News and Updates

This page shows updates made to this site and the game. They appear in order of occurrence, starting with the most recent. Not all changes show up here.

5 Nov 2022 -- I'm taking a break from looking for work while relocating. The game is on unofficial hiatus while moving to another state. I'm hoping to try one last game before officially moving, but I don't know when that will be. In the meantime, I made the following adjustments:

I increased the individual streak bonus to 40 per question. The bonus question will end most individual streaks, making it more difficult to get and keep them going.
I also increased the overall streak bonus to 125 per question starting at three. I did not change the number of players bonus.
The next change should solve the problem of the jackpot getting too high. I cut the points going to the jackpot in half due to missed questions, rounded to the nearest five. This probably adds confusion to an already complicated game, but this change will award players for getting questions correct, and the jackpot will not climb as fast.
However, I increased the points going to the jackpot per question to 250 from 100. This happens regardless of its outcome.
I doubled the bonus points going to players' scores and the jackpot for time left on the bonus clock. I don't want to go higher.
One goal with some of these changes is to reward players that go quickly and take less time off the clock. It will probably increase the length of the game, but it will allow more questions and puzzles.
Also, I changed the value of vowels yet again for puzzles. The puzzle now starts at 11,500, 250 for each letter and then another 5,000 for all five vowels. Also, the puzzle's value gets 50 points for each vowel in the puzzle. When players guess vowels, the puzzle's value will now decrease by 1,250 points plus an additional 50 points for each vowel revealed. Players will still lose 500 points if there are consonants in the puzzle. The goal is to reward players for not guessing vowels, but I have a feeling that players will still guess them. Even I guess them when I am script testing, because I can't figure it out.

19 Jun 2022

I hopefully fixed some minor bugs.
I did my eighth script test last Sunday, and I analyzed it. Results are on the Script Tests page under Script Test Eight.

28 May 2022

I removed the line graphics.
Unfortunately, this site isn't viewing well on mobile devices. I don't know how to change it. I just tried some tweaks, and it didn't work the way I wanted it.

17 May 2022

When players type !score, they will now see their streaks, if applicable: main streak and individual.

9 May 2022

I analyzed my seventh script test. Results are on the Script Tests page under Script Test Seven.
I made some minor changes to the script that I can't really remember.

7 May 2022

I smoothed out bugs to the point of a faster pace.
During speed round, I removed a pause between displaying the puzzle and the next player getting a chance to guess a letter.
Changed welcome message. When players enter the channel that have points, the script will now display their score when welcoming the player back. The script will automatically voice the player in control upon entering unless they enter during a speed round.
Fixed changing nickname bugs, I hope. I only want to tell people that are in the channel that their scores don't change between nicknames.
Fixed bug of awarding the jackpot before adding points waiting in limbo (delayed).
No points go to the jackpot when the game clock expires. It's just the puzzle clock.
I finished the sixth saved script test. Results are on the Script Tests page under Script Test Six.
I started an Example Game page and then deleted it. The process of creating it was slow, and I was using a script test instead of a live game. The last live game was long ago, and I made many changes to the game between then and now.
While analyzing the latest script test, I noticed point values of some letters as weird. H seems more frequent than P. I want point values of letters based entirely on their frequency. I first used Scrabble as a reference; however, I'm realizing Scrabble has a limit of tiles and thus affected the point values. For this game, there's no set number of letters or tiles. I'm now basing the point values on overall frequency of letters. Additionally, I'm placing a minimum of 100 points per consonant but keeping the maximum at 500. This changes the point values of matching bonuses, puzzle values, scrambles, et cetera. I have to update values in the examples section. The new point values appear below following by the old point values along with the sources of the tables used to form the new point values: The point values for the letters C, H, J, Q, X, and Z didn't change.

NRST = 100; CDL = 150; GHMP = 200; BFWY = 250; KV = 300; JX = 400; QZ = 500
LNRST = 50; DG = 100; BCMP = 150; FHVWY = 200; K = 250; JX = 400; QZ = 500
"Frequency of the Letters of the Alphabet in English." https://www3.nd.edu/~busiforc/handouts/cryptography/letterfrequencies.html. Accessed 1 May 2022.
“Letter Frequency.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 29 Apr. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Letter_frequency&oldid=1085262926.

