apterous.org

Charlie Reams So it seems that, if your objective is just to maximise the max, you should probably just pick 4 vowels and not bother fishing.

Jen Steadman Does this include Bullet/Speed variants, or is it just 30-second rounds?

Charlie Reams All round lengths are considered.

Oliver Garner The fact that 9's are counted as 18 may skew the average a bit as 4/5 vowel picking is more conducive to 9's. However, on rounds where after the first seven letters it is clear that there is no 9, picking CC after 4C3V is surely often advantageous.

Charlie Reams You should generally be picking C for your eighth letter anyway -- it's the correct choice about 5 times out of 6. The final pick is the hard one. That's talking more in terms of theoretical optimality though. What I meant was more that, as a matter of human ability, it's probably safer to just pick 4V every time, since people who do that appear to outperform people who pick more 3V/5V selections. (I know people are not necessarily trying to maximise the max, but most of the time I imagine they are.)

Catriona Cappleman Interestingly, most of my games have been French, Italian or Spanish

Charlie Reams They don't count for this table.

Quinn James Yeah, I just hit the 4 key 100% of the time in most variants.

Gevin Chapwell What's Prune's average max?

Charlie Reams 7.92.

Nick Deller I have 350 4V rounds out of 353, the other 3 are 5V, and I'm 155th on an average of 7.45. Obviously Apterous hates me. :-)

Adam Gillard Neil bucking the 4V trend.

Jack Hurst This page is crap, there's no point in picking a fifth vowel to get NEUROGLIA if you dont spot it.

Adam Gillard Don't recall ever seeing anyone as high as John is now (8.37).

Mark D This page trusts a lot to the word "best". The best pick is the pick that gets you a word you spot and your opponent doesn't, not the longest.

Jon Stitcher I'm in here by blind luck. I almost always go 4V.

Jon Stitcher In fact, I usually only go 3V when I have ING up

Callum Todd 7,753 rounds played in the past 90 days. I need to get a life.

Matthew Tassier I agree with Mark. I don't pick to maximise the available max in a round, I pick to maximise my chance of winning the game. Apparently that currently makes me the 3rd "Worst" picker. Is there a more appropriate word than Best that could be used?

Zarte Siempre Most profitable picker? If we term "profitable" in a high score sense, not a winning one? Still ambiguous, but an improvement.

Andy Platt Just my opinion but "best" might be a correlation with how few maxes you leave in each round, and how many times you spot those very few maxes or indeed just win the round outright. Wonder what Graeme would say as he tends to always be right on stuff like this.

Adam Gillard You're all just jealous that John is the best.

Mark D I love Liam's stats on here. :)

Gevin Chapwell Most fruitful? Most pointy, pointed, pointable?

Adam Dexter I just spam the C and V keys arbitrarily and somehow I've made 5th place - something about 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters springs to mind here :)

Rhys Benjamin I'm near the bottom, which, considering I tend to try to flatten rounds, is a good thing!!

David Barnard Probably one of the most pointless stats, someone who has a good word knowledge will surely pick to make the rounds as awkward to max as possible and most tend to be low scoring

Rosie Lennox you're just jealous of my main man Aaron. back down man.

Matt Conway I'm an average to poor player who doesn't max many games so that's what I attempt to do when playing goat; problem?

Ahmed M This isn't for goat

Rhys Benjamin As if to illustrate David's point, I'm fourth in this table all of a sudden despite making no concerted effort to pick for high maxes unless I'm miles behind.

Adam Gillard Conor's even top of this! Average pick over 8 points, impressive!

Ian Volante I've never really understood why I'm usually pretty high in this list. Simply a focus on four vowels?

Jordan F ...how the hell am I number 2?

Matty Artell Statistically 4 vowels gives the highest average max, and you pick 4 vowels almost exclusively

Johnny Canuck Clearly a lot of it has to be luck-based, though; Thomas Carey and Mark James have also chosen almost exclusively 4-vowel selections and their average maxes are still a ways below 8.

Matty Artell If all 3 played a lot more, and picked 4 vowels exclusively, it *should* average out to the same value with enough rounds played

Johnny Canuck Interesting seeing someone be at the top of the chart after such a high frequency of 5-vowel picks. Might there be more 5-vowel niners in the new dictionary than there used to be?

Johnny Canuck Also, are niners counted as maxes of 9 or 18 for purposes of this chart?

Matthew Tassier Eighteen.

Johnny Canuck Thanks!

Sean D High proportion of 4 vowel picks here, 4 vowels seems to give the highest average max, and the most 9s

Gevin Chapwell It's pretty much a case of pick four vowels and then it's pot luck. So for maximum luck potential keep your number of rounds down close to the minimum.

Tracey Mills so does Jonathan Rawlinson !

Adam Gillard Disciplined 4-vowel approach from H Zekaj at the top!

Elliott Mellor Seems to have improved the max a fair bit! Though really the best pickers are the ones who pick such that they beat their opponent more often.

Tricia Lockhart Can't believe I am comparatively high on any Apterous list. I wonder whether the order of vowel choice is relevant? I get the impression that if I choose a vowel in the last slot, it is more often an E if I haven't yet got one. Could easily be imagination.

Elliott Mellor Probably that's because E is the most common vowel and a long string without any of them is unlikely.

