Wordabble — A graphical view of its first year
This blog entry builds on my last blog presenting some statistics from Wordabble’s first year of operation. Below are two graphs which present the number of words for a given day and the number of points attainable for a given day.
Some statistics on Wordabble’s first year of operation
Wordabble recently celebrated it’s first anniversary of operation and so I decided to calculate some statistics.
Words
Total number of words: 66,021
Fewest number of words per game: 19
Maximum number of words per game: 444
Average words per game: 178
Standard deviation: 73.3371
Points
Total number of points: 941,160
Fewest number of points: 127
Maximum number of points: 7,513
Average point per game: 2,550
Standard deviation: 1239.993
Happy Birthday Wordabble
Today, I achieved two goals one of which was expected and the other a surprise. 365 days ago I played my first game of Wordabble which is a word game that Jason Lancaster and Adam Douglass released a year ago for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. I’ve played every day and enjoyed the 300 word games almost as much as the games when there are fewer than 100 words to find in the 5×5 grid. There is one mystery I discovered today that I have been waiting for quite some time and that is, what happens when you find all the words. Today was my chance when there were only 19 words to find. I can say with a smile that it was worth waiting 365 days to see what was behind the magic curtain. Over the past year, I have earned 281,268 points with an average score of 771 points per game and in theory played for 56 hours which I think underestimates the actual time. I close by thanking Jason and Adam for a year of challenging fun.
Almost Wordabble’s first birthday
In 15 days or so Wordabble with celebrate its first anniversary of operation. It is hard to believe that 349 days ago Jason sent me an email at 11:30 pm to say that he and Adam’s game was available for sale on the iTunes Appstore. With 30 minutes to go it would be a hard challenge to beat either Adam’s or Jason’s score for the day. I can say with a smile on my face, that I have enjoyed all the games that I have played. I’ve enjoyed the 300 words games as much as the frustrating ones where you have to find under 50 words (Argh!). Over the year, I have learned many news words and probably used the familar ones too often. I’ve also used Wordabble as a way of testing my mental acuity each day. There is still one challenge that I have to overcome and that is to discover what happens when you locate all the words. I know that something mysterious or magical happening but I’ll have to keep playing to find out. I’ll close out this blog by thanking Jason and Adam for almost a year’s worth of daily challenges.
100th Wordabble game — Nov 16 2008
Today I played my 100th game of Wordabble. Each day has been a lot of challenging and rewarding fun. I can say with certainty that my vocabulary has increased as I continue to learn more and more obscure words. When a Jason and Adam at introduced the finger-dragging with auto-entry I found I could play the game faster. Another feature that has become more valuable over time is being able see what words I have missed as I use it as a learning vehicle. I would like to take a moment to take about a couple of the more entertaining games. In the first I was able to make use of most of the urology terms I have learned a couple of years ago. In the other game I was using my knowledge of the various conponents of the heart and lungs. I can say that I have enjoyed each days whether it had 200+ words or less than 100 words. In the high value games it was frustrating to find 50% of the words. When there were fewer than 100 words I would scratch my head and wonder if that four letter jumble of letters was indeed a word. In most cases it would be an obscure word that I would park away for future reference. I’ll close off this entry by thanking Jason and Adam for my first 100 days of fun playing wordabble.
Wordabble at six month
Today is a special day for folks that play Wordabble. Wordabble is an iPhone/iPod Touch game from the folks at Fusion Bay and today it celebrates its first six month of offering challenging daily word puzzles. When you look at the rankings page, five of the top 20 regular players have over 200,000 points. Congratulation and thanks to Jason and Adam for six month of fun and daily challenges.
