Hello Quackle Team and all, A recent club game gives rise to this question: Can Quackle evaluate moves that involve challenging a phony vs. moves that involve leaving the phony on the board, deliberately, in the same Simulation?
A recent club game, John vs. opp (Quackle v0.95, both players are "Human with Unknown Racks). Opp started w/ 8G WAW 18. I had 'AEMMUUY' and didn't think of MAMEY for either 24 or 23 points, so exchanged 'AMMUUY' keeping 'E'. It turned out that the exchange Simmed best (2 plies, 500 iterations), not that that excuses my failure to think of MAMEY, but anyway... Opp played 9F KEP, forming AP*, claiming 20 points. When I put KEP on Quackle's board during post-mortem, it points out that a phony is formed, and asks me "If committed, should 9F KEP be challenged off the board?" What Quackle really means here is "DID the play get challenged off the board?" The question I'd like help with is this: SHOULD the play be challenged off the board? Can I take advantage of the phony word played? For example, suppose my rack here is 'HHAZARD'. Then clearly, I'd want to play H(AP)HAZARD for a whopping 161 points. In that case, the answer to "should it be challenged off?" is certainly "No, don't challenge it." On the other hand, if my opponent has just played a high-scoring phony bingo, and I have no reasonable reply, then the answer would be "Yes, challenge!" What I'd like to be able to do is evaluate plays that involve challenging the phony and plays that involve deliberately leaving the phony on the board in one Simulation. For example: challenge, then play <location1> <word1> <score1> don't-challenge, play <location2> <word2> <score2> Note that if I challenge, I'm going to have at least partial knowledge of my opponent's rack, and that would factor into the Sim. I haven't been able to figure out how to run such a Sim in Quackle. If there is a way to do so, please tell me how to go about it. If there isn't a way, would it be possible to implement such a feature? Thanks, John Hart
