I have no doubt he will surpass me very soon if he continues to improve at that rate. I barely escaped a 0-5 fate against his 225 word average

And I am very excited because it'll give me a new level to attain.

And what's the news on Vitz? I wonder if his app is fixed now. Would love for him to join the fray. This is probably one of the most competitive seasons ever in group 1.

So what's the deal with this strategy of starting with one letter, finding all the words that begin with it, and then moving to the next letter? I'm trying to be more organized and accurate, but this is almost exactly the opposite of what I tend to do. I usually find certain patterns, for example, -AILER, and then start putting different start letters in front of it (MAILER NAILER TAILER SAILER, etc). Or I'll start with sort of a small nucleus and expand it; e.g., TATE STATE TATER STATER ESTATE RESTATE GESTATE, etc. Finding all the words based on start letter seems more difficult. Another problem with that strategy would be using the forward-backward words like CARES/SERAC. If you're swiping all the words that begin with C, are you going to wait until later to get SERAC?

Obviously if this is what Duyun actually does than it sure is working! I'm just curious how...

Thanks curtainz, I singed up. So will someone contact me with more info?

The point of my approach is to reduce the the search space incrementally. I find it hard to remember what words I have already swiped when I'm going all over the place. That results in a lot of reswipes, which not only consumes swipe time but also distracts your lookahead. One advantage to my approach is that it becomes much easier to bookkeep what words you have already tried and minimize reswipes. Simply go down the board and don't revisit tiles you already used as starting tiles till the very end. It's not perfect since there are dupe tiles/paths and whatnot, but it definitely helps, at least for me.

I am aware of reverse combos and clusters, etc. But I deliberately defer them for the sake of bookkeeping while making a mental note. It's much easier for me to keep track of future words than the entire list of past words. It's a style that will be hard to get used to for most players. It might just be in my personal taste, is all. Like Greg said, after a certain point it might not be worth it to drastically change the way you play the game.

In general just think of swipes as currency. Reswipes, guess-swipes, misswipes are "expensive" and you should avoid them amap. You should be aware of what words are not actual words as much as what words are. I saw a thread in the Ruzzle league page where people were enumerating non-words that they swipe every time. It's probably a good idea to be aware what some of these words are for you and work towards not incurring these expenses. You board should be as green as possible. I know it's easy said and it actually takes a lot of effort to achieve that.. but if it were easy then everyone would squeeze into group 1.

Did he get the 252 words against you, Duyun? That's pretty impressive. If Vitz comes back next season and Lyndsey and Will stay, then group 1 for season 24 will be madder than ever. I'm sure there will be room for Bruno as well.
Just imagine group 1 as it is right now plus Vitz, Sleep n dream, and Rhezz. That would be the craziest group 1 ever.

Interesting that you say this. I agree that such an approach - or really, any systematic approach to the board - will help minimize reswipes, but, oddly enough, I don't think I've ever reswiped a word. As in, not even once. At least not in the past year. I guess my memory for what words I've played is very good, even though I don't consciously focus on it. I just always assumed most good players were the same in that respect.

My accuracy is also generally very good (80-95+% on average in Ruzzle). It's these two things which allow me to stay in the 150-160 word range in SWF, because my pure speed is not elite. I guess that's why when I see Ruzzle/SWF videos from people who are on my level or even a bit below, I'm pretty awestruck at their speed. Their fingers look like a blur to me lol. I'm very deliberate and methodical with my swiping, by contrast.

Lol I reswipe like 100 times per round

Same, and misswipe. My accuracy in ruzzle is usually 50-60%.

Also, I've said it before but I'll say it again: Ruzzle and SWF may as well be completely different games for me. When I play Ruzzle more and then go back to SWF, my play suffers dramatically. I may have to really consider alternating seasons between the leagues, or playing 2 seasons in one league, then 2 in the other. My SWF play has stagnated and even regressed during the past couple of months because of this.

I think even more than the differences in visual cues, responsiveness etc. (which I've gotten used to), it's the fact that SWF features SIGNIFICANTLY more varied letters/hooks on any given board, and my mind needs to get familiar with that and get into a rhythm in order to recognize them quickly. In Ruzzle, there will only usually be one hook (-ing, -ers, -ed) on a given board, MAYBE two. There's also far less letter variety. In short, I don't think Ruzzle exercises as many parts of your brain as SWF does.

I am still significantly worse at Ruzzle. But don't be a weirdo, just play them both always. This isn't like your job or something

I talked to Danny about trying to work together and stagger start times of the leagues as well. I think that'd be helpful.

I do play them both, though not equally. I find myself spending more time on Ruzzle lately. I guess I could make more of an effort at balancing my playing time. I guess that would help some, but it still wouldn't be as good as if I played one exclusively for a week or two.

I am also still significantly worse at ruzzle than scramble, probably just because I play it much less. People that I hardly ever lose to on scramble beat up on me on ruzzle.

yup same here, lots of people who I am slightly better than or even with are clearly better than me at Ruzzle.

I'd love to see a video of you in action, Chris! I agree that (with the exception of Duyun) all the videos of strong players that I've seen involve them going ridiculously fast without necessarily taking accuracy into account.

Now that I've been focusing on accuracy I don't reswipe too often, although I sometimes get tricked into reswiping the same word from a different location on the board if there are duplicate paths! I guess in that situation the muscle memory fails and you have to have recall for the actual words, not the paths.

I meant always play both leagues

If I only play league games, it's not enough "practice" for me in SWF to get my mind loose for it. That's why I need to focus on one or the other for a while. We'll see.

Also, I know the season is early so maybe he'll level off, but wow @ Ykx jumping 27 wpr in average in just a couple of weeks from last season til now. Even Duyun's largest jump between seasons was "only" 17 wpr.

It helps your wpr to move up groups also. He won't constantly have giant leads, therefore he'll have longer freezes.

Did you see Yxk's video?

Ruzzle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFka2kbepyk

Scramble With Friends:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eUZChElj14

His accuracy's better than some of the other's I've seen. I think Wren or one of the other website developers should start a resource page like what the Ruzzle league website has and put up resources of the really good scramblers recording themselves playing

True also.

Well, it gives the yxk4eva's accuracy in Ruzzle at the end as 53%. I'd estimate someone like Duyun or Chris JM is more in the 90% range. I don't mean to be critical of Yuy of course; he's WAY better than me. He's just following a different strategy of going REALLY fast but having lower accuracy. I know personally that I can't really ever be that fast, so it makes more sense for me to focus on accuracy.

He was also just starting to play Ruzzle at the time he made that iirc, and it does take time to get used to the timing of the swipes and visual cues, which differ from SWF. I doubt his accuracy is in the 50% range on SWF at his word count (he'd have to make ~300 attempts at words per round if that were true), though there are some group 1'ers who do have lower accuracy (50-65%) as measured by Ruzzle (hi Bruno! ).

It doesn't seem too impossible to make about 300 attempts if you assume a typical two-freeze round of Scramble is about 160 seconds. That corresponds to 112.5 'words' per minute. But I'm sure you are correct that yxk's Ruzzle accuracy has since improved.

My mind isn't working. It would mean he'd need to make 400 attempts in the allotted time. Not sure why I added 50% to his average word count lol.