Head to Head / New Game mode

[WiseOldDuck]

Anyone who has played the new game and has questions or thoughts : here is a great place to share them!

[devjoe]

It's long. Sure, the daily puzzle is also long, but in comparison to the amount of word-building you can do, head-to-head is extremely long.

trix had trouble - getting locked up, unable to play words - which I did not experience during our game, so I can't elaborate further.

Blank tiles which are declared but not used in a word remain colored, though they have no significance since they cannot be subsequently changed. The color should be removed once they cannot be changed.

[WiseOldDuck]

How long did it take you to finish?  It does have the waiting for each other, which you don't have in the puzzles...I want to experiment with some kind of offline notification system and more of a play-by-mail style, with the idea of someone coming on and taking their turn in several games once each day.  The games would wind up spanning over more time, but you wouldn't have the experience of waiting for each other or having to commit to a whole game at one sitting.  Of course if a group of people wanted to finish up a game they could also do that.

[devjoe]

An hour and a half? Two hours? I wasn't timing it, but it was quite a while. Turns were about as long as a slow, deeply considered Scrabble game, but since you have to fill the whole board, there were about twice as many of them, plus the additional turns drawing tiles.

[Jane Again]

Hi,

I wonder why nobody ever wants to play head to head with me: it is so much fun, once you found out how it works.

The black tiles can be ugly if there are too many on the board: anyone who has not tried head-to-head: you cannot put any pieces on black tiles.

During my first game I thought I had to put out ALL the pieces given in one round  : that is nearly impossible though and once I got over this, things improved a lot 

The earlier posts say that the game took to long: this seems to have changed. I chose three minutes for every player and that was almost too long once I found out how to work this.

I can only recommend this mode: it makes a nice change to the isolated ways of the other puzzles!

Try it. Anyone who would like to invite me some time: I´m in!

Jane A. 

[woodsyet]

Hi again Jane,  My problem is that I cannot even find the instructions for the game...is it because my brain is addled from being sick, or have all instructions disappeared?  Help.

Woodsye

[woodsyet]

WOD, would like to try H2H but have not a clue how to find the instructions...Help.

Woodsye

[Pat]

I have a question, I am playing a game with 2 others & one of them has no time to play, I have my turn, then Jane_again, then Dorland comes up straight away as 'pass', why would that be?.

[WiseOldDuck]

I have a question, I am playing a game with 2 others & one of them has no time to play, I have my turn, then Jane_again, then Dorland comes up straight away as 'pass', why would that be?.

It looks like the time mode was set to "time per game", in which each player has a certain amount of time in which to make all of their moves.  The time they take for each turn is deducted from their pool until they are out, then all they can do is pass.

I'm just guessing it's probably not what anyone actually wanted to do, what with a 24 hour time control.  In my imagination, time per game is more for people who want to get together and play a game while they are all online.  I think correspondence style games are going to generally use 24 hours per turn, on the assumption everyone can show up once a day and play whatever games they are in.

I'm hoping to put in some instructions soon that will hopefully avoid confusion like this (and maybe get some more people playing...the more the merrier!)

[Pat]

I set the time for the game as 1 day per turn, as some of the games take a long time, but Dorland didn't get a chance to play a turn after the first one, it just went straight to pass. does that mean if the first 'turn' goes over the time limit they can't play another one at all for the whole of the rest of the game?.Thats a bit harsh.

[WiseOldDuck]

I set the time for the game as 1 day per turn, as some of the games take a long time, but Dorland didn't get a chance to play a turn after the first one, it just went straight to pass. does that mean if the first 'turn' goes over the time limit they can't play another one at all for the whole of the rest of the game?.Thats a bit harsh.

It might be a bug or the host might have clicked the wrong circle, but the game is definitely marked as 24 hours per game, and everyone has run out of time and the game ended

In a 'time per turn' game, running out of time just makes you pass once.  In a 'time per game' game, once your pool is used up you always pass.

[Gilbert Grape]

WOD, All the Head to Head games have gone AWOL!
No sign of them.
Zippo.
Nothing.
Only options are cancel and new "buttons"

[Gilbert Grape]

WOD,
Trying to play the head to head and it's given me a "pass" twice without me doing anything.
Regards.
GG.

[WiseOldDuck]

WOD,
Trying to play the head to head and it's given me a "pass" twice without me doing anything.
Regards.
GG.

I checked your games and everything seems to be in order - are you sure your time didn't lapse?  The game you are currently playing has a 24 hour per turn limit, which means if you take longer than 24 hours to move it will automatically pass for you.

There will soon be some more notifications in place to let you know when your turn starts, making this less likely to happen.  Currently if you check once a day you should be all right though.