Online-Scrabble.com Blog

2009-09-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

It's been an exciting few months as Online-Scrabble.com has raced passed 10,000 members! It is an incredible achievement, and I thank everyone who visits and plays Online-Scrabble.com for making it possible!

The honour of user id number 10000 goes to medawley17 who scored 8 points in Never Ending mode.

Meanwhile this is a good opportunity to look at the leaderboard. It's still neck-and-neck in Never Ending mode, with moongirl sitting on 115,512 points. vinhkhoi is not too far behind with 110,537. Meanwhile, GOD - unsurprisingly! - is still the standout leader in Traditional mode with an incredible 2147483647 points.

2009-03-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

Sen. John McCain is a fan of Online-Scrabble.com it seems! Well, according to one website anyway. I know what you're going to say; "pics or it didn't happen". One step ahead of you! You can see the screenshot for proof at http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=96218#p96218!

2008-11-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

We have 7500 members! What an amazing achievement.

Congratulations to cej88, who was member number 7500. At the time of publishing, we are sitting on 7514 registered users. Thanks to all of you for making Online-Scrabble.com such a wonderful website!

2007-11-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

phpBB.com has been a good source of referrals to Online-Scrabble.com. In fact, thanks to a link in my signature, as well as a link on the teams page, phpBB.com has been the source of over 4466 visits to the website!

Just a small fact about Online-Scrabble.com which you may not have known :-)

Now for the plug: phpBB Olympus is in the final stages of development, check it out today!
http://www.phpbb.com/

2007-10-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

It's pretty hard to get on to the high scorers list now, with the lowest Never Ending score being in the low 4000's. But the beauty of Never Ending is you can do it over several days, weeks etc... there is no limit on the amount of time it takes!

But it's time to acknowledge the people who, in the last few weeks, have got close to the leaderboard.

mathdude31 - 2162 points
brendanut - 1310 points
ntni - 877 points
lmintz - 508 points
ky111180 - 458 points

Congratulations for your good performances! Don't give up though, it won't take long before you too hit that leaderboard!

To view the current leaderboard, for all Online-Scrabble.com formats, go to http://www.online-scrabble.com/profile.php?mode=highscores

2007-10-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I need to say that Online-Scrabble.com has passed 3000 members! This is a massive achievement.

Also, a special mention to acaridi who has done exceedingly well in Time Limits! acaridi has taken out spots 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, with a top average points per minute of 144.10.

What I wanted to say though, was how amazing it is to see how popular Online-Scrabble.com has become. In Never Ending alone, a total of 567,553 points have been scored by thousands of players. WOW!

A total of 34,897 rounds of Never Ending have been played. Assuming it takes approximately 10 seconds per round, that's over 5000 hours of Never Ending mode that has been played. In other words, a total of 242 days around the world has been spent playing Never Ending.

----------------------------------------
Never Ending: 567553 (34897 rounds)
----------------------------------------

Statistics current as of October 7, 2007.

2007-09-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

There is a lot about Online-Scrabble.com on this blog, but not much about the blog itself. This is blog post #23 since the day I created it, Sunday, 2 October 2005.

I know, it doesn't sound like a lot of posts, but it's the quality, not quantity... right?!

There have been approximate 4500 views of this blog, including a few hundred over the last month or so.

Help build this blogs popularity! Spread the word about http://online-scrabble.blogspot.com

2007-08-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

At Online-Scrabble.com, we mainly focus on Never Ending format. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that, it's our most popular format!

But "Time Limits" is a hidden treasure, and a fantastic way to test your skills.

You have 10 minutes to make the largest score possible. Why not give it a shot, right now?!
To play, go to http://www.online-scrabble.com/play.php?mode=time_limit

In total, Online-Scrabblers have spent 64 hours playing Time Limits. Let's try and get that figure up to 100 by the end of the year!

Hell, why not give it another plug... http://www.online-scrabble.com/play.php?mode=time_limit

Have fun, and good luck!

2007-07-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

We've hit the 2500 mark! This has also been added as an announcement at CricketMX.com, which can be read in this post: http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?p=77328#77328

melikes is the 2500th member, congratulations!

Thank you to everyone who has registered at Online-Scrabble.com, it is the users which have made it so successful :-)

Here's to the next 2500!

2007-07-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we didn't quite crack the 2500 by July, but we are getting pretty close. Less than 30 users are needed to reach the milestone, so if you have been thinking about registering, now is the time!

Who knows? Perhaps you will be user number #2500!
To register, go to http://www.online-scrabble.com/profile.php?mode=register

The most recent update to the site includes a new quiz feature. The quiz consists of a number of the questions vinhkhoi posted on the Online-Scrabble a year or so back. Some of them are pretty tricky, think you're up to the challenge? To find out, go to http://www.online-scrabble.com/quiz.php

Lastly, it appears we had a very special visitor to the site. In traditional mode, GOD scored 2147483647. I'd like to know which word that was ;-)

2007-05-27T23:35:00.000-07:00

We are approaching the 2500 member milestone! Currently we are sitting on 2348, will we crack the 2500 by July? I sure hope so!

