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Re: "Broad categories of words to eliminate... I am always..."
If you come across a word that should be included, please let me know (using the .whatever in-game message or email or here) -- I add missing words almost every game...
Once you play a few games it becomes pretty obvious _why_ certain words are not included... The dictionary is at more than 35000 words, and I can't imagine annotating the remaining 300,000+ words that are not in the dictionary with notes describing why such words were not included!
2023-06-25 · 1 year ago
🚀 totroptof · 2023-06-25 at 00:35:
Absolutely, I wouldn’t imagine asking for such a feat. And the word suggestion feature is very nice, thank you (I suggested “pawl” yesterday 🙂). What I meant was that if you’re going to delete broad categories of words, maybe it might be worth noting that they’re not simply unknown to the game but intentionally excluded for a specific reason. I guess it doesn’t really have to be in-game, either; it could be mentioned alongside the prohibition on plurals, for instance.
As an aside, I’m actually a bit surprised how 𝘶𝘯frustrating SpellBinding is. Not that it’s a big deal, but I find a common UX snag in other word games is a sense of inconsistency as to what words are and aren’t allowed. I’m not really sure why SpellBinding seems different; I’m guessing it’s either the fact that SpellBinding explicitly states up-front that the dictionary is intentionally incomplete or that the scoring system feels less emphasised to me relative to other games (could also just be that you’ve done a really good job at curating your dictionary! 😉).
🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2023-06-25 at 00:43:
&totroptof: thanks, I think I understand what you mean. Most of the time I add words that are missing; it is very rare that I remove words that are iffy - usually what slips by are remnants of country names and such....
Thank you for your kind words. I spenda lot of time on the dictionary - I started the project because I was frustrated by the NYT puzzle missing my favorite words. Rarely a day goes by without me massaging the dictionary; luckily I enjoy looking up definitions and learning new words a lot...
🚀 stack [OP/mod] · 2023-06-25 at 00:46:
I added PAWL the other day - thanks!
🕹️ skyjake [...] · 2023-06-25 at 08:41:
Is there some objective way to exclude all infrequently used and rare words, regardless of category? Comparing against some dictionary of common words, perhaps. Would seem fair if the same exclusion rule applied to everything.
Perhaps one way to deal with the common suffixes would be to give a point only for the first one that a player submits, and zero points for subsequent variations.
Broad categories of words to eliminate... I am always struggling with the tradeoff of balancing the dictionary: too many words and games become too large to be fun; too few and I get annoyed at 'such obvious' words missing... Currently close to optimal, I think. But I keep thinking of removing entire categories such as: - each word that ends in -MAN has a potential -WOMAN and -PERSON version; - birds - there are so darn many! - plants -- likewise. So many obscure grasses...And I found...