Cheating?

[philhughes]

blah, i'm totally with you on this. i consider myself a decent player but not to the extent of competing with either you or testdummy - i'm winding down at work so tried to compete in the total score section but clearly don't have the time to dedicate to it as others do!

anyway, i thought you must have been referring to osaka. it irritates me too. i know people often say it's easy to ignore cheaters etc but frankly it's not. when you've battled (as you and testdummy did) for a month to gain the top spot not only do you want the moral victory but you also want the goddamn accolade that goes with it! our profiles show our 'achievements' in the game and nobody's to know that your second is actually a first. that was taken from you by a cheater and there should be no place for them here or in any word game.

here's a link to his profile to show a comparison between his 'usual' scoring average historically and what he's managing this month (similar to last month).

http://www.wordtwist.org/profile.php?u=26803

it is dispiriting and when one turns up in scramble on facebook i tend to leave the room.

these stats are ridiculous:

[blah]

I must confess, I still return to glance at my scorecard and trophy room every day, to see if Osaka's trophies from last month have been stripped from him, and given to me. I am sorry to say that I have lost a considerable amount of my interest in this game as a result of the sense of injustice and the annoyance that I feel. I was going for a string of first place trophies, but now that has been broken by a cheat and it feels pointless to keep trying. I can play Prolific instead, where such blatant cheats are swiftly uprooted and barred from future performance, and where I can maintain a number 1 spot (apart from occasional and obvious glitches) without having to worry about that sort of thing.

I think that Testdummy feels even stronger about this than I do, and hasn't played at all so far this month. Bad players drive out good players. If drug cheats in the Olympics and other sporting competitions were permitted to keep medals and winnings for drug-fuelled performances (even if they were barred from future performance) clean players would just end up losing interest.

[philhughes]

Yes, it would have been nice if admin, when stripping my non-deserved trophies for August had done the same with osaka's. The best any admin can do is remove the obvious cheats - there won't be anyway of preventing cheating altogether but if you're removing the obvious ones it will, at least, provide some balance and better perspective to the scores.

Testdummy's messaged me and she does feel strongly about it. However, just because you two were top does not mean you're alone. I may not have lost out on a trophy or some form of recognition but I also abhor cheaters and I think that applies whether you're challenging for top spots or not. Everyone wants to know that they're on a level playing field so that they truly know where they rank and whether it may be possible to improve from their current playing ability. Nobody wants to unknowingly see a score posted by a cheater and then give up on the basis that it's unattainable without knowing that only a cheater could have posted it.

Cheaters not only drive away the good players like you and testdummy they also put off the new and improving players.

It's a shame that they haven't activated the head-to-head challenge function. They seem to have been talking about it years ago but is it functioning yet? In the absence of that, testdummy and I are going down the route of posting screenshots as and when either of us beat each other's records (as I did with Lyndsey). Trouble is, there's no way of searching for the games where testdummy holds a record other than constantly refreshing the new game page.

Perhaps next month I can compete with you and testdummy in the average score comp but this month I've already been too indiscriminate in the games I play to stand a chance

[999Tony]

Sorry, I accidentally cheated today when the game time froze, so I got a score of over 800, with my previous high in the 500s. If there was a way to delete the score, I would. The time has frozen on me several times, but usually I notice sooner and stop before my score gets so high.

[blah]

Originally Posted by 999Tony

Sorry, I accidentally cheated today when the game time froze, so I got a score of over 800, with my previous high in the 500s. If there was a way to delete the score, I would. The time has frozen on me several times, but usually I notice sooner and stop before my score gets so high.

That really doesn't count as cheating. It is just a glitch in the game, and you had no intention of exploiting it. Cheats know what they are doing and use programs and other such means to get their results.