Word Up Tournament

[Istenem]

hurrah! the best game gets a national tournament on the titbox.
£1 a game, highest score wins £1k, you know the format of these things.

it will be interesting to get a better idea of whether there are many accomplished players the Bobs don't know about.

it can only be good news but the grey lining is that the wordlist has grown and now seems to accept any combination of letters as words. but that is my problem, i dare say it will be a benefit to joe & josephine public who will now be able to stab out a clearance for the first time in their otherwise wretched lives. the sort of people who cheat at online scrabble will be pleased that ZEX and/or similar nonsense will be allowed
Mr Bob is winning at the moment but i'll be chancing my arm later.
from my limited forays so far the ingame prize structure seems to fluctuate wildly from 2500 for £1 to the £10 JP within 1800. perhaps this is based on location/playedness of the machines.
could they control the prize structure remotely?

furthermore, given the spotlight and revamped wordlist i predict the winning score will break the current world record.

i just hope it is not the knell for what is still a very good game.

[Northern Monkey]

Had a go on this at lunch and it did not show leaderboard. Presumably the pros will clean up by winning in several locations?

On a more positive note having swiftly JPed the online version, I noticed that if you switch to the 50p play offfered through the GRand Master edition, the JP does not affect the prize ladder making for a few more easy £££.

[Istenem]

interesting. the JP structure must allow whitney's backing singers to sniff £1 most of the time unless somebody has just potted it when you'll need to break the world record to get a quid.

i do hope that not too many JPs get taken as it would put off casual players to see that they need more than double their personal best for the return of their stake.
i guess time will tell.

anyway, for the moment i'll only be going to pubs with the fantastitbox.

[Ernest W. Quality]

i do hope that not too many JPs get taken as it would put off casual players to see that they need more than double their personal best for the return of their stake.

And that it is easier to get on the leaderboard for £100 than win £1 on the actual machine.

[Guest]

it can only be good news but the grey lining is that the wordlist has grown and now seems to accept any combination of letters as words.

Yeah, I think it uses the Scrabble dictionary, which means that high score tables will be crawling with oddballs like QAIMAQAM, SALPINXES and QIVIUTS, making the game seem the province of the spoddiest rather than simply the most skilled.

It is rumoured that words above 15 letters are out of bounds, which would be a real shame.

[Ernest W. Quality]

high score tables will be crawling with oddballs like QAIMAQAM, SALPINXES and QIVIUTS...

Because everyone in the pub knows words like that...

[Northern Monkey]

Had another go in a different pub and another easy JP. Again prize structure on 50p version not affected.

This is great as means that all itboxes effectively have three independent WU installations with two of them effectively virgin territory (for now at least). Can't see the easy pickings lasting long and it was disheartening to see the that the prize structure on £1 version immediately up to 1750 for the first £1 which most of the time is all but out of reach for us mere mortals of the game.

[Istenem]

it is clever whether intentionally or otherwise. nobody is going to refuse a JP so when they realise it is gettable they go into clearance gear too early thus don't get the best scores for the tournament prizes. hence the bigger money prizes will need to be done on machines which don't necessarily offer much short-term winning opportunity. also to get a good grid with lots of higher power tiles for potential big scores, it needs to be in tight mode which results from overplay.

i'm very disappointed if Mr Bob is right about the non-existence of any words longer than 15 letters. i for one would be distraught to set up EXTRATERRITORIA with a homeless L next to it. worse if there was no Y floating which would lead to a humiliating EXTRA which could maybe nick an S somewhere.

[angie]

Having not seen this new release on ItBox yet, I'm a bit confused. What exactly are the 3 versions you're talking about? And does this filthy new dictionary apply to all 3 versions?

EWQ - will the national website discriminate between scores made on the different versions/vocabs of the game? Or will us non-Scrabble types soon be getting overrun by unassailable scores from people who have swotted up on obscure words that include 3 Qs and 2 Js and are usually of African origin meaning a cooking pot made from giraffe dung?

[Cardinal Sin]

Had my first dig tonight.

I couldn't get used to the new dictionary until I started just guessing words, then I got on fine. Got a shoddy clearance and a fiver for my efforts (no tourney game). Was out with chums so couldn't try anywhere else, but I reckon every machine will be ripe for at least one semi-decent payout.

[Guest]

until I started just guessing words, then I got on fine.

[davejon]

we managed a 'quintessential' and juxtapsition', this tournament may bring davejon out of retirement. whats the highest score so far?

[jonesey]

Hmmm - can't see myself getting near the top 100 but jackpots within 1800 sounds interesting. Will have to try to get a sesh myself this week.

If it's the case that 16+ letter words not allowed on this, wonder if that's to prevent someone setting a score that seems out of reach and killing the competition early ?

Not certain that the adoption of the Scrabble word list will give hard-core Scrabble players a huge advantage though. There's only a relatively small number of letters in play in Scrabble so focus always on getting most points out of the few letters you've got to play with. In WU, I think, there's so much going on with a new board, the major skills are deciding strategy early on; being able to 'see' long/valuable words, and being able to set them up.

Having had ZOONOSE and PALMIPED turned down by Puzzle Word in last half hour though, maybe I'm just being cynical about the value of vocabulary...

[Northern Monkey]

Having not seen this new release on ItBox yet, I'm a bit confused. What exactly are the 3 versions you're talking about? And does this filthy new dictionary apply to all 3 versions?

As in the original Word Up which is still there on the Itboxes I have seen and Word Up Grandmasters edition 50p non tournie play and £1 tournie play.

[dangerous]

The normal word up has been taken off most itboxes I think

Also the tournament leaderboard never loads up