[nico002]

Everytime I play the top scores are in the thousands. Meaning people literally find hundreds of words in a 2 minute span. I normally average around 10-20 words.

Are people cheating?

[holzlondon]

Had the same thoughts for a very long time already. Been playing since my wife got her L800 a year ago. Once managed a 10th place, felt like I had just won the football world cup or something. It's impossible to play at that level.

[beej]

Seriously, I'm pretty smart, but that game makes me feel so dumb. I love playing it, though! If I make it into the 99th ad under place, I'm ecstatic.

[Reflexx]

My wife normally gets around 40 words. I normally get around 20. LoL.

I imagine that there are a limited amount of game boards, and if you play enough you will see them several times and remember some of the high value words.

Most of the top people get around 90-100 words. I imagine that half of those are words that are 4 letters or less that they find within the first 20 seconds.

[CJ Thunder]

Guess twice, then do a word you know, then you see words you guessed pop up more so you guess less. That's what my friend says and he gets top five everytime he plays...I'm dyslexic so I suck.

[shinygerbil]

Yeah...it's pretty humbling to play. In fact if you hit their website / twitter they have some videos of top players playing. They can tell pretty easily when someone is cheating apparently! People get banned.

[FinsUpDNC]

My wife steals my phone just for this game. I prob should see if she can use my old 900 on wifi just for the game. She usually finishes well over 90% and makes me feel like an *****!

[black snapper msft]

Hi nico002,

I'm the engineering manager for Wordament and while I will confirm that people try to cheat at Wordament, we have pretty strong policies and enforcement against it. The people that are consistently scoring at the top are truly outstanding players. There are many videos available on YouTube (just search Wordament) where you can see people get 100+ words. Videos of folks like DiscoPidgeon and mztan, both great players and personal friends of the Wordament team.

We've watched people consistently improve with playtime and practice. Disco (who holds the current speed record of 158 words in a single game--ridiculous to the point of unbelievable, if I didn't know him personally and had previously witnessed him doing those things) started like most people getting just 10 - 20 words in a round. After a few weeks of practice he was getting 30 words, then 40, then... well, he's the best.

Thanks for your interest in our game and for playing!

Jason / Black Snapper
You vs. the Internet, a Microsoft Studio

[black snapper msft]

Hi Winning Guy,

This is actually incorrect. With the exception of a small handful of upload mistakes (I can remember 5 hours worth over the 18+ months we've run Wordament), we don't repeat or reuse puzzles. If is our goal to never serve the same puzzle twice. There are well over 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique board configurations just using the letters A - Z in each of the 16 tiles, so it's not like we are going to run out of boards any time soon. :-) We have a record of every board we've ever served, when it was served, etc. While individual theme words will show in the themed boards, even those are in unique positions. People simply learn that in "American Football", you might want to look for words like "QUARTERBACKS".

Jason / Black Snapper
You vs. the Internet, a Microsoft Studio

[beej]

Wow, Jason, thanks for commenting. Your presence here is surprising and awesome! Wow, that is a lot of different combinations!

[tmservo]

I play a ton; one of the best games on any platform. The highest I've ever ranked is 22. And you're right, I keep thinking: oh, I can get into the very top.. but boy, those people have to be super genius or something.. (my tag is the same as handle here)

[Keith Wallace]

I'm usually in the 85-95% range myself. If you look, it shows that most people at the top get 70-100 words, not "hundreds." Yes, though, people do cheat on it, and the people who do PROBABLY get banned eventually.

[c8m6p]

I average 70 words and a bit over 900 points per game, ranked in the top 30 average. I come in 1st in about 1/3 of the games I play.

Basically it comes down to the fact that I've been playing the game regularly for a year. I know how to form words with common groupings of letters. It's gotten to the point where words just pop out at me.

Practice makes perfect in a way. I've pretty much beat every single player except for Discopidgeon. His talent level is on another planet, let alone the fact that he's like 10 years old

As far as cheating.. the people who are in the top 10 regularly are always in the top 10.. They're not cheaters. They're well known players and have been playing for a long time.

There are cheaters, but cheaters are easy to spot. People who only get 30 words and over 1000 points every round for example is a blatantly obvious example of this.

Of course when you get as good as me there's no better feeling than crushing fools who think they're going to place first by cheating. A legit elite player will smoke cheaters 100% of the time.

[Keith Wallace]

Yeah, it's something I've noticed. There are words I quickly picked up on and rarely miss now, and that's only in about 2 weeks' time. After a year, I'm sure I'll be dong much better than 85%+ on most occasions.

[Boggy79]

I've noticed it's definitely harder to hit the top since Wordament become an Xbox Live game. It went from 300-500 people each game to over 1000 overnight.
I used to hit Top 10 in 99% of game but now that's down to under half. Got a couple of 1st place finishes but I'm in awe of players like DiscoPidgeon and Chingu80 who are always up there.