Really this page is just who has the most luck, to be called best pickers imo it should factor in how often people max the rounds they pick.

Conrad Teixeira Or maybe average points per round picked, subtract average points per round picked by opponent?

Elliott Mellor If your opponent happens to pick a lot of 9y rounds though it could sway it a lot. Maybe average points scored per round/average points available per round?

Matthew Tassier Surely (Average player points scored on player's pick - Average opponent points scored on player's pick) + (Average opponent points scored on opponent's pick - Average player points scored on opponent's pick)

Ian Volante Not sure it has anything to do with the opponent's picks. And this might be based on luck, but I always seem to be near the top. Not sure why.

Matthew Tassier It should be a measure of how much better you do on your pick than on your opponent's pick imo. I'm always right near the bottom of this current table, and quite happy with that.

Sam Prouse wow, i'm 4th, pretty good result for me

Sam Prouse Wow, how am I the 2nd best picker atm? incredible.

Elliott Mellor You're officially the second luckiest player on apterous.

Johnny Canuck I find Sam's average max quite impressive given that the number of rounds played (i.e., sample size) is so much higher than those of the rest of the top 10.

Elliott Mellor Exactly. He's officially very lucky where picking for the highest max is concerned.

Sam Prouse Skill Elliott, Skill :)

Sean D There's certainly an element of luck in this table, but at least subconciously you're picking the 'right' final letter regularly, so you must be getting a good feel for it Sam!
Another thing here is the top end is dominated by people picking lots of 5C/4V combos which will yield the most 9s.... many players will of course tactically pick 3V or 5V

Sam Prouse Cheers Sean

Tim Down Unsurprisingly, I'm dead last in this list because I nearly always pick 5 vowels. Given that 5V is my strongest selection relative to other people, this is the correct selection for me for winning games. I agree with earlier comments about changing "best" to some other adjective.

Elliott Mellor Yeah it really isn't the best pickers, more the pickers who happen to yield the highest average max. The best pickers are the ones who pick to win the round, not necessarily to maximise what is available, which if anything is the polar opposite of best tactically.

Matty Artell That's not really a measurable thing though. There's really no issue with this saying "best", you're just splitting hairs imo

Transude Transude Elliott and Matthew Tassier are correct. There still isn't a measure of who actually uses the picks on their turn to win rounds, which is a shame.

Andy Platt Tony Atkins showing nice consistency, with every single round having 4 vowels.

Tony Atkins I'm lazy and just do CVCVCVCVC

John Carpenter Since my strength appears to be getting 6s when my opponent gets 5s I thought I might change my tactics and choose only 3 vowels more frequently but experience shows now that this doesn't seem to make any difference. I still stick to mostly 4 or 5 vowels rather than 3 but still choose 3 if I feel I have a good word in mind.

Ian Birdman Solid strategy Mr. Carpenter

Andy SC I just pick whatever I can be arsed to pick

Ross Jeffries CCVVCCVVC every time for me. When I was quite new to this Robin M called anyone who picked just 3 vowels some very nasty (i may be exaggerating slightly) words so have never dared to pick just 3V ever since

Andy SC Just pick whatever you wish to pick or you feel gives you the best chance.

Ross Jeffries i probably should try to mix it up. I also miss a lot of words beginning with vowels so could be a better idea to start with vowels to prompt me

Simpatico Jones Worsley and Siempre know what's up. I think two vowel Countdown should be accepted.

Piaras M Carney How the hell am I 2nd?

Tricia Lockhart Don't question, Piaras, just take the accolade.

Elliott Mellor You're second due to sheer luck.

Andy Platt This isn't a measure of skill, Piaras.

Piaras M Carney oh :P

Sean D The top pickers list is fairly random, but is generally dominated by people who pick 5 consonant/4 vowel as that yields the most 9 letters maxes

Andy Platt The most objective measure would be some combination of people that pick to yield the fewest maxes, and still spot them. But that would be very complicated.

Tim Down It's a totally meaningless stat.

Steve H Pick 4 vowels and let luck take its course. It's a pretty pointless stat to be fair

Steve H Oh no, I was picking so well. The ignominy - down to seventh

William R Draper 7th still a gd effort Steve!

Steve H This is all pure sarcasm, William

Christy Cooper oh yeah- top 12!

Adam Latchford fiona thorne smashing it!

Adam Finlay This assumes 9 letters as 18 points doesn't it?
Otherwise almost every round picked by Fi would be a 9.

Paul Anderson So, Fiona, have you any tips for us?

Adam Latchford apparently never go 3 vowels is the correct strategy

Elwin Carlos 3 vowels won you Series 83 though, Adam!

Fi Thorne Whoop! Finally won something!!!! ;-)

Fi Thorne Yes Paul... what you hate me doing i.e. 2C, 2V x 2 then decide on the final letter!

Daniel Pati I guess the best way to pick well is to be called Andrew

Andres S. Guess my parents missed that chance then

Adam Finlay Anybody feel this should be averaged length of word available not number of points available?

Andres S. How the hell did I jump to 3rd place?

Adam Finlay By being a legend mate

Stephen Holford 4th Woo hooh I don't understand what it means but still woo hooh

Tracey Mills 19th How ???