On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 02:30:00PM -0400, Mark Jason Dominus wrote:
>
> On May 26, 2004, at 2:20 PM, Joshua Kronengold wrote:
>
> >Mark Jason Dominus writes:
> >>> Adapting it to phrases should be trivial.
> >>I wouldn't think so, because a phrase like "All's well that ends well"
> >>would be a lot more likely than "Well well ends all's that", even
> >>though the words are the same.
> >
> >Actually, this isn't that bad.
>
> I see what you mean. Yes, if there is a shared phrase list. I was
> imagining that there would be a shared *word* list, and the guesser
> would have to guess a phrase, given only that the words in the phrase
> were all in the word list.
Even if you only share the word list, it's not too bad.
The key thing is that hangman gets easier if there are more
different letters in the solution, because it gets harder
to guess a failing letter. If the phrase is "the quick
brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", you'll find the answer
in 26 guesses - and none of the guesses will be wrong!
A single short word is te hardest form of hangman.
As long as you can find highly likely (or certain) letters
that fit in one of the words, you can stay alive - and
each one will help fill in the other words.
You don't need to care too much that one of those phrases
is more likely, because as soon as you guess an 'e',
you have either:
...'. .e.. .... e... .e..
or
.e.. .e.. e... ..'. ....
That resolves the issue of whether it is "all's well that
ends well" or "well well ends all's that" without any
extra effort.
(If you give extra credit for a guess of the entire word
than for guessing each of the remaining letters one at a
time, then recognizing phrases as well as words becomes
important. That's the Wheel of Fortune crux - if you keep
spinning when you know the answer, you might go bankrupt
or you might increase your winnings.)
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