A quick update on the statistics:

Top 15 Scores Never Ending Mode
User	Score	Rounds	Average
moongirl	101507	6318	16.07
vinhkhoi	101429	1989	50

Top 10 Scores Time Limit Mode
User	Score	Avg Points Per Minute
vinhkhoi	16791	1,679.10
mlgrant1122	4978	497.80

To start playing, head over to http://www.online-scrabble.com/play.php?mode=scrabble
To register (yes, it's free!) go to http://www.online-scrabble.com/profile.php?mode=register

Have fun!

2006-03-29T00:23:00.000-08:00

Recently, there has been a bit of downtime at Online-Scrabble.com, as well as CricketMX.com, LyricsMX.com and Cmxmods.net.

In the future, any updates regarding the situation of downtime will be posted here, as this site isn't on the server.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

2006-02-11T00:24:00.000-08:00

I think that it is important that everyone who plays Online-Scrabble knows how to make the most of their playing experience.

For the best Online-Scrabble hints and tips, such as how to reach your full potential, strategies for Tournaments, and a lot more, make sure you visit http://www.online-scrabble.com/hints.php

2006-02-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

Exciting times ahead! It's really good to see we have finally got on to Google! So far "scrabble hints" has us placed at number 4, thanks to our hints page!

So that is very exciting, and already I have seen an increase in users coming from Google. Albeit, it is small at the moment, but hopefully it will rise in the future :-)

Here are some of our major referrers:

MSN: 5455
Wikipedia: 723
CricketMX: 326
phpBB: 213
Google: 26

2006-01-21T07:31:00.000-08:00

Well, Happy New Year! (For 21 days ago)

We have passed 500 members (currently 535) which is very exciting. Is is fantastic seeing Online-Scrabble.com mature into such a fantastic (and big!) site.

Thanks to all the members, regulars, and moderators, who make it possible!

2005-12-18T06:54:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'd see the day when someone got to a milestone (such as 5000!) without trying. Let alone on 2 occasions. That someone? Me.

Two times, I have landed on 5000, without trying. In Never Ending, so many times I wanted (and tried) to land on a good number; 30,000, 40,000, 45,000 etc. Never happened.

Yet in Tournament play, I have done it twice, without trying.

It also says a lot that the number of rounds are so similar, I suppose it means I have a steady Tournament average. It's going to be sad to see those numbers disappear off the scoreboard, and then lost in cyberspace. I have left them there for quite a while now.. but surely another couple of weeks can't hurt? :-)

At least I have a screenshot of it, probably not the best quality, maybe Blogger thumbnails it? Let's see.

Links: http://www.online-scrabble.com/profile.php?mode=highscores & http://www.cmxmods.net/images/me/5000.PNG

2005-12-09T04:27:00.000-08:00

Amazing, we are finally on Google. Even if it is page 9 for "online-scrabble" it is still somewhat of an achievement :-)

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=online-scrabble&hl=en&lr=&start=80&sa=N

Next step is to get "online scrabble" without the dash, and eventually "scrabble".

Online-Scrabble.com: http://www.online-scrabble.com

2005-12-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

The Online-Scrabble forum is back up again, sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

2005-12-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

Introducing the monthly tips program. It is a downloadable file which allows users to read up on some of the best Online-Scrabble.com tips, on or off the internet.

Grab it while it's hot: December 2005 Tip

2005-11-26T05:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I think this is pretty impressive:

Percentage of referrals -> user: 10.75%

The crazy thing, is that at one stage was about 22%! Still, I'm happy 10% of all visitors register at Online-Scrabble.com :)

2005-11-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

So, we passed 300 members. It's quite amazing really, the rate that Online-Scrabble.com has grown, and is continuing to grow.

It really pleases me to see people enjoying the experience, in the last few days alone there have been 2 new entries on to the High Scores list.

saradalton@hotmail.co.uk

Score: 2858

Rnds: 186

Avg: 15.37

archduchess

Score: 683

Rnds: 64

10.67

Congrats!

2005-11-01T06:01:00.000-08:00

What was I going to say.. oh yeah,
New poll question:

Poll: How did you find out about Online-Scrabble.com?

Don't forget to vote folks, http://www.online-scrabble.com

2005-10-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

I'm actually pretty excited, tomorrow I'll be changing the poll question for the first time!

In the Online-Scrabble forum I asked everyone how I should arrange this whole poll thing. Garmy suggested it should be changed monthly, and Moongirl agreed, so that's that!

I'm thinking maybe the poll should also be located on the "Play" page, as it seems that is the most visited page on the site (not surprisingly!).

Until next time, so long..

2005-10-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

Wow, I never realised there was so much code!

I decided to count up how many lines of code it took to write Online-Scrabble (no, not manually, my text editor, Notepad++, tells me how many lines of code there are!).

Obviously, most of it went into the actual game, 1470 lines to be exact, but the whole site (not including the forum) uses 4332 lines.

Again, wow.

2005-10-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

300 games have been played at Online-Scrabble now, not bad is it?
In a little over 1 month there's been 160 members, that's almost 2 games per member!

