ISC Cheaters
I put someone on my ISC No Play list today. It's the first time that I've done it.
I was ahead by 65 points with my opponent in serious time trouble. He was holding AEILRS? with a hanging T. I saw REALISTS right away, which would have won the game for him. But with his time coming up, I was hoping he wouldn't see it in time. Then with a minute left he "lost his connection", which in essence paused the game. Then he came back, a few more seconds clicked off, then he "lost his connection" again. He did it a third time with 15 seconds left in his penalty time. The last time he came up with LARDIEST and won the game.
He never lost his connection any other time in the game, which makes me think it was intentional. I don't know if he was looking up words or anagramming and since I can't prove it, I don't concern myself with that. I feel like he was disconnecting to give himself more time which I find unethical. I adjusted my play according to the clock; I played my previous turn quicker than usual because I saw that he was in time trouble. I don't care that he came up with a good play; I care that he gave himself more time to do it.
And the kicker is that he had set the time limit, so if it's not long enough then he should make it longer.
He's lucky that I don't post his handle...or should I? What do you think?
Well, since you ask for my opinion... I say, either leave it be (which doesn't seem to be working,) or report it as suspicious behavior through the appropriate channels at ISC. No need to draw your conclusions any further.
The person is on your No Play list, and no one expects you to heroically battle all cheaters, to pass swift and terrible judgement upon them, to defend the poor downtrodden innocents who will find their hard-earned rating points stolen from under their noses at the last minute.
If you report the behavior, and the moderators or judges of ISC (whatever they have) receive other similar reports, they can conclude more accurately whether the player is cheating, and can enforce actual penalties. You on the other hand have little real information and (face it) no real power.
Because of this bad experience, I think it's appropriate to place the player on a No Play list. You don't want to play against someone if their connection is apt to break at critical moments. But, either report the incident diplomatically or wrap it up in a little package and drop it down the memory hole.
So sayeth the Younger Waugh, go now in peace.
Ah, the disconnector. I haven't been playing long but somtimes I get the feeling that I'm being cheated. Maybe I'm just paranoid. And like you're younger brother said, you can never really know for sure. So I suppose you take the good with good with the bad. There is nothing satisying about putting someone on your Noplay list - I think you just presume a certain small percentage will be slightly underhanded at times and you take that as a given.
I wonder if he had been anagraming that he would have found realists before lardiest and played that because it would less suspicious? Or perhaps he just got lucky with a known suffix and it's jusr sour grapes from you :)
I've been called a cheater for playing a phoney word - I find that preposterous. But what about if your ahead and someone has a bingo, but nowhere to play it, so you pass so as to force them to play something - do you think that is unethical? I don't.
A quick question for you vis-a-vis you're flash cards: you say you went through the top 1000 bingos and got the single ones out. I like the idea of this, but how did you know which were true single, in so far as they didn't belong to a stem which you were yet to study? Does that make sense? That is to say, I have done EASTER, RETAIN, SATIRE, and SATINE so far (inspired by your little cards) and I don't want to learn single anagrams if I know they are going to turn up in stems I will do in the near future. Sorry for all the questions but it's just easier to ask someone that tinker around for hours. Thanks.
If I read the help topics correctly, ISC only wants you to report somebody if they are using offensive language (not in the words played, but in the chat). Otherwise, they want you to just use the No Play to take care of cheaters.
I've had people disconnect on me before, but usually it's at random times during the game. It's a little annoying but not infuriating. And if it happens during your turn, then you're the one getting the free time. I think this other player was disconnecting because he was about to run out of time. On further reflection, he probably reconnected only so he could remember what the board looked like. What I should have done was adjourned the game right then. Hindsight is 20/20 though.
I don't really think he was anagramming, or he would have played a lot quicker. The ISC detects when you have an anagramming program running. I know because I've accidentally left Lexpert open when opening Wordbiz. The ISC gives you a message warning you to close Lexpert. Although it does take it a couple minutes to warn you.
I find nothing unethical with playing phoneys, and I think most people with higher rankings would agree with me. It's part of the game. There is definitely nothing unethical about forcing someone to play away a bingo by passing. In a given situation, that might be the best move. I've passed so that I wouldn't be the one to draw a Q that I knew was in the bag.
As far as my singletons, my definition of a singleton was a word that only had one anagram. The most probable might be ANEROID. ATONIES is also a singleton, although it does belong to a stem group TISANE+O. REDTAIL is not a singleton because it also anagrams as DILATER and TRAILED.
When I compiled my list of singletons, I didn't worry if it overlapped with the stem groups. I figure it would actually help because I saw the word more times, and in different contexts. And there are so many stems, hundreds of them, that you could probably come up with some stem for almost any word. If you pulled out the ones that didn't have a stem, then you'd be left with no words. You could say that ANEROID is IRONED+A for example. There's not a lot of words in the IRONED stem group, but I studied it because the ananomic is "WAUGH JAMS", which has a personal connection for me.
There's also a lot of overlap between the stems too. You will see AEINRST in seven different stem groups:
INSERT+A
TRAINS+E
STERNA+I
SATIRE+N
TISANE+R
RETINA+s
ARSINE+T
I still made cards for them, but then once I learned the 9 anagrams for AEINRST then I just skip it, keeping in mind that it belongs in the stem group that I'm working with. But you'll always find review helpful, so I wouldn't discard them.
To compile the list, I used LeXpert, which I highly recommend to anybody wanting to study word lists.
Well I think it doesn't matter if you disclose his handle here. Cause most prolly people won't add that person to their noplay list just because of that one bad incident you had. For someone to be added to my noplay, I need to experience for myself the kinda bad stuffs that that person do.
CHeers~