Hi, I tend to use Quackle to improve my play by entering all the good moves I see on a given turn and then hitting ctrl-g (generate choices) and see which, if any, are in the top list. Since I'm no better than the speedy player I don't bother with simulation for this purpose.
I find that the biggest gap between my play and the speedy player is vocabulary - I simply don't know the top choice word often. If we were to build a simpler player I would focus on dumbing down his vocabulary rather than his strategy. If I miss a strategic play with a word I know then I want to see that. One way to get a common man's vocabulary would be to use Project Gutenberg's free books and extract all the words from a few thousand books. Then take all the related words (plurals, etc) and call that a dictionary. Would this benefit anyone but me? I've considered doing it for a while but it didn't seem to be worth the bother just for myself. Matt
