Comments on: Wordcube feedback

By: Maureen Hanley

Maureen Hanley — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:16:58 +0000

On today’s wordcube, Jan 29, why is oaked not a valid word? Wine is oaked…

By: Avigail

Avigail — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:11:00 +0000

Hi, In today’s wordcube (13 January) why is “risk” not a valid word???

By: Johnny

Johnny — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:30:10 +0000

This is a game I play everyday whenever I have a few minutes to spare. I recently switched to using an iPhone instead of a droid. I’d love to see a version of the app available on iTunes. I can access the website on the phone, but the interface is a little slow to respond and overlaps kind of oddly. I love this game.. Even if it doesn’t think “guitar” is a word. Keep up the good work guys.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:16:06 +0000

From wordcube 2011 Dec 18: WOTOHDSTI
Not included: soho,

From wordcube 2011 Dec 17: DEADNEDLI
Not included: dane, laiden, nile

I know you’re busy with your thesis but you might want to let your users know what dictionary you are using. I use wordcube almost every day. Thanks very much
Paul

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:33:39 +0000

Some words are not included at times. I’d like to know what dictionary is being used.

By: Sanjiv

Sanjiv — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:59:20 +0000

Small glitch: your solutions don’t include words like lays, corgi, coir. Otherwise, Word Cube is great fun, I enjoy doing it every day!

By: Rich Marsubian

Rich Marsubian — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:54:34 +0000

puzzle of 11/10/11 missed:

beaut

tule (a California bulrush)

By: Rich Marsubian

Rich Marsubian — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:17:01 +0000

another solution for today’s puzzle (10-24-11) using
all the letters would be: winelover

By: Eric Pierce

Eric Pierce — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:36:29 +0000

Thanks for WordCube! I play it often, and find it much more stimulating during idle minutes than, say, Sudoku. My 4-year old enjoys trying to play along too.

Just a couple oddities I’ve noticed since I started playing–the WordCube of 2011/07/20 wouldn’t take “vigor”. Also, the one on 2011/07/10 didn’t accept “honor”. Seems odd that these common words weren’t allowed, when the puzzle of 2011/06/25 included “umiak”(!?) among its solutions. I’ve noticed that a lot of loanwords aren’t valid (cafe, etude, etc.) which makes sense, but it seems like very common English words should always be allowed.

By: yakub

yakub — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:55:22 +0000

In today’s Wordcube, 2011/07/11, there are some missing words: effuse, luff, luffs. How do you generate the words for the solutions, and are they checked before publishing? It’s a little frustrating to have perfectly valid words rejected.

By: jean

jean — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:25:38 +0000

Hello Mat
I’m on Jack’s computer and enjoying playing on wordcube(although not scoring very high marks!) Your comment that you are not too fond of rules made me smile !! X Mum

By: mat

mat — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:07:45 +0000

Glad you enjoy it and I appreciate you giving feedback

I do intent to update wordcube to support different languages (or rather dictionaries), I never really expected it to get that popular. Unfortunately I am currently very busy at the moment so I can’t promise when I will be able to complete this by. Yeah I’ve never really been a massive fan of rules, so I kinda want to allow any “dictionary” word, but this requires me obtaining a good dictionary file.

Anyway thanks for your patience, hope to update wordcube soon!

Mat

By: Earl McCarroll

Earl McCarroll — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:57:51 +0000

We are enjoying your invention here in the States, but would probably not get so angry at it if you posted your “rules” in the directions or, at least, somewhere on the website.

First, and foremost: (1) Full disclosure that your spelling and vocabulary will be Brit.
a. Some Brit slang is allowed, but no Yank, except those we’ve adopted (lite, deli)
b. No “foreign” words allowed. Except those familiar to me, i.e., duvet but not brie, even though we have
as many bries on our tables as duvets on our beds.
This will warn us not to try to “-ize” anything and that our curbs become kerbs, goiters goitres, and tykes tikes.

(2) Plurals are at my whim. You may have several ilks, but only one klutz. (Klutz is as English as duvet.)
(3) If you think of perfectly good words, i.e., tiered, lays, ondine, undine, emit, evert — you may count them in your
score, but I will not. I don’t care if they are in the dictionary and lite and klutz are not.
(4) I will not allow re as a prefix. Unless I feel like it.
And, of course, any others by which you abide. If forewarned, we may not scream at the screen quite as much and will enjoy the game even more. Thanks!
Earl

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:25:08 +0000

In the puzzle of 24 Feb, “senescent” should be listed among the possible words. Also, plural words such as “sentences” should not be allowed in these puzzles.

By: mat

mat — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:10:07 +0000

@Ian thanks, that’s very useful.

@Anita That was a problem with one of my scripts, I have fixed it now and updated the missing ones.