At the same time, I wanted to change the point values of vowels, but I couldn't come up with something until now. Vowels will now subtract 500 points from a player's score; however, the player will get 50 points for each vowel in the puzzle. The puzzle's value of 1,000 did not change. One idea was to change the value of the vowels itself. E is the most common with U the least common; however, I rejected that idea. This would complicate the game further, and I don't want to change the programming of the script.
The letter value increase caused an imbalance in the value of word scrambles. This required me to divide by four instead of three. The reason is to keep the point values between 200 and 1,000. I'm not going to worry about the balance on the puzzle values, the correct spelling bonus, and the correct spelling puzzle bonus.
This change required me to go through all the word scrambles marked as not usable and see which ones are now in range. I was able to add about 125 scrambles that will require hints. I'm not going to worry about the ones already in existence. Before I am able to use them, the script will tell me if the point value's too high or too low.
During the bonus round, there's now time added for all questions, not just levels higher than five. This is to encourage players to read the question. However, if a player is early, the clock will decrease to use two seconds. For example, if a player sees a question with two minutes on the clock and answers early, the clock will drop to 1:58. Players will see the amount of time added.

24 Apr 2022

Fixed known broken links on the site.
Added increased time penalties for additional violations of the game's misbehavior rules. The time doubles each time.
Added general three strikes rule. Ultimately, I will decide when to implement it. There may be times when I will kick and ban on the first violation, not necessarily the third. I hope to be consistent, but I won't know for sure until the situations occur.
Working on full game example. This will be in case players want to know more about how a game works. Unfortunately, it excludes the details of questions, scrambles, and puzzles.
Clocks now display in the standard minutes, seconds format with a leading zero when applicable.

16 Apr 2022

When no player has control, and it's time to start a speed round, the script will randomly select a player. This is to save time and for consistency when there's only one player. During a script test, I couldn't solve two scrambles, which ate two minutes off the clock. I wish I would have thought of the script randomly selecting a player instead of multiple scrambles. Sometimes, it's difficult to determine ideas until trying them.
When displaying questions, the clock won't start until the script prompts players for guesses. This is to encourage reading the question. The clock still starts immediately after displaying a scramble.
Moved script test summaries to its own page.

3 Apr 2022

I made changes to how the script displays information and other tweaks. It took some time to work out the bugs this caused.
I changed how the script displays adding points to the jackpot. The 100 points per question is delayed and officially added after a question. I had a struggle trying to get it to work.
I had a major struggle fixing the idle count. The script wasn't correctly counting the number of players idling. I wanted the script to track it during play; however, it didn't work. Now, the script counts the number of players idling when needing that information. This affected the winning streak calculation and the automatic clock stoppage during part one of questions.
I adjusted the processing of entries for the jackpot. It, unfortunately, caused a problem where it processed only one entry no matter how many entries the player actually received. This affected the latest script test, and the jackpot climbed about 10 to 15 thousand more than what I would like.
I scrapped a session due to the script not working correctly, and it was easier to start over. The script was freezing instead of correctly marking idle players, and I had difficulty figuring out why.
I completed another script test, because I didn't fix bugs after completing the previous test. Results are on the Scripts Test page under Saved Test Five.

6 Mar 2022

In the previous update, I brought back Puzzle Round and Question Round. I also talked about the Triple Church Mystery. There was one other feature that I thought about bringing back: Brain Speed Test (BST). I'm not bringing them back, either, and I deleted code remnants of the two features. The BST took more time to explain it than to actually play it and writing for both detracts me from writing questions. I spend a lot of time trying to get the script to work correctly, which also detracts me. I bring this up in case I want to rethink this. Besides, having questions with three correct answers has elements of the BST and works.
A rule on the website didn't match the script. It involves a single player playing a speed round. If the buzzer goes off for a letter guess, speed round ends, and then players have 60 seconds to submit guesses. Well, the script says 90, so I forgot I changed it and didn't update the rules page. The website rules' page now says 90 seconds.
I found many more bugs while testing the newly added Puzzle Round and Question Round:

The pre-game part didn't work the way I wanted. The points didn't award correctly, and the script didn't display it correctly.
The point values for scrambles doubled.
There was a miscalculation in the jackpot formula at time of reset. It thought there were more players than there actually was, so it significantly lowered the probability of players getting the jackpot. More on that later in this update.
When a player reveals the entire puzzle, the script didn't display it the way I wanted.
The automatic stopping of the clock during part one of questions wasn't working correctly when one or more players idle. I'm not sure if I fixed it.
Problem implementing converting an educated guess question to a normal question when there's only one player.
I thought the bonus round worked, but I was wrong:

The winning streak bonus went to the player's regular score, not the bonus round's score.
Matching a word scramble didn't add bonus points.

I completed another script test on 6 Mar that took two weeks. The results are on the Script Tests page under Saved Script Test Four.
I changed some script text. A lot of actions are complete sentences, so I changed them to regular purple text.
During the process of adding and testing the Puzzle Round, 1,500 points was going to the jackpot after completing each puzzle. I didn't want 1,500 points going to the jackpot for each puzzle, so I adjusted it to do it for each round.
After that adjustment, I increased the points from 1,500 to 2,000 when finishing Puzzle Round and Question Round.
I noticed that the jackpot algorithm wasn't awarding the correct number of bonus entries.
Moreover, I adjusted the script to give bonus entries for the jackpot as the value increases. If anybody reading this is thinking I should award the jackpot when it hits a certain value or at a certain time, it will eliminate the random aspect of it. Even I don't know when the script will award it, and I don't want to know. I'm hoping that awarding it more often will result in the jackpot not being in the top three ways to score points in this game.
I changed how the script shows when points go to the jackpot. It creates too many lines. It adds to the delay and can be annoying. I also added a way to delay adding points to the jackpot.
Changed the bonus for random level to 20% from 25%. The bonus for random category stays the same, and the bonus for random category and level stays at 40%, thus increasing the bonus for both to 10% from 5%. I lowered the random category bonus down to 5% and left the random level bonus alone; however, rounding would result in some being 10% anyway, so I changed the random category bonus back to 10%. The goal was to increase the bonus for both to 10% from 5%, but I didn't want to raise the random category and level bonus. Therefore, I lowered the random level bonus to 20%. The goal is to encourage picking both random categories and levels.

17 Feb 2022

I got a strong impression about adding puzzle rounds and question rounds. I forgot how much fun it was to have those rounds. During my decision process, I read my notes from my first update. I removed them to not shift the focus to one or the other. Well, I now realize that puzzles and questions are the top scoring methods, so the focus is already on both of them. However, I couldn't really decide which one to do first, so instead, I decided to give the player in control a choice. Before round two starts, the player in control will now get to choose between three options: Question Round, Puzzle Round, or neither. If the player chooses either questions or puzzles, round four will be the other one.
After I decided to add those rounds and give a player the choice, another option crossed my mind. In the first iteration of this game, I had something called Triple Church Mystery. For reasons that I don't fully remember, I changed its name with a reason that I also don't remember. I still have remnants of code left for this feature. I talked about this in the first update at the bottom of this page. I used it during puzzle round, which was perfect. The concern I now have is the time involved in writing them. In the first iteration, I wrote them each week, because I already had a lot of questions, and I had fairly regular players. This time, I need to have a good-sized pool to choose from, mainly because I'll test it and want to play. It's no fun in testing when I know the answer each time on the first clue. As tempting as this is, I'm not going to add this feature. The game's already too complicated, and writing the clues and deciding on the subjects would take time away from writing questions. I'm already having difficulty creating puzzles. I don't worry too much about scrambles anymore; I have over 1500 of them.
Okay, it's official. This game is complicated. There's really no way for me to make it less complicated, but this is fun.
I keep reformatting the Full Rules page. Every time I read over the rules, I make at least one change, or I get an idea of a major change of one or more sections. It would take too much time to write down all the changes.
Added clarity about what happens if a player leaves the channel during a ban: The player can't come back until the ban's removal.
Now, I just need to update the script for the new rounds and the conversion of educated guess questions discussed in the previous update.