[Keith Wallace]

I think my question is do people REALLY keep tabs on strangers like this? I mean, I'm assuming you're not actually friends with these people, but you remember who is up there? I've never been like that. I kind of notice one or two short-term, but I've never really admired/awed at other gamers, whether it be in this or a FPS like Halo. It seems a little odd you guys remember these people, but I guess long-term exposure to the same people at the top of the list does that, eh?

[Flagz]

I think my question is do people REALLY keep tabs on strangers like this? I mean, I'm assuming you're not actually friends with these people, but you remember who is up there? I've never been like that. I kind of notice one or two short-term, but I've never really admired/awed at other gamers, whether it be in this or a FPS like Halo. It seems a little odd you guys remember these people, but I guess long-term exposure to the same people at the top of the list does that, eh?

No some people just like to keeps tabs because they're competitive and like to keep up on competition. I talked to at least once a d know the gamer tag if every top halo player your can find lol.

[grammabe]

I am discouraged sometimes when I swipe a word that gets rejected and I know it is right. Probably my error but in reading the article on the 2013 Wordament I came across these misspelled words: "memorised them. In the vast majority of these theme rounds (when I recognise the theme words)", causing me to wonder about some of the spelling in the puzzles.

[eeewing]

I am discouraged sometimes when I swipe a word that gets rejected and I know it is right. Probably my error but in reading the article on the 2013 Wordament I came across these misspelled words: "memorised them. In the vast majority of these theme rounds (when I recognise the theme words)", causing me to wonder about some of the spelling in the puzzles.

If you're talking about the words "memorised" and "recognise," those aren't misspelled -- that's the proper way of spelling those words in the UK. Did the article you read perhaps originate from there?

[JMBasquiat]

Have you seen that kid on YouTube? He was basically just guessing while quickly moving his finger around the board. And he would get like 1500 or so!

[grammabe]

I don't think so. It looks like a Microsoft deal. Does Microsoft outsource? I just put 'Wordament' in my browser and up it popped!

[Luminatic]

I was just recently wondering about the people with 1000+ points. But you do get faster in seeing words when playing more as I can see now (on a holiday with lots of wordament playing time).

[atinywolf]

I actually am one of those players who scores 1000+ most games, getting an average of ~85-90 words per run I'd say, sometimes going over 100 (my top being 121) or low to 60 depending on the board. Mostly it comes with play time, the more you play the more patterns you'll start to memorize and it'll become easier to look for words while mindlessly scoring through the usual patterns. I'm actually trying to make a guide for how to get better on /r/wordament on reddit. I recently became a moderator there and trying to get the game back on the map. The game is perfect and more people need to realize that!

[powerfader]

I don't know if there are that many cheaters or not, I have run some rudimentary testing concerning time. It seems that it takes about four second to rotate the board 3-4 times. That is a little over a second per turn. I found, albeit with my seemingly limited skills, it takes about 1-2 seconds per 3-4 letter words, more time for large words, and even more time for larger words not in a straight line.

Point is, if you are limited to 120 second and scan the board on each rotation for words then you are effectively using up about 10 seconds on each rotation; leaving you with about 80-90 seconds to score. That equates to about to someone scoring 90 words (just the word count, not the score) they would have to do one word a second. If that person is ranking high on the list then he/she are using longer words and letter combinations, therefore, using more time per word.

Someone who is scoring high in just the word count in the 100's would have to complete a word every half second.

It seems to me that just the mere facts of physics would prohibit someone from manipulating their physical attributes to such an alarming speed to accomplish scoring more than an average of 1 second per word. The highest word count seems to be 158 words. If that is true then that person used all 120 seconds registering words at about .75 a second and no time to rotate a screen or scan for words.

I have taken a screen shot of a random board and studied as many possible words as I could find, using a dictionary, and in no way could find 158 words on one board. Ergo, then the board must be rotated and causing even more loss of time per game.

So again I say, I don't know if their are that many geniuses out there or a bunch of cheaters, but I do not believe for the most part that a human being can scan, manipulate, rotate, and register a high count averaging about 1-2 seconds per word.

[bg2b]

I don't know if there are that many cheaters or not, I have run some rudimentary testing concerning time. It seems that it takes about four second to rotate the board 3-4 times. That is a little over a second per turn. I found, albeit with my seemingly limited skills, it takes about 1-2 seconds per 3-4 letter words, more time for large words, and even more time for larger words not in a straight line.

I'm hardly a top player, but you really do get faster with time. I started out doing maybe 40 words in the speed rounds, and am now usually in the 80s and occasionally over 100. I personally think rotation is a waste of time, and I'd guess most good players don't do it. You just get better at picking out words going every which way.