By: Anita Watkins

Anita Watkins — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:03:43 +0000

The past couple of days the puzzles have been blank in both of my browers. Anybody know what the problem is.

Anita

By: Ian Barnes

Ian Barnes — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:22:43 +0000

Hi Mat,

Great game. I’ve been enjoying it on both phone and computer.

Like several other commenters I’ve been having some frustrations with the word list… mostly with common words not being accepted, but also very occasionally weird non-words showing up in the list of solutions.

I was just reading in the comments that you’re in the process of looking for a new and improved word list. You might want to consider looking at SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists), available from http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/. The lists are broken down into different categories, both by type of English (British, American etc) and also by size of list/weirdness of words.

As others have already written, you don’t want the biggest, most comprehensive list to end all lists, because then it will be mostly strange/stupid words that nobody has ever heard of, and it takes a lot of the fun out of the game. But you also don’t want the list to be too small: there should be some challenge.

A facility for adding — or challenging — words in the list dynamically would also be fun. Might generate lots of discussion and interest too.

It should be fairly easy to have the site take a visitor to an American or British version of the puzzle automatically depending on their location, but with a link allowing Brits in the US or vice-versa to switch to their preferred version. A bit of extra work I guess, but I’m assuming you’ve got a lot of this automated so it should be a one-off effort, not ongoing. (And if not, there’s another good programming exercise for you…)

Good luck with it all. I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Ian

By: Avigail Abarbanel

Avigail Abarbanel — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:24:23 +0000

Hi Mat, Thanks for all the good work you are putting into the word cube. Much appreciated. I wanted to ask why words like ‘lays’ (the present tense of ‘lay’ as in: ‘The hen lays an egg each morning’, or ‘anally’ the adverb of ‘anal’ aren’t included in your word list/dictionary. I hope it’s just an oversight. Cheers, Avigail

By: peter

peter — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:19:29 +0000

Mat!!!,re 2010/12/12

Why not ovens you use them every day mate??##?

Iwas gonna say something like its’ about time you got yer(xxxxxxx) arse into gear.
So why not?????

Peter

By: mat

mat — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:49:56 +0000

Just an update, I’ve found some suitable dictionaries for US/UK/CA languages, I just need to do some filtering on these to remove the obviously stupid words.

I will have to update all the previous ones to account for other languages anyway and the scripts I’ll have to write will be useful for future proofing. In theory I have some free time this Sunday, so I hope to get a bit of work on it done then.

By: jfk

jfk — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:39:04 +0000

LOVE Word cube. Thanks for making it, and for wanting to update it to meet users’ requests. Good luck with uni, and hope you get a chance to come up for air. BTW: when you do change the dictionary, I don’t think you need to go back and redo any of the old ones. We can just go forward.
Thanks for a great game,
Julie

By: peter

peter — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:44:42 +0000

Mat,Long time no speak…(as they say)
I was wondering how you are working towards making wordcube a more enjoyable & satisfying experience for all of us “word cubers”.
Last time we communicated you were looking at getting some rationalisation to the dictionary side of things,something we all of course hold most important in extracting some sort of “satisfaction” in applying ourselves every day to your latest offering.
I assume you are still working on this most important aspect over & above other refinements of things like leader boards & such periferal crap.
Tonight I sit attempting to be top of the heap with 2010/11/26 & am at a loss that though you allow “inquirer” as valid you do not allow “inquire”.
Matt ,this is the kind of incongruity that has lingered with wordcube for a very long time .I don’t know what others think but there’s not a lot of confidence or satisfaction for me right now.

By: mat

mat — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:24:59 +0000

@javanut Thanks, I’m learning java for my android apps

I’ve been looking into the problems with the dictionary and I haven’t found a good place to get a new dictionary from but an option to change between US/UK/Others would be great.

I can add a timer in easily enough, stay tuned.

Leaderboard is trickier as it is very easy for people to cheat, however I am looking into adding a way to track your performance currently, maybe using openID of facebook/twitter to login.

By: javanut

javanut — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:57:51 +0000

Mat congrats on this old classic. I only found it today and boy am I glad.
I think you have done a fantastic job and only reason I found this is because I’m a java programer myself and was thinking of making this app as I was dissatisfied with what I found out there.

I have some suggestions
-an option to choose dictionary english -US?
-How about an optional timer if you want a performance score/metric…which leads to my next suggestion
- how about a leader board? Upload to a ‘hall of fame’ .

By: peter

peter — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:11:40 +0000

Hi Mat,
How are you progressing with the dictionary to end all dictionaries??
I was enjoying WC 2010/10/30 but find there is another acceptable main word (according to Dictionary.com) which is …… “verberate”

Please let us know how you are getting on with the
“”Final Solution”" & when we can all finally “word cube” with confidence!

Kind Regards,
Peter