2008 Goals in Review
Last year around this time I uploaded my goals for 2008. The wisdom was if you publicly state some of your goals you are more likely to take the steps to achieve them. I found this a good exercise last year and something I will do this year. Before I list my 2009 goals I thought I would take a minute to see how I did in achieving my 2008 goals.br /br /br /br /* Run a 1:30 half-marathon timebr /Getting closer with each race. Will have to try harder in 2009br /br /br /* Go on more OHOC outdoor adventuresbr /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved/spanbr /br /br /* Do more hiking tripsbr /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved (OHOC trips, Catochins, Pretty Boy dam, etc.)/spanbr /br /br /* Climb more of the 46ers (46 highest peaks in the Adirondacks , NY)br /span style=”color:#3333ff;”span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved/span. /spanClimbed a couple of more peaksbr /br /br /* Loose 10 lbs by May 30 (race date –National Capital half-marathon)br /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved./spanbr /br /br /* Hike the West Coast Trail/Shenandoah National Park/Old Smoky National Parkbr /No. Shifted to 2009.br /br /br /* Run a faster Baltimore half-marathon ( 1:34 ) in October 2008br /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved/span. Each year I run the race around a minute fasterbr /br /br /* Visit Brent ( Algonquin Park ) by canoeing and portaging and bring along a digital camerabr /No. But parents had two roofs and one patio deck rebuilt.br /br /br /* Reach 500,000 Babble point (now 350,000) a href=”http://www.playbabble.com/”www.playbabble.com/abr /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved./span When I combine my babble scores and a href=”http://wordabble.com/”wordabble /ascores I achieved this goal.br /br /br /* Do more cycling (road and mountain biking)br /No. Ouchbr /br /br /* Geocaching goal 900-1000 finds by Dec 31 2008br /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved/span in the spring and finished off the year with 949 finds.br /br /br /* Become more mobilebr /Nobr /br /br /* Complete an Olympic Distance triathlon (1500m swum/40km cycle/10km run)br /Nobr /br /br /* Swing dancing – Learn the Lindy Hopbr /span style=”color:#3333ff;”Achieved/span but more work to do.br /br /br /* Take the train to Baltimorebr /Goal for 2009 (Montreal to New York to Baltimore Penn Station)br /br /2008 was a good year for me. I did more than I expected an achieved other goals that I that I didn’t push up to my blog.
Wordabble — 100,000 points
This morning, I passed a landmark that has been looming for a while and that is have found 100,000 points in the a href=”http://fusionbay.com”Fusion Bay’/as iPhone/iPod Touch game a href=”http://wordabble.com”Wordabble/a. Earlier in the month, I achieved another milestone and that was to have played my first 100 games. As I think about these two milestones, I wonder what other milestones I can achieve by playing wordabble. I’ll close this entry by thanking a href=”http://jasonplancaster.com”Jason/a and a href=”http://adamism.com”Adam/a for developing wordabble. 100,000 points later and 100 games later I still get my daily mental gymnastics through Wordabble. Thanks guys!
100th Wordabble game
Today I played my 100th game of a href=”http://wordabble.com”Wordabble/a. Each day has been a lot of challenging and rewarding fun. I can say with certainty that my vocabulary has increased as I continue to learn more and more obscure words. When a href=”http://jasonplancaster.com”Jason/a and a href=”http://adamism.com/”Adam/a introduced the finger-dragging with auto-entry option I found I could play the game faster. Another feature that has become more valuable over time is being able see what words I have missed at the stroke of midnight as I use it as a way to increase my vocabulary. I would like to take a moment to talk about a couple of the more entertaining days. In one of them I was able to make use of most of the urology terms I had learned a couple of years ago. In the other game, I was using my knowledge of the various components of the heart and lungs. I can say that I have enjoyed each days whether it had 200+ words or less than 100 words. In the high value games it was frustrating to find 50% of the words. When there were fewer than 100 words I would scratch my head and wonder if that four letter jumble of letters was indeed a word. In most cases it would be a new obscure word that I would park away for future reference. I’ll close off this entry by thanking Jason and Adam for my first 100 days of fun playing wordabble.
Wordabble
I thought I would blog about a new game available for the iPhone and iPod Touch which has me excited. The folks at a href=”http://www.fusionbay.com/”Fusion Bay /arecently developed a game called a href=”http://wordabble.com/”Wordabble/a. Using the touch interface of the iPhone/iPod, you locate words hidden in a 5×5 block of letters. What I like about the application is it is easy to use, intuitive, fun and addictive. You can play the game in three modes, a timed game, a marathon session or you can download the game of the day and challenge your friends and family. At any time you can submit your scores to see how fair with other players. I like the way the application cleanly and smoothly presents the challenge of finding the words. I say check-it out!
