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I play to have fun, but not necessarily to win.
My best game is Boggle. In person, I've never lost a game. I have lost a few rounds, but never a game (though I did come close to losing a game once). A while back, I discovered boggle online. I played on mIrc and on games.com. Online I've found lots of people who can cream me with tidal regularity and I love it. I still like boggle, but games.com is really irritating these days - too hard to connect. They need more and faster servers, I think. But boggle's a pretty network intensive game (not in amount of bytes, but in frequency of packets sent). You need to be a good pattern matcher to play well at this game, but you also have to know some boggle words - words that don't seem to be anywhere but in an online boggle dictionary someplace. Rare words like cwm and airn, but also suspicious words like tegs, uta, var, and hols. Some people set themselves apart by not using these kinds of words.
Recently I started playing scrabble on yahoo which is pretty fun. I never really liked scrabble all that much before. I played to make cool words and not to win. But this is pretty fun. I can't play worth a crap, yet, but it's nice. I'm coming aware of strategy. There's a big luck factor in this game, but you definitely need to know rare words, be a good and quick pattern-matcher, and also have a tenable strategy. While I do not understand them very well, I discern that the strategies of the better players (ranked red on yahoo) prescribe methods for when and how to pass, and most importantly - how to block the other player. I was vaguely aware of this before, but it wasn't until I played a few games with different players that I realized how important this is. I can't do it yet. I only note. (Interestingly, these strategies are much hated by some other players.)
They came out with another word game called text twist on yahoo which is pretty fun, too. I like that one - it's almost like solo boggle. They also have an anagram game (with some annoying bugs) and daily cryptograms (though the software lacks an important feature - clear guesses).
In general, I think the people on the Boggle group are much, much friendlier and even supportive. Very different personality types. (Although there was once a guy who came in to play with a bot, which I thought was pretty rude. I don't consider him a boggle player, per se.) In the back of my mind, I'm wondering whether there is some reason for this other than chance. Not that I mind either way. I just ignore the boneheads and play.
There are several other word games I'd like to play, but haven't yet. I've heard about upwords, but have no idea what that one's about. Oh, and there's a pretty good game on mIrc, the name of which eludes me for now, in which a bot gives you a random sequence of letters, then everyone treats it like an acronym (that's it! the game is called acro!). Everyone submits their expansions in private to the bot, after time is up (60 seconds maybe) the bot prints the expansions and people vote on the best ones. I like the ones that make meaningful sentences.
Ah, well. I can go on a while longer, but I guess this is enough rambling.
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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SIGH
I made a very good living living - for 40 years - in the word game ... i.e.media...and I am the worst at word games. If ya wanna win, don't pick me for your partner!
I have nothing but admiration for those who excell but ....those who know me well hand me paper and pencil and make me the Score-Keeper! That way they, and I, are out of harm's way.
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dear FF, what is a "bot"?! I haven't attempted to play any games online but I do like Boggle and Scrabble. I'm interested in the strategies of the latter - how DO you block players, and what does it mean to pass? My mother is the one I play Scrabble with the most, and she and I rarely keep score - we play gentlewomen's Scrabble - "O, I got the Q" - "Well, I have a U, would you like it?"!! 
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enthusiast
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How well I remember the days when my sister and I would play Jotto. I guess that's another one that could translate well to computers.
One of my favourite twists in word games is this: keep a list of the words used (in Scrabble, for example). At the end of the game, each player tells a short 'story' linking the words in his or her list. It's probably a good exercise for creative thinking, and it's always a hoot - the stories end up being very silly. Even my father got into the act, and we all ended up laughing every time.
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each player tells a short 'story' linking the words in his or her list
What a great idea!
I've also heard of people playing other versions of Scrabble, in which they made up words and had to concoct a feasible definition for their new creations - every word had to be one NOT found in the dictionary. I'm sure there are other variants - I might even have read them here somewhere. I'm sure some people play dirty-word Scrabble too, for example - I wonder if anyone ever plays proper-name Scrabble?
It might be fun to allow more than seven letters, too. Some country does, I think - Anu mentioned it in the AWAD a week or so ago, didn't he?
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Thanks, Silk. But then how does it apply as FF mentions it here? -
(Although there was once a guy who came in to play with a bot, which I thought was pretty rude. I don't consider him a boggle player, per se.)
How does one play with a bot? it seems it would improve your game....?
edit: I mean, how does one "come in with" a bot? it sounds as though it's something that's either there or not there on a site?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Curious whether "bot" has yet been accepted in "the" dictionary. On quick scan, AHD has it but M-W does not, and I wonder what OED says.
Anyone want to take a bet a bit about a bot?
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OP
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dear FF, what is a "bot"?!
I haven't attempted to play any games online but I do like Boggle and Scrabble. I'm interested in the strategies of the latter - how DO you block players, and what does it mean to pass? My mother is the one I play Scrabble with the most, and she and I rarely keep score - we play gentlewomen's Scrabble - "O, I got the Q" - "Well, I have a U, would you like it?"!!
Bot is short for robot, actually not a robot but a program that does something for a user. Some bots are good - they manage channels, moderate games, etc. Others are annoying - pestering users, taking over channels, or as in this case, playing in the place of a human.
You block players by screwing up the board in a way that screws them more than it screws you, i.e. by playing a lousy word on a choice spot - or playing a less valuable word because it might create more valuable choices for the other player. I think there's a lot of strategy among the more highly rated players.
To pass means to skip one's turn, with the option of returning some or all of one's letters and retreiving new ones. I note now that the game on yahoo is not called scrabble, but literati. Literati is slightly different than scrabble. The points for letters are different, I think, and I believe the letters are randomly generated with P(1/26) for each instead of according to a predefined number of each letter.
When I played with my grandma, I never won because I always went for long and cool words instead of maximum points. So I would play a word like orbital without a word multiplier instead of playing, say, trail on a triple word. Not like that any more, as I would like to see exactly how hard it is to learn the strategy, but that's how I used to play.
We're very fond of Boggle at home (not online of course). We can handicap the game very easily. I have to play words of 4 (sometimes 5) or more letters. Oldest daughter and wife play regular rules. Youngest daughter gets to play one and two letter words and gets to keep words even though others have them.
k
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How well I remember the days when my sister and I would play Jotto. I guess that's another one that could translate well to computers.
One of my favourite twists in word games is this: keep a list of the words used (in Scrabble, for example). At the end of the game, each player tells a short 'story' linking the words in his or her list. It's probably a good exercise for creative thinking, and it's always a hoot - the stories end up being very silly. Even my father got into the act, and we all ended up laughing every time.
I'm not familiar with Jotto, but now that I'm aware of it, I'll look into it some time. I like the idea of making up a story for the list. Maybe we'll try it.
k
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