The most popular is traditional surprisingly, I honestly thought it would be Never Ending:

Traditional: 194 games
Never Ending: 66 games.

But considering Traditional can be played an unlimited number of times, and Never Ending is 1 time per member, I suppose it makes sense.

More stats are at http://www.online-scrabble.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21

2005-10-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

Please contact us!

I have just added a contact page to the site with both the link to the forum and our administration email address, so if you have any feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, please do!

It's all here..

2005-10-04T02:05:00.000-07:00

Aarrghh, why won't it work!

I updated the registration page, I've done two things. First, I added a rules section that is displayed after registering. This is to make the rules on how to play clearer, such as the fact that you can use other letters in conjunction with those given to you. I think this is a good idea, hopefully it will encourage higher scores and averages too.

The second, I've added the option to put an email address. This is optional, there is absolutely no difference whether you do or don't, but if you do add it, you will get an email with your username and password details.

Depending on which email service you use, it could take up to 3 hours to get an email. From the tests that I have done, Hotmail takes about 3 hours, while the CricketMX server is instantaneous (no surprise there). Also, thanks to Spintop for helping me test it out, his Canadian email service took approximately 2 hours for the email to deliver.

I find it quite odd that it took so long to send, I can only think that there may have been a glitch on Online-Scrabble's end.

I will post an update soon.

2005-10-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

A hidden treasure of Online-Scrabble.com is the Practise feature. Only recently did I realise that it wasn't being used at all. I thought I'd go over some of its advantages here.

On the Practise feature (or as I like to call it in cricket terms, the Practise Nets) you can find out whether a word exists, and how much it is worth.

For example, I could enter the word "battye" into the practise page, to be told that it is worth 11 points. However, it would also say that it is invalid, and cannot be used:

The word battye is worth 11 points!
However, the word does not exist. Therefore it cannot be used in a Scrabble, or Online-Scrabble game.

And a message to state that it is a valid word would be displayed if indeed it was. This can be a very useful feature if you are interested to find out trivial things, such as how much your name is worth in Scrabble points etc.

To try the Practise feature, click here.

2005-10-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally made a blog. This will be dedicated to Online-Scrabble though.. well, most of the time!

I'm open to suggestions for any other scrabble variations that you want added, but after adding the multiplayer, it seems as if I have added the lot. I suppose, a 3 / 4 multiplayer could be done, but I think I'll wait a while before I start any work on that.

One thing I am very keen on doing, is another 2 player version, except the second player is the computer. Some of the things I am thinking about for this, are:

AI. Now artificial intelligence for making the computer look at the letters given, and then finding a word that actually uses those letters, that is hard. Hell, I don't even know if it's possible with PHP. Other than a brute force method of searching the dictionary for a random word, and then checking to see if the letters are there, or searching the dictionary for a word beginning with one of the letters given and then checking if the other two letters are there, I'm out of ideas. I think I'm going to pass on that one.
More AI. Now, in theory, it shouldn't be too hard to get a random score for the computer to use each time. But it will look a bit silly if the letters given are Q U Z, and the computer gets a score of 7 for the word, it has to be at least 21. Therefore, what will happen, is the letters will be added up (10 + 1 + 10) and then a random number will be plucked out of thin air (maybe between 1 and 10) then to be added on to the 21. Now, it might not always work. The human might think, there is no possible word that has Q, U and a Z, that equals 31. Unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done about this. This bit of AI has got my tick of approval.
What about bad letters you might ask, maybe the letters were J X Q. Well, hopefully, 9 times out of 10, the computer will realise this and will also have to give up. The other time, the computer will get a score. The reason for this, is that not all of the times you have click Give Up, the letters have been impossible.

OK, I've got that out of the way, the other feature which is on the drawing board, is what will be called, "The Lookout".

In Tournament play, you can easily track your opponents score, it is right there on the screen when you add a word. But in Never Ending, which is arguably the most competitive game we have at Online-Scrabble.com, there is no tracking feature. You have to continually look on the High Scorers list. Then we come to another problem, if your opponent isn't on the leaderboard, you have to go to the memberlist, find their profile, and look there.

Well, "The Lookout" will completely eradicate the need to use these methods. Like I said, it is still on the drawing board, but I have a fairly good idea what it's going to be like.

You will have two options:

Going to the actual lookout page. On this page, you can add your friends, relies, pet rock.. anyone that you want to track the score of. Then a table below, will outline the status over your little duel. Starting with the scores, rounds.. all the standard stuff. The row will be highlighted green if you are winning, red if you're trailing. If the game is fairly close (ie. Less than 1000 points in it), you will be given an achievable average to pass your opponents score.
On the Lookout page, you can select your most heated dual, someone that you are hell bent on staying ahead of. This particular matchup will be printed at the bottom of the Never Ending page. Of course, only the basic details will be listed here (highlighting, opponents name, opponents rounds / scores) but it will be enough to tell you what you need to do, to get ahead (or stay in front!).

I'm open to any feedback and comment regarding any of the features I mentioned here.