The problem is that there's no ONE way a 1500 (or whatever) rated human plays. Some know a lot of very obscure words, Some have got most of the probable stems totally memorized, some may be lacking in vocabulary but very good at board vision and strategy ETC..
The problem with playing Quackle at the highest level is that, along with the demoralization factor, I think it effects strategy in an unrealistic way when your opponent will always make the best possible play. Like if someone was trying to maximize their (slight) chances of winning against Quackle would they play very defensively and get into that habit against less skilled players where it may be a disadvantage? I think the way a dumbed-down Maven will sometimes come out with a very obscure word or brilliant play is a good way to learn. But if you wanted to make "artificial stupidity" more realistic. I think it might be as simple as breaking the skills in the game down into categories like "Vocabulary in high probability words", "vocabulary in low probability words", "endgame strategy" and some others. Then you could have sliders with 100 representing the "perfect" player in each category and 0 representing a complete novice player in that particular category.. So you could customize it so, for example, your computer opponent wouldn't play as many very obscure bingos but would play a very good endgame. It would be interesting to either match yourself against a computer opponent with about the same level of strength in different areas that you have or make it stronger in areas that you are weaker and improve that way. Mike From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Graham Toal Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 11:38 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [quackle] turning Quackle down On 9/4/07, John Van Pelt <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:verbalobe%40gmail.com> > wrote: > for one thing, the "blunders" that the 1600-level Maven made did not consistently resemble real 1600 players in any way. Although it's probably not a discussion for the Quackle list, if you want to take it next door to wordgame-programmers, I'm interested in working out the details of what exactly would be needed for an Artificial Stupidity System to make the computer play as convincing as a poor human. Over the years I've made a mental list of a few points, though maybe it's time we started writing some of them down in case anyone ever gets round to doing this. For example, active vs passive vocabulary, plausible phonies, use of front/rear hooks, parallel plays, etc can all be parameterised as features to use or not within a game. My idea of a playing like an ASS would include tracking opponents so that the computer always played a *little* better than them but not much, so they have a chance of winning a good percentage of the time (eg 40%); it should track which of the play techniques the human has mastered and use the same things itself, eg when a human finally plays a parallel play, then the ASS can do so too, but not *too* impressively. If it doesn't have a history of games played, it shouldn't try to play an even game by using too simple an algorithm of trying to match the score for example - you don't want it to bingo only when you bingo, or to gradually fall behind and then place QUETZAL on a TW to catch up in a single play. It should also have a teaching role - after a few games, and once its play is matched to the opponent, it could introduce *one* new technique (eg putting tiles on both the start and end of a word to extend it) which the human hasn't yet done, with the intention of the human learning better ways to play. But not all at once in an intimidating way. It should *never* be obvious that the ASS is throwing the game. In fact it might be fair to start it off with only a basic vocabulary of English, and have it learn new words from web pages it happens across, and it might also have a limited memory for word storage so that it forgets seldom used obscure words that it has learned a few days after learning them. Google's "did you mean" prompt might be something it could learn from. It could also ask a dictionary authority for a check now and then. That's a few ideas off the top of my head, maybe y'all have some more. Graham PS GMail doesn't let me redirect the reply-to so could you please follow up to wordgame programmers unless there's a lot of interest and a strong consensus that this is relevant to Quackle.
