Since tactics are already under consideration, maybe they could be discussed thoroughly. So collecting and adding considerations (for starters):

1) multiple identities and groups discussing their choises before making them (eg. via irc)

I think this might kill the game. Probably people will avoid this enough to keep it in the marginal. No discussion about the day with friends before playing would be good gentleman's rule.

2) different ways of writing, different words of the same root

With 'forest' one could have got quite good placement (over 300 points) with word list 'tree','trees','wood','woods','leaf','leaves','animal','animals','bird','birds'. One would have won the round had he put 'nature' and 'green' instead of 'bird' and 'birds'. I think this might be the way things will be. One must see, when plural is intuitive to be used. Some people will always avoid plurals (thinking there's a rule for that), so most times singular form is also wise choise. This makes words with plurals weaker than words with just single form (like 'green' and 'nature'). If there are good single form words, they are best to play with.

Plurals are far from only trouble. Compound words are another. 'rain' would have earned me much more points than 'rainforest', but sometimes it could be best to use both, maybe 'rain forest' too. Then there are verb forms (drive/driving); there are regional differences (color/colour); there is case sensitivity (were 'christianity' day's word, I would go for both 'jesus' and 'god' and 'Jesus' and 'God').

Etc.

Saddest thing to me is that otherwise good words might be bad just because they can be written in many ways. Winning just with fife or six words troubles me less.

3) developing a culture

More or less this will happen. People learn what are good answers and use them. Good tactics make themselves even better. This also might get boring. Strong culture might kill innovative aproaches. (I wish expressions like 'All your base are belong to us.' (worth trying with 'base', I think) or 'xxx' would have potential.)

This forum is a strong way to create culture. Maybe plurals (or even words that can easily be used as plurals) are already dying. People see this discussion and begin to avoid them. Then people notice people are avoiding plurals and avoid them more fiercely. Or maybe easily pluralable words just start giving same points for both forms everybody using both.

People could also start using same sources to invent words. Someone (dopplefunker) mentioned using Google Sets. It doesn't seem so strong by itself, but it could get strong, if many people would use it.

There might be more specific rules than just constraints emerging (with or without forums). Maybe one should always try to invent opposite words just because it has developed to common habit (it would for sure puzzle fist timers, if 'desert' would get best points for 'forest'). Maybe some unrelated word (like 'spam') will always give good points.

And ofcourse there could emerge that forumgame where people battle posting their words and tactical suggestions.

Forum posting game would be a great variant. Starting word could be left off completely to make the game pure.

Variant that would give best points not for most popular

but for somewhat popular words (eg. like fearlessleader suggested in thread varyation) could also be fun and would make many above strategies much harder.

blah blah blah. Cheers.

yessssss

a lose sooooo much points

in the plural-singular problem :(

its convenient use both words?

what do u think?

what is best…singular word…or plural word!!!

OPINEN TODOS!

Yesterday (clock) the best idea was to use both forms:

hour 63 hours 30

minute 55 minutes 34

second 48 seconds 30

hands 35 hand 27

I think there is no case sensitivity. I start all my words with a capital letter.

no there isn't.

no two words phrases either. I think two words like “rain forest” are converted to one word “rainforest”.

You are true. When points are counted, every individual word is converted into lower case and spaces are removed: rainforest == rain forest == RAINFOREST.

I consider suggestion, where will be forbidden send pair of words, where second word is diferent only on end with -s, or -es (you must choose singular or plural form), but these words will be consider as different for final score.

Second possibility is forbidden send of words, where one word is part of second word. Not only tree-trees, animal-animals but forest-forester, air-airplane, rain-rainbow too.

air-fair?

Question… If I submit my entry, and then discover, for example, that I spelled a word wrong, am I allowed to correct the error and resubmit the entry again? (Only my most RECENT entry will be the one that is used.)

Or, after submitting their entry, if a player changes his mind, is he/she allowed to submit another entry, and override the first entry?

This sounds easy… the programming logic would only allow the most RECENT entry, if two or more were submitted by the same individual.

(This didn't happen to me, but I was just wondering if this was allowed.)

Yes, it is allowed to correct your entry. Just as you described.

I like universality of the game. Some simple rule like Richard described could do fine, but would solve just part of the problem and bring new ones.

If I submitted 'a' as an expression, would every other word with 'a' be invalid?

And one could still use pairs like leaf-leaves and fly-flight.

Ignoring spaces and caps is nice. How about puncturation and such? Would 'd?j? vu' count same as 'dejavu' or 'Don't do it!' same as 'dont do it'?

i don understand …richard said.

its forbiden put in my words…

tree and in other spaces

trees?

.-…its forbiden use the singular and the plural?

what hapen..if

for example…

last words…was “AIRPLANE”

and..i know that “pilot” it was the favorite word

and in my ten spaces…i use

pilot - pilot - pilot - pilot …succesibly..

(obviusly is cheating…but..there is this problem or cheating..controling? and fixed? or…its out of control..and only we have faith and ethic ?)

I tried using the same word twice in the same round once. It only counted the word once, so it looked like I had only entered nine words instead of ten.

this is probably a very odvious tactical point:

check you spelling if you are at all uncertain.

(i saw a few mispellings down in the 2s range of a few games)

byond that:

it might be a fair idea to establish as part of our 'culture' a single means (websight) by which we would all chech our spelling. i think this would improve gameplay by removing elements of bad luck; i do not think it would corrupt the game.

i'm not actualy suggesting a sight now, because if in fact people in general do now want this to be come standard practice, it woudl be rude of me to set things in that direction.