If only there were anti-cheating apps! I don’t know how many times I used to play Words With Friends or Scramble type games, when all of a sudden, my opponent would seem to become a master wordsmith of the first order, almost overnight! It got to the point where, even though I’d be playing with friends I had known for years and whom I could trust implicitly, in the back of my mind I’d always suspect they might be using a cheating app, even when there would be no grounds for such suspicion. Easier just to stop playing those games. (Although I do admit to still playing with a couple of my most trusted friends, but not often.) I guess this says more about me and my suspicious, paranoid mind than it does about the integrity of my friends, but there you have it.
How ’bout you BOTreaders? Do you have reason to suspect your closest friends and family members of cheating, ever?
And of course, all props to The Big Hit (any fans out there?) for inspiring my Cheater Buster app tech.
I think it’s impossible to prevent cheating on those games unless you’re all sitting together and seeing each other’s screens (or why not just pick it up as a board game?).
people could simply do searches on a computer and enter the results on their phones, circumventing anything that would detect a cheating app on the other party’s phone.
true that, Anonymous – there’s no absolute way to prevent cheating, hence my paranoia! heck, my sister even cheated at boardgames right in front of me when we were younger. i guess i’ll just have to learn to deal with the possibility of people not being on their honor.
and check you out: by snagging the first comment, you just achieved the Shades of Firsting! wear them well – they’ll help you spot cheaters with their patented Cheat-Buster-Busta-Busted technology:
😎
To be honest, I prefer board games. I love sitting around with everyone, drinking, laughing and just having a good time. I love Apples to Apples. My Great Niece loves to play Trouble because it;s an easy counting game for her.
I remember hours upon hours of playing parcheesi, Risk, Stratigo, Battleship, and well, many other games, with my friends and family. Lots of good times.
same here, TPC. lots of Life, Monopoly and Clue, too.
i just discovered Apples to Apples with some friends a few months back, Pixie! was fun. definitely need to up my board gaming habits.
Apples to Apples is hugely popular among the theatre kids here. It’s a lot of fun to play at cast parties after everyone’s had a few drinks and the answers get silly.
i can see why it’d be popular among theatre kids, T! funny how so many of my friends have played it but i hadn’t even heard about it until recently. 😛
It was covered in one of the Freakonomics books that the only way you can trust people without standing over them is to involve small amounts of money and the honor system. It describes a guy that runs a muffin business where he puts out baskets of muffins with an honor system jar. Everyone told him he’d lose his butt because nobody would pay if they weren’t being watched, but apparently, if I remember correctly, the only place with a problem with that was a bank. I might be wrong. Anyone have the book to check for me?
Also, go to bed, Jeff.
hmm… well, these game apps involve small amounts of money and the honor system, but i still don’t trust people, Kizudarake! heheh.
i’ve been wanting to check out Freakonomics for a while now to see if i can pick up any tips, but i have a ton of other economics/marketing/design books i need to get through first! but that was a nice anecdote that restores (some of) my faith in the human condition, so i hope it’s true. 🙂
okay, now going to bed!
I don’t know what kind of tips you might be looking for, but it and the sequel actually ended up being researched and referenced Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader type books. Put them in your bathroom, and read a few pages or so while you’re taking care of what needs to be taken care of. They’re light fare, aimed at an audience that doesn’t know economics or statistics, so they fit a short attention span and don’t use complicated language.
i’ll check that out, Kizudarake – most of my quality reading time gets done in the bathroom, recently.
That almost sounds like plaing online chess in one window, and having chessmaster 9000 in another window. Whatever move the other person makes online, you play in Chessmaster. Then however Chessmaster moves, you move on your end of the online game. Basically playing as the Chessmaster.
very much so, Saeed. and these “cheater apps” are getting more and more sophisticated. i know of at least one that takes a screen cap of your game, interprets it, then tells you what to do next. insidious!
I stopped playing when all I did was use the cheat app. (Don’t look at me that way!) But, I was playing like 15 games at one time and just didn’t have the time for even one round. Now I play with my mom with no cheats cause, well it would be a sin to cheat on a game with your mom, right?
yes – and a mortal sin at that, TPC! (okay, don’t quote me on that, but it’s very, very bad to cheat your mom.)
I am totally addicted to Words with Friends. Most of my friends are librarians, teachers, avid readers, or work with words for a living, so the vocabulary level is pretty amazing already.
I lost my first twenty games . . . but then I started remembering the words that worked for my opponents and figured out where to put them, so I’m more of a challenge now. I hope.
We only caught one guy cheating—his wife busted him—so when we play him, we all use scrabblefinder. Otherwise, cheating is shamefully shameful.
“shamefully shameful” indeed! what’s “scrabblefinder” Sarah W? does it show you words that the cheater might use so you can bust him? i’d love to call out “CHEATER!” if i could catch someone in the act. especially at Words with Friends. 🙂
I wish—you plug in your letters and it shows the various legal words that can be made from them.
My best personal strategy is to throw random letters at the screen and see what sticks. It’s amazing what does.
darn. they really need to make a program that will reveal the cheating cheaters for the cheats they are!