6 Feb 2022 -- I read through the rules multiple times, and each time, I add or change something.

Word scrambles used for determining control now include up to 250 points based on perceived difficulty. It was only for questions.
Added rules for misbehavior during a bonus round. Getting a ban or kicking the player out of the channel ends the bonus round. If the kick and ban doesn't have a timer, the bonus round doesn't count, and the second place player gets to play a bonus round if still in the channel.
Educated guess questions convert to regular questions if there's only one player in the channel playing. I still have to update the script at the time of this update.
When making updates, it's important to upload the files to the server. I tend to forget that a lot.

24 Dec 2021 -- I just looked to see when I started this, and I worked on this for about two and a half years: writing questions, tweaking the script and the game, and more. I'm still not done tweaking the game, and to be honest, I don't think I'll ever have it just right.

I completed a third script test and analysis. This time, I simulated three players. I had to make corrections, because I made some mistakes. The results are on the Script Tests page under Saved Test Three
I adjusted the jackpot awarding algorithm to account for the number of players at time of reset. Hopefully, this will result in the same number of jackpot awards for two or more players.
For the final puzzle of the game, if the players reveal the entire puzzle, the required points go to the jackpot normally; however, instead of giving the jackpot to the player that revealed the last letter, the script will award it to a random player. It could still be the player that revealed it, but all the other players get an equal shot. Idling players don't get a chance for the jackpot.
I tested as much of the idling aspects of the script as I could, and I didn't test everything. When a question displays, players that idle will now see a message, saying "I won't wait for your answer in part one. . . ." Additionally, players will now see when the script detects that all the players answered. Idle players that answer a question must get their answer to me before I display the correct answer in order for it to count as correct.
I made other cosmetic tweaks to the script.
I made many rewrites to the full rules page and added a section about idling.
Okay, I won't be doing much to lower the feeling of too much information.

26 Nov 2021

One thing I want is consistency in this game. When a player reveals the entire puzzle, the 5,000 points now go to the jackpot. It's not consistent when the puzzle clock bonus goes to the jackpot but not the 5,000. Having each player get 5,000 points isn't very competitive. One player should get those points, but it shouldn't be the player that guesses the final letter, because it probably takes all players to get to that point. Each player that isn't idling can still get the jackpot.
The jackpot's starting value decreases to 1,000 per player from 5,000. The reason is that the jackpot is part of the top three ways to earn points. It's something I accept, but I would like it to be number three, above answering questions and solving puzzles. The script won't start attempting to award the jackpot until its value is above zero, so I don't want it to be zero. The sooner it starts to award the jackpot, the sooner a player can get it.

12 Nov 2021 -- Okay, there's probably too much information on this site, especially on the Full Rules page. I'm not sure if I can cut any information, especially since I keep changing things and adding sections.

I added a section regarding questions that are both educated guess and have multiple answers, and I included a lengthy explanation of how I process multiple answers. The detailed part moved to the Detailed Examples section.
I completed another script test and simulated game, and the results are different from the first one. The results appear on the Script Tests page under Saved Test Two.
Something else I noticed while testing is that the pauses seem to increase. Actually, it's probably my patience decreasing, and there are a lot of messages. As I said in past updates, I added pauses to spread out messages and prevent triggering [of] flood protection scripts.
I decreased pause lengths to two seconds instead of three seconds. The final pause is usually five seconds, so that should give players time to catch up on reading.
When players guess all letters to the puzzle, the bonus for time left on the puzzle clock will now go to the jackpot. The jackpot is perfect for situations where one player should get the points instead of every player. Any player idling when revealing all letters in the puzzle will not get points for solving the puzzle. They weren't playing; they don't get the reward.
I noticed more bugs. My goal when an actual game happens is to have zero bugs and problems. I'm realizing that's not going to happen. I'm a human being, and I will make mistakes, and I can't catch all the bugs. I can't test every aspect of the script; there's too many. Besides, the mistakes could make things interesting.

8 Nov 2021 -- The Impossible! game show (stylized as !mpossible) has a prize pot that players add to by eliminating impossible answers from a "grid". However, only one player can collect that pot. I want to implement something like that in this game. In a way, I already have some of those elements via the jackpot feature. There's already points going to the jackpot for each puzzle, although it's more points when solving. Adding a small number of points to the jackpot when a player guesses a letter or chooses the next category is a bad idea. I don't want to do this for word scrambles as control picks, because there should only be one per game.

100 points now go to the jackpot for each question asked.
I did an analysis of my latest test by seeing how many points each "player" earned through each task and the percentage of the total. The results are on the Script Tests page under Saved Test One.
Players now earn bonus points for time left on a clock when guessing a letter and selecting the next category and level. When a player gets a prompt to guess a letter or to choose the next category and level, 30 seconds goes on a separate clock called bonus. When the player makes a successful letter guess or selection, the player will earn one point for each second left on that clock. It's not much, but my goal is to encourage players to go faster to get more questions and puzzles. Other ideas for this included rounding this to the nearest five and going higher than one per second. The rounding seemed wrong, and I don't want players to get more points than solving the puzzle with time left on the puzzle clock.
When a speed round starts, five minutes goes on the bonus clock. If a player solves the puzzle before that clock hits zero, the jackpot will get one point per second left. The reason for the jackpot is that it takes all players to solve the puzzle fast.
I didn't realize the bonus for having the numbers 13 and 666 in scores wasn't working properly. It only looked at the player currently in control. This bonus affects all players, not just the player in control. I fixed it so that it looks at each player's score.
The Scriptures category is very close to random so that category now counts for random bonuses.
Changed the way clocks start and stop during speed rounds. When a player makes a successful letter guess, the clock stops. The clock starts when the puzzle updates or when the next player gets the prompt for a letter. The clock shouldn't run while waiting for information to display.

31 Oct 2021 -- Added report from Zotero of the sources I use for questions. Unfortunately, the file size is about 3 megabytes, but it gives more information than the full Works Cited entries.

30 Oct 2021

I tweaked the text by removing colors, thinking the color will go back to the color set at the beginning of the line. Nope, I forgot it goes to black. I had to undo the change, and of course, I missed some of those changes. I bring this up, because it's funny.
I added pauses to spread out displaying information. Generally speaking, I don't want the script to display more than two lines at once. It can trigger flood protection scripts, and it can lead to the player feeling overwhelmed. There are now pauses when starting a round and when a player finds a letter in the puzzle. Before the change, it could cause up to five lines to display at once.
Behind the scenes, a lot of information appears only on my screen to help me. Because of possible mistakes I can make, I now have the script display the game clock and puzzle clock frequently in the channel. I also programmed it to display winning streaks. The reason for this is to minimize the time it can take to make corrections.
During a bonus round, there was a bug when adding time for levels five to eight. It wasn't adding the time due to using the wrong variable. It also took a while to notice this one.
Additionally, the script wasn't trying to match word scrambles, once again due to using the wrong variable.
I spend a lot of time testing the script, which can be a distraction when I should spend more time writing questions. Additionally, I feel like I will never get all the bugs out of the script. I just hope that when I actually do have a game that the bugs won't be catastrophic to the point I have to make adjustments during the game.
I even noticed a question that was so poorly worded that I had to toss it and mark it for rewording.

16 Oct 2021 -- I made some more changes to the script:

I found more instances where three lines of text goes out at once. Generally, I don't want more than two lines of text going out at the same time. The main reason for this is to not trigger flood protection scripts, but the other reason is to give players time to read the lines. (Note: When I script test and play, I'm guilty of not reading everything. It's one of the reasons for the section in the full rules about host mistakes, but I digress.) For those that are more curious, I programmed the script to queue up messages at custom intervals. When there are more than two lines, I add each additional line to the queue with three seconds between each message and five seconds between the last message and the next prompt. This is why players will see small and large wait times. The way to tell when something can change each time the line appears is red text. Of course, if I don't reset the queue to zero, the wait times will increase with no messages appearing, and that's frustrating.
I noticed an inconsistency in puzzle guess matching and word scramble matching. When a player matches a puzzle guess, but a different player got the correct puzzle without matching, both players get the point value of the puzzle with the one matching getting bonus points. Well, with word scrambles, only the first player got the points for the word scramble instead of both, so I changed that so that both players get the points of the word scramble with the one making a match getting bonus points.
I rearranged the order of some messages. I won't make a list.
Sometimes, I make changes to some questions. If they confuse me, there's definitely something wrong, especially since I write most of the questions.
I added code to more automate the process of what to do when I choose a question from the wrong category and level.

