldn't play when they wanted to, or when they could play but their words weren't going onto the scoreboard. So over the years I've implemented a few measures to improve reliability, including use of local storage in the player's browser.

Now, daily puzzles are actually created a few days in advance - by random selection from a list of seed words, as you say. Some details of these future puzzles are stored by the player's browser. So when it's time for the new 10-letter puzzle to start, you can play it, even if the server has crashed, or your internet is on the blink, or whatever. The words you've played will be stored on your device, and submitted to the scoreboard the next time you're back online...

[pat]

You think of everything, Alan! Thanks.

Yelnats, I'm in Peru. Muyuna Lodge is only accessible by boat and involves an hour long boat ride from Iquitos, mostly along the Amazon itself, and then a short distance along a tributary. We've now moved on from there and will be steadily climbing to higher altitudes where it will hopefully be a lot less hot and humid and with a lot fewer biting insects!