If you need to cheat to beat the game, or your opponent, where is the fun?
exactly my thinking, Maryz! how much satisfaction can a cheater get by winning with a cheat???
Good Morning BOTvilians! It’s a beautiful morning out here in the BOTiverse.
I played Words with Friends for a little bit, then got angry. Not with my friends, but with myself for missing good words in favor of something quick. SO that app had to go.
The one I’m truly addicted to? Draw Something. I am no artist so sometimes I give word clues but oh what fun! ESQ and I draw some really funny stuff!
For those of you who are interested, Here is ESQ’s blog…
http://mmbeautyblog.blogspot.com
And Here is Mine,
http://pyratepixie.blogspot.com
The one I’m writing is mostly daily musings and as always constructive criticism is always welcome!
morning, Pixie! it’s indeed a beautiful day.
i used to play Draw Something (occasionally i’ll still pick it up) avidly until a couple friends started getting lazy and just writing the word on the screen instead of drawing the picture. kinda defeated the point (and fun!) of the game.
and: sweet! thanks for the links. i’m gonna go over and see what you two are up to. 🙂
That’s pretty lame that people would get an app to cheat in games like this. C’mon people, it’s a GAME. It’s not like the loser is going to be executed (Mayan Ball Court style – or was that the winner?) or like you are going to win/lose a bunch of money or something.
You know what your strip reminded me of? (Total uber-science-geek coming out here.) The plant-insect arms races you see in evolution. A plant evolves some defense against an insect – some chemical compound perhaps. Then the insect evolves resistance against it. Then the plant evolves some more extreme defense, then the insect gets around it, then the plant, then the insect… It only happens in situations where the insect is really specialized on a particular plant. Otherwise they’d just eat something else and call it good. It is one of the coolest and most fun things to teach about in intro evolution classes.
ha! i like how your brain works, Shanna! and that “plant-insect arms race” sounds like it would make an awesome app! maybe a resource management or tower defence game? hmm… 😀
My mom used the cheating app once on words with friends and I still won.
heheh. awesome. i might have to get my mom into Words with Friends. of course, i’d have to do periodic checks of her phone to make sure she didn’t download any nefarious apps…
i totally got the big hit reference and was laughing to myself. also, a friend of mine is always beating me with crazy words that i just don’t understand how she could possibly know. i truly think she’s cheating and have had to stop playing. only to be bombarded with invites all the time. she’s one of my best friends too…
i’m happy you got the reference, juniperlee! i’ve quoted that line in many situations and rarely do my friends know where it came from. i haven’t watched The Big Hit in a long time but i used to love it. might have to check it out again to see if it holds up.
and you should suggest playing with your friend in person, to see if she comes up with those crazy words on her own. it’s the only way to be sure since there’s no “Buster Busta Busted app” yet!
HA!
Okay, I’ll admit that I use scrabblefinder.com, but here’s the thing: I play with my father-in-law, who has me playing FOUR GAMES SIMULTANEOUSLY! I can’t be clever for four games in a row! However, I’ll also admit that he’s the ONLY person I use that site with, so any victories I get over my wife on that game are 100% mine.
“four games simultaneously”!? yow. your f-i-l needs some other people to play with! or does he have tons of games going with multiple people? and let’s hope your wife doesn’t see your comment here – she might not believe that your victories aren’t tainted… 😉
Part of the problem is inherent in Words with Friends: it asks BOTH players if they want to start a rematch, which accounts for some of the multiple games (I think at one point I was juggling somewhere around six games with him). Needless to say, he’s unofficially in charge of deciding how many games we have going anymore.
As for my wife…we’ve already had the discussion about scrabblefinder and she knows I only break it out for her dad. Or to reverse-engineer an impossibly-drawn creation in Draw Something.
ah. that makes sense. Scramble does the same thing – i think at one point i was playing 10 separate games with the same person.
ooOh… now “reverse-engineering” a Draw Something creation sounds pretty cool! educational even. i’m not even sure it’d count as cheating. i’ll have to process that a bit more. 🙂
Well, it might sound like it’s not cheating, but it really is. Just plug in the letters Draw Something gives you, then look at the appropriate slot (6 letters, 4 letters, etc.). It’s an imperfect solution, but if you’re staring down a drawing that makes no sense, it works.
This is why I play Draw Something. You pick from three words and it’s entirely up to your SKILL to play.
It’s also a cooperative game. You have to draw well and get the person on the other end to think like you to keep the game going.
i stopped playing Draw Something too, McClaud, cuz it seemed people got bored of it and just wanted the points. i’ve actually had friends write “Batman” or “Vacation” on the screen, cuz they didn’t want to bother trying to draw the object. ridiculous!
That’s no fun. If it’s a hard word, I usually draw two items and put a + sign between them.
My wife and I are on round 414. I’m running out of ways to draw certain repeated words, though.
414!!? wow, you and your wife are like, uberDrawSomethingnauts, McClaud! impressive.