5 Sep 2021 -- I changed the color of text on the site to black from blue. When reading the text recently, I was having a little trouble reading the text. My apologies for not noticing this earlier.

3 Jul 2021 -- I spent a lot of time trying to get all the bugs out in the script and updating the text on this site. The changes are minor, and I didn't make a list. I don't think I will get all the bugs out. I just hope they don't cause drastic errors that require a lot of time to fix during a game.

6 Jun 2021 -- When script testing, which I do a lot, I made mistakes that can affect the outcome of the game. It got me thinking that I need to write some rules regarding corrections. I already wrote corrections into the script, but there is one scenario that I didn't. What if I pick a category and level from the wrong list? For example, when script testing, I selected Bible, level 6. Well, I selected a question from the list for the previous question: Church History, level six. Selecting from the wrong list is a serious error, and it's my bad, not the player's. I also didn't realize the error until after selecting the category and level for the next question. For the test, I tossed the question, but what should I do during a real game?

Additionally, during script testing, I also made the mistake of forgetting it's a bonus question and accept answers from the wrong player. This one is simple. I toss the question, because it was my error.

I will adjust these rules if I come across anything that needs formal rules, but for any mistake not covered, I simply do what I can to make it right, which can take some time.

Also, when testing the bonus round, I came across something I didn't expect. When the player gets to level five, I add time to the clock as an incentive for the players to read the question. Well, I added too much time and got a lot of time on the clock. I ended up letting the clock expire, because it got repetitive and tiring and annoying. It was my best bonus round yet and the first time I actually got to level five; otherwise, I would have noticed this a long time ago.

Added Host Mistakes on Full Rules page.

If I select a question from the wrong list, I will let the player in control decide on whether to toss it or not. It also depends on when I catch the error. If it's during the question, I will play the question out, then that player can decide. If the player decides to toss the question out, I cancel the question and undo all the points and adjust the stats. If no player is in control when the error occurs, I will toss the question unless the majority agree to keep it. Having the rule this way allows me to override ties.
If I accept a correct answer from the wrong player during a bonus question, I will simply toss the question.
If I display a correct answer too soon, I toss the question. If any player gets a correct answer in part one, I will still award points before tossing the question.
If I go to part two of a question when a player got it right in part one, it's a simple adjustment of going back to part one before awarding points.
Finally, if I give credit of who's first to the wrong player, I adjust who got it right first.

During the bonus round and for levels five to eight, I add time equivalent to the pause during the regular game. It's based on word count and in three second increments.
If a player answers a level eight question correctly during the bonus round, the player gets 1,250 points and goes back to level one. (I couldn't decide between 1,000 and 1500.)

29 May 2021

Word scrambles can now be questions. This allows them to appear more. The rules for word scrambles when determining control blend with question rules that allows more than one player to earn the points.
Changed the point values of word scrambles. The point values on average seemed too low, and since they are now going to be questions, this required an adjustment to somewhat match the point values of questions.

The point values regarding letters did not change.
Divide the value by three instead of five and round to the nearest ten.
Add 50 points for each word instead of 25.

Updated and added tables to Example section of Full Rules.
Added clock section to Full Rules that describes the clocks used in the game and when they start and stop.
When integrating word scrambles as questions, all word scrambles under 200 points and over 1,000 stay in the database but marked used, so they won't appear. I didn't remove them to make sure I don't add it again.

9 May 2021 -- First major change in a while. The major change is the point values for puzzles. I wanted to give more points for smaller puzzles, because they are harder to solve. The old way started the value at 6,500 and subtracted 500 for each word in the puzzle with this starting value not dropping below 3,500 points. When I looked at values for different puzