She wants my vocabulary, complete from A to Z

[venta]

OK, time for totting up the scores in the second Boggle game. This game was indeed much less popular than the former - and people entered much shorter word lists - making it a relatively simple matter to tot the scores up.

I originally said:

"A word is a legal word if (and only if) dictionary.com lists it as a word."

by which I meant "rules as before, but the dictionary whose word is final is dictionary.com".

However, one of the earliest entries was from addedentry, including words like "Etna". Which clearly wouldn't be allowed as it's a proper noun. However, it is listed by dictionary.com by a word, so I was left without, as they say, one of those lower limbs upon which to balance myself.

I had thought I'd expressly commented that things dictionary.com lists as "in Acronym Finder" weren't counted, but apparently I didn't, or I deleted it or something. I did stick to that, however: d.com has an entry for an acronym, but doesn't list it "as a word". Anything else, however - proper nouns, foreign words - was fair game.

In addition, considering the cock up I made up explaining my scoring system, I reckon the lesson we can all learn from this is that I can't specify games for toffee.

lanfykins: INTO, WELL, NEAL, TEW, AWM, WELE, WANE, FLYTE, LATEEN + 5 non-unique words
Total score: 12 - 5 = 7
addedentry: LEW, ETNA, FEAL, FETA, TEEL, WALM, LENTO + 4 non-unique words
Total score: 8 - 4 = 4
shyrdar: oaf, fan, let, ant, oaten + 3 non-unique words
Total score: 6 -3 = 3
nisaba: Flan, Ween, Leant, Wanty + 2 non-unique words
Total score: 6 - 2 = 4
pseudomonas: entered an empty list of words
Total score: 0
undyingking: EWE, WEN, YAT + 2 non-unique words
Total score: 3 - 2 = 1
wimble: ante, lei, leafy, fane, flay + 6 non-unique words
Total score = 6 - 6 = 0

Which leaves Lanfykins, who said "please don't list my score if it's embarrassing", as the winner on 7 points.

That means that the longest list of words (fourteen valid entries in dictionary.com) scored the highest, and the second longest list (eleven valid entries) scored the (joint) lowest. Game theorists make of that what you will :)

Comments

I would like to thank my agent, my friends, my mother, the person I met on the bus last week...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly surprised that the forays I made into game theory there actually succeeded :)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Any idea what I'd have scored if I'd had the guts to admit the full list I gave you?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Nope, no idea :)

I'm fairly sure you'd have been streets ahead of Lanfykins, though, just because most other people submitted quite short lists, so I think you'd have won on quantity if not quality.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that noone went negative.

I think I should have biased the random selection componant of my entry towards longer ones...

How about a game where your score for each word is multiplied by the number of other players who did not list it? (ie, if four out of seven players listed "said", then those that did score (7-4)*2=6 for it)

That way, if only two people list a word, they get a better score than if it's a word that almost everyone got.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I like the sound of that.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I like the sound of it so long as someone else does the sums :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Splendid.

You write me a python script to work the scores out (and give me idiot-proof instructions for running it) and I'll roll up a grid and off we go!

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Enroute to molasses :)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting, thank you! I reasoned that if there were an optimal strategy, I had to assume other players would find it. So submitting obvious words, in the hope that no one else would dare, was out, and the obscurest obscurities were in.

Also, it was worth entering words of 5 letters or more because the score from them being acceptable far exceeds the harm from them being duplicates. Unfortunately I could only find one (-:

[venta.livejournal.com]

Leeway was, I think, the longest word available.

Sadly, more than one person spotted it :)

Never mind the Boggle, that's...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Big Dictionary !

Re: Never mind the Boggle, that's...

[metame.livejournal.com]

is that a Faster Pussycat reference?

Re: Never mind the Boggle, that's...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yup. With some very silly lyrics (scroll down).

Re: Never mind the Boggle, that's...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I refer you to my earlier comment (http://www.livejournal.com/users/venta/131486.html?thread=1907102#t1907102)!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

No comment.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Guh, there were heaps more words I would have added except that we thought they'd be too common and everyone else would have one... interesting psychological addition to the gameplay there.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I figured everyone would think that, which is why I listed the most obvious word I could find ;)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

The problem being that you're relying on everyone thinking that.

I was very tempted to submit all 70 odd words I'd dug out, on the grounds that 20 or so of them would hit the words that other people had used (scoring you -20, and me -20), but the other 50 would score me positive points (leaving me on +30, due to the sheer quantity of words, but you still on -20).

But again, if somebody else had adopted the same tactice, we'd have both ended up on -70.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

hooray! -- my strategy for ending up positive worked (just). And I beat wimble, which is clearly important.

My other conclusion is that dictionary.com is rather silly in places ;-)

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

damn, missed that game! again, again!!

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'd like to claim that I didn't enter this one because I wanted to give everybody else a chance, but actually I just don't understand the first thing about game theory. I read the rules through about fifteen times trying to work out what I was supposed to be doing, before deciding that the optimal strategy was to go and have a cup of tea. 8-)