Sweet dancing jesus, and here I thought I was the only person who ever watched The Big Hit
yay! another Big Hit fan! that film was totally underappreciated in its day, Nia. 🙂
And possibly the only movie that shows that Marky mark can actually act and be funny.
i’ve seen him pull the “act and be funny” trick at least a few times, Nia. of course, if we’re counting The Happening, then we’re going to have to distinguish between “intentionally funny” and “unintentionally funny.”
Point made, just for me the Big Hit and the Three Kings were the only movies Marky Mark was ever good, others just made me groan and go “Dude…Are you serious?”
I was tempted to buy a cheating app about a year ago when I first started, but i decided just to lose a couple hundred times till I got good at it.. Mind you people have cheated against me and still lost To me because It’s all chess in the long run.. Besides my family has no time for cheaters and it would be another thing that would cause a member to be disowned from the family for
i commend you for not being tempted by the easy way, Satoshieyes. and the brief sting of losing is easily diminished by all the times you’ve now won using your own skillz, i’d imagine. 🙂
Words With Friends drives me NUTZ! My friends all cheat, and when I’m winning, they quit! Lame!
BUH. that’s another thing, Funnyshaffer – the sore losers that quit before they can be “officially” beaten! i hate that. i used to get that all the time when i frequented XBOX Live more.
You can’t be serious? An App to cheat on other apps? And for something similar to scrabble no less? This my friends is a new low even for lazy people. My mind is still trying to comprehend the first part. Let’s not even go to the inceptionlike app against app against app against app! It’s totally whacked!
well, the app vs. app vs. app was born of my own imaginings, Jiro, but those things should exist! as for the app to cheat on other apps – that’s totally real and should be abolished.
Aren’t there enough apps already?
not until the official JEFbot app comes out, DAS!
There’s an app for that!
I’ve noticed how some apps are getting way out of hand. I don’t usually buy apps in the first place. Especially since 90% of the apps on the market contain some ridiculous permission requirements that would probably jack up my phone. I would rather that professional companies be producing the apps than people in their basements who I’ve never met. especially with all the recent discoveries of spyware on smart phones.
P.S. did you get my second live request? I hear the live system has been having problems. i suppose that’s because they don’t really work on it much.
i totally have way more apps than i need, Heavycannontank – i have some sort of compulsion to buy any interesting game that’s under 99 cents. which leaves me with a whole buncha games on my phone that i haven’t played in years.
re: Live request – i recently went on XBL and accepted the friend requests i had pending. did yours get accepted? if not, i’ll check it again either tonight or tomorrow.
I love board games of all varieties. I used to play Words a lot more, and had fun even when I was getting my arse handed to me on a silver platter by people who are WAY better with words than I am. I mean, holy crap, I have a pretty good vocabulary thanks to lots of reading, but some words that my friends come up with…!
I just don’t have time now, with working two jobs and finishing my Nano novel (which I should be doing right now…) Maybe when life slows down again at the end of summer. Really, when I have free time and my smart phone, I like reading the daily articles on Cracked.com’s app. That’s a lot of fun.
are you sure those friends came up with those big words on their own, T? with these cheating apps out there, it’s just impossible to tell!
and i can relate about your “time” dilemma – hard to find time to play with my apps, much less my console games or board games!
It sickens me when someone cheats at gmaes like Scrabble or Tetris. Have these people got patience or grace to play a simple game without resorting to cheating their way to winning?! It’s just sad.
oh no – don’t tell me there’s a cheat out there for Tetris too, GardeBlaze!! apps are dead to me now.
Sadly there’s a cheat to give you nothing but line blocks so you can get nothing but tetrises. I want to throw up just thinking about that awful, awful cheat.
I don’t really play those games either. But I DO play DrawSomething.
i might have to get back to playing Draw Something, ShadowShuffler. at least with the friends who weren’t cheating!
Once at one of my workplaces, it was lunch time and two men were playing a word scramble game. The following conversation took place between them.
First man: I got it. This word is “cortice”.
Second man: “Cortice” isn’t a word.
First man: It is so.
Second man: Use it in a sentence.
First man: I’m going to cortice my back. It means “to rub lightly”
Second man: Now I’m going to use “cortice” in a sentence: You are full of cortice!
heheh. now if the first man had just put an “s” on the end of that word, he would’ve had the plural of “cortex.” as it is, i believe the second man’s final statement is correct. 🙂
Hi, my girlfriend got me to start reading these today, and now I’m done. There were at least 3 plotlines that weren’t wrapped up though… we haven’t seen the scarf for a long time, we haven’t seen Xidna for a long time, and what happened to Cel? Do you have any intention of finishing those plots?
hey, Guy – firstly, thank your girlfriend for me for getting you to check out my strip! (and thank you for reading through them all.) secondly, i absolutely have every intention of returning to those plots. hopefully, shortly after the San Diego Comic-con this month, i’ll be tackling at least one of those storylines. thanks for the interest! 😀
Have you gotten to your PS3 friend requests yet?
Also, if you ever make it to Henderson, KY, I’ll challenge you to Zombies!!! or Munchkin. Even if I were inclined to cheat, I don’t have enough experience in either to do so.
ppl cant just play games no more, no? makes sense i dont play games with my fam cause we always end of fighting -.-