Brain Games on Facebook; Word Hunt 2009

If I didn't play so many word games on Facebook I'm sure I'd be writing more articles and focusing more on finishing a couple of books I am writing. Nonetheless I manage to distract myself very well with the word games on Facebook.

Recently I've been playing Pathwords, Word Twist, Word Challenge, Scramble and now my latest find is Word Hunt 2009. I prefer Word Hunt 2009 for a number of reasons; you can 'put it down' so to speak which allows you to answer the phone or be distracted by any other of a thousand things. You can stop and restart at will as it is not a timed thing unlike all the others I've mentioned.

I'm tiring of Pathwords. At least it is longer (time wise) than the aforementioned games - which is a good thing. It seems to become repetitive and I'm now really tired of the boring letter combinations it seems to spew out at you.

My main complaint about Word Twist, Word Challenge and Scramble is that they are too short in terms of time given per game. Word Twist would be more interesting if it gave you more time and then averaged out your per minute rate and gave you a hefty bonus for deriving all the possible words in some of their weird words. And you also cannot pause any of them to answer the phone, go to the loo, make a cuppa or pick up your grandson because your daughter has wet feet.

Scramble has also become boring for me as I now will not play any games whose possible score is less than around 1800 so I am spending much time closing out windows and opening new ones which can make the hunt for a good game a very boring affair.

Word Challenge annoys the crap out of me as, of all the games I have mentioned this one has the worst vocabulary of them all.

Us Australians are discriminated against by these games. The vocab' of all of them includes some common vernacular words from USA or Europe but even words most Aussies would consider to be so well used as to no longer constitute vernacular are never in the vocab's of these games. I'm talking here about words such as roo (for kangaroo), eski (essential equipment for the barbie) and even barbie itself is not in their vocab's. Also common medical words are usually overlooked too. Words such as testes, mons, and countless other short medical or anatomical words are also absent.

But with Word Hunt 2009 vocab' is less important as the game itself chooses the words. In Word Hunt 2009 one collects letters to complete the words in the game. Letters are collected from the racks of your friends.

Which brings me to the first strategic point; being that it's good to have a few friends who are also enrolled and have downloaded the Word Hunt 2009 application. Facebook has groups that you can visit to enlist a few friends in order that you will have more letter racks at your disposal.

From the few players I have spoken to it seems that around 50 friends who play the game is a good number of fellow playing friends to have. And what I've found is that it is good to have little sub-groupings amongst those friends comprised of some of your friends who have the application but rarely play the game (cos their letters don't vanish and get used by other players so much) and a few more friendly players from a continent that sleeps whilst you play as their letters too don't vanish too quickly either. Also have a few friends that other friends who play don't share in common to also maximize the availability of letters. My playing friends are comprised of around 50% strangers on various continents.

I focus on getting 4 words in a row. Words are worth between 1 - 5 points and the game doesn't often give you the 5 point words. Besides other things it also needs enough room for these larger words. I also try to keep as 'spare' one of those short, 3 letters words that can be used when a longer 5 point word comes along.

For the uninitiated if you make 4 words in a row you maximize your score; for the first word you score face-value points and for the 2^nd you double, 3^rd you triple and the 4^th you quadruple. There is no bonus for making 5 words at a time so I don't do this.

So I'm hoping it goes without saying that you leave the highest scoring words so that you can triple and quadruple your score. In other words you use the lowest scoring words when you first start making your words and building up to using your largest scoring word to quadruple your score.

There is an exemption to this strategy; when all your possible words are short, low scoring words it is good to get rid of them 2 or 3 at a time so that it will be far more statistically likely that they will be replaced with longer, high scoring words.

You also need to count up how many letters are used in your word combination before you go hunting. Sometimes there will be more than the maximum of 36 letters you are allowed to have in your 'word bag' but I'll get back to how to deal with this a bit later.

Think I better go take a break to do part of a game; back soon LOL.

Because I am using the strategies aforementioned when I start what I call a round (completing four words simultaneously) there are five words whose letters are basically all vacant. I make up a little kind of ditty in my head which is a sentence that uses all five words. I must admit that the sentences are most usually quite bizarre as the game also tends to use words with unusual letter concentrations.

Before you go hunting open 2 tabs; one so you can use the 'create' function to periodically check your hunting progress and another 'find letters' for hunting. At the beginning of the round I click open about 10 'find letter' tabs simultaneously and go collecting letters that comprise part of my weird little ditty. I most often manage to go through these 10 tabs twice collecting letters before closing them out to go and take stock by once again clicking on the 'create' tab. At this point I usually have collected about 20 letters.

Not time to panic yet!!!

Of the letters you still need you can usually make an anagram or 2 before you go hunting again. For this stage I usually open about 4 or 5 tabs and flip through them twice collecting letters.

If you have had a fruitful hunting session you may have around 28 - 31 letters now. It is now time to start honing a bit. At this point I may decide which 4 of the 5 words I will concentrate on whilst still having a bit of an open mind. I suggest you go through counting up the vowels needed to make the chosen 4 words and clicking recycle on the spares, particularly if the 4 words that are being made have 33 or more letters between them.

The 'green shading' used by the game can be misleading so at this point take little notice of it as it just may derail you from your task of forming 4 words simultaneously. Count up the numbers required of each letter to see what you still need and go hunting again.

Perhaps by now you will only be hunting 2 or 3 letters and I tab only 1 page per time at this point. I click to get a new page prior to trawling the current page. When so few letters are needed I find it is usually easy to create an acronym. I find that there are not too many combinations of 2 or 3 letters that cannot make an acronym.

A piece of paper and a pen can be useful at this point of the game unless you have a remarkable memory. Mine is reasonable but from the scores that abound on the scoreboard I know there must be many who play this who have immaculate memories. This article is not written for them.

The letters required can be marked off as you acquire them so make sure not to close out your tabs without first checking to see if your hunting session was successful or not.

Good luck.

If you go looking for me on the 'scoreboard' you will not find me in the highest places as I don't play too often but when I do I average a very high hourly score. Now let me get back to my game!

Keep posted.