Hello, Brian. I've long hoped to have a chance to talk Maven, Quackle, and Scrabble programming in general with you. Your Maven program was (and undoubtedly still is) terrific, but not perfect.
Let me assure you that my recollection is not "off." In the circumstances described, Maven did in fact miss the 50-point X play at the end of the game. The bag was empty; no doubt about that. I did not "miss" the feature that allowed the user to add plays to the Kibitz list. In fact, we DID add the 50-point Xi play to the list, and I then asked the owner of the program (Nancy Larson, formerly of Tucson, AZ, where I lived at the time) to run a Sim, as she had done on several earlier plays in the game. Simulate was disabled, though, BECAUSE the bag was empty. I considered that a limitation of the program. The upshot was that there was no way to verify that the actual winning play that I made would Sim "best" because Simulate was not allowed (greyed out) with the bag empty. Over the past 15 years, I have done post-mortem on hundreds and hundreds of games, using Tyler, Maven, CrossWise Pro (which I was Beta-testing for Jim Homan in 1998, before Hasbro threatened him out of the Scrabble software business) and now Quackle. I do not "forget" to mark blanks or anything else on my scoresheets, and I keep those scoresheets. If you find yourself in or near Portland, OR sometime, I'll be happy to show you boxes & folders filled with my scoresheets (most of them fully annotated) from many, many club and tournament games. I have also taught several dozen other players (including Chris Cree) how to annotate their own games with Maven, and I am totally conversant with concepts like adding moves to the Kibitz list, removing choices from the Kibitz list, Simming to different plies, and drawing inferences from the results. Honest. I continue to annotate games today with Quackle, and teach other players how to use that program. I would be delighted to help make both Quackle and today's version of Maven easier to use for people who don't have the programming talent that you and the Q team of Jason, John, and John possess. My own programming skills are way out- of-date, but my flair for Usability, Quality Assurance, and User Interface are as sharp as ever. In other words, I am very good at making programs understandable to people who DON'T know (and don't need to know) what's going on "under the hood" within the complexities of the code. John Hart --- In [email protected], "sapphirebrand2000" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "John Hart" <ride8hard@> wrote: > > > > Seems like a good opportunity for Quackle to go beyond > > just making the right play and actually TEACH the user > > WHY certain plays were considered or discarded. > > > > Let's assume that the 5 tiles left in the bag cannot be > > any combination of letters that produce 64-point QI or > > ZA plays, or other high-scoring prospects. Then, the > > 60-point bingo would almost certainly lose the game > > (still trailing by 30, no way to catch up). An expert > > player knows that cultivating the rack with an eye > > toward bingo-ing OUT is the only way to win; Quackle > > should understand that, too. > > > > It would be nice to have an option (maybe a checkbox) to > > always include the highest-scoring play, even if it's not > > a candidate that Generate Choices would select. Thinking > > back to Maven, there was a 'Compare Moves' feature that > > offered an opinion (sometimes useful, sometimes not) on > > how one move stacked up against another. Not that Maven > > was perfect; the very first time I ever saw it, it failed > > spectacularly to find a winning move at the end of a game. > > More on that in a footnote. > > > > For Quackle in the here-and-now, including the highest- > > scoring play, even when it doesn't meet the criteria for > > a "best" play, could be very instructive, especially when > > doing post-mortem. If the game-losing 60-point bingo is > > included in the Choices list, and ends up dead last in the > > Sim, with a win %-age of 0, sobeit. > > > > John Hart > > > > > > When Maven failed to find a winning endgame play: Circa > > 1994, a friend bought Mac-Maven and we used it to do a > > post-mortem on a game we played. We wrote down all our > > racks, recorded all moves played, and set about reviewing > > the game. I was behind by about 25 points with X, blank, > > and 5 vowels on my rack; opp had just emptied the bag. > > All the vowels were of the A-E-O type; no I or U. There > > was a place to play either Xi or Xu (X on TLS) for 50, > > winning the game, which was exactly what I had done. > > Maven listed a slew of 17- and 18-point plays, all of > > which were AX, EX, or OX, all keeping the blank on the > > rack. All of those plays would have lost, because my > > opponent was going to go out on her next turn. > > > > I still remember being shocked that an easy 50-point > > play like Xi was not listed. "Isn't there a way to tell > > it to list the highest-scoring play?" I asked. There was > > not. No way to override the program's opinion about rack > > leave, etc. That was a serious flaw, which I assume has > > been fixed in the intervening years (someone who saw Maven > > play in Toronto, please fill me in). > > Maven missed an obvious move in an *endgame*? No way! > > Something about your recollection is off. A simple > thing like having 1 tile in the bag would make a huge > difference. Or if you forgot to mark a blank while analyzing > the game. > > Regarding the number of plays generated: Maven gave you > the ability to add another move to the Kibitzer. You must > have missed that feature. > > The Compare Move feature only explained static evaluation. > Static evaluation might not think the 60-point bingo was a > bad move. You have to look at winning percentage for that. > > Or create the ability to explain why a simulation prefers > a play. I made some attempts to prototype that feature, > but never released them in a product. > > BTW, Maven would certainly not be improved if users had the > ability to tweak its rack evaluations. Where do users get > such notions... :-) > > Best Regards, > Sapphire Brand >
