What you see at left is my record-setting game of Word Square, which can be played (if you can call it that) at gamesavants.com. Bob Dyjak, a co-worker of mine at Kodak, and I would play the two-player version of this game at break-time in the Building 23 cafeteria, some 36 years ago.*
In the two-player version (which I prefer), each player draws a 5×5 grid. One player begins by calling a letter, then each player writes that letter into any space on his grid.
Players take turns calling letters, until the grid is full. The object of the game is to form words of three, four, or five letters in the rows and columns of the grid. Five-letter words are worth the most (10 points each), four-letter words are worth 5 points, and three-letter words score 2 points each.
The online version of this game differs in two respects. First, you can score up to 26 points for each row or column, since there are three possible three-letter words, two four-letter words, and one five-letter word in each row or column. Second, and more importantly, the program calls all the letters. This turns out to be a big problem with this particular game.
I played this game a few hundred times and know it well. The program has a letter pool that is dominated by the odd consonants and vowels. You can pretty much count on getting 1 V, 2 Ws, 1 X, 2 Ys and 1 Z every single game, and very often a J, K or Q as well, just to make things interesting. The most commonly called vowel is neither A or E, but U. The game board you see here is unusual only in that 2 Ls were called (a rarity!) and a second M was called instead of a second W. I also got a second P instead of a J, K or Q. The seven-vowel total is also on the generous side for this game — it is not at all unusual to wind up with only three or four vowels (most of which are Us) out of twenty-five letters.
You may ask, why play such a poorly-designed game? Well, the game has a high-score list, and the best recorded score was 111. For a long time, this seemed impossibly high to me. But I figured if I put the right letters in the right places, and had a little luck, then I could use the predictability of the game to my advantage and eventually beat the sucker.
Finally, things fell into place, I scored 115 and now I’m done. Game over.
It wouldn’t be hard for a programmer to improve the on-line game. First and foremost, the letter pool should reflect the letter-frequency of English (not Czech) five-letter words. Second, the program should allow the player to select every other letter, otherwise the outcome depends too much on the random whims of the program. Third, the program should keep track of the vowel-consonant balance during the game and adjust its letter selections to avoid over-representation of either type. Finally, the program shouldn’t just drop a J or Q or Z onto you at the end of the game when there is no hope of making it fit into the grid. That’s just spiteful, and extinguishes interest in the game.
So good luck to you in case you wish to try it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
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* Neither Bob or I or Building 23 remains at Kodak. In fact, you can watch the implosion of Building 23 here. I found it satisfying that the nice corner offices, where the managers sat, were the first to fall.
In the two-player version (which I prefer), each player draws a 5×5 grid. One player begins by calling a letter, then each player writes that letter into any space on his grid.
Players take turns calling letters, until the grid is full. The object of the game is to form words of three, four, or five letters in the rows and columns of the grid. Five-letter words are worth the most (10 points each), four-letter words are worth 5 points, and three-letter words score 2 points each.
The online version of this game differs in two respects. First, you can score up to 26 points for each row or column, since there are three possible three-letter words, two four-letter words, and one five-letter word in each row or column. Second, and more importantly, the program calls all the letters. This turns out to be a big problem with this particular game.
I played this game a few hundred times and know it well. The program has a letter pool that is dominated by the odd consonants and vowels. You can pretty much count on getting 1 V, 2 Ws, 1 X, 2 Ys and 1 Z every single game, and very often a J, K or Q as well, just to make things interesting. The most commonly called vowel is neither A or E, but U. The game board you see here is unusual only in that 2 Ls were called (a rarity!) and a second M was called instead of a second W. I also got a second P instead of a J, K or Q. The seven-vowel total is also on the generous side for this game — it is not at all unusual to wind up with only three or four vowels (most of which are Us) out of twenty-five letters.
You may ask, why play such a poorly-designed game? Well, the game has a high-score list, and the best recorded score was 111. For a long time, this seemed impossibly high to me. But I figured if I put the right letters in the right places, and had a little luck, then I could use the predictability of the game to my advantage and eventually beat the sucker.
Finally, things fell into place, I scored 115 and now I’m done. Game over.
It wouldn’t be hard for a programmer to improve the on-line game. First and foremost, the letter pool should reflect the letter-frequency of English (not Czech) five-letter words. Second, the program should allow the player to select every other letter, otherwise the outcome depends too much on the random whims of the program. Third, the program should keep track of the vowel-consonant balance during the game and adjust its letter selections to avoid over-representation of either type. Finally, the program shouldn’t just drop a J or Q or Z onto you at the end of the game when there is no hope of making it fit into the grid. That’s just spiteful, and extinguishes interest in the game.
So good luck to you in case you wish to try it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
____________________________________________________________
* Neither Bob or I or Building 23 remains at Kodak. In fact, you can watch the implosion of Building 23 here. I found it satisfying that the nice corner offices, where the managers sat, were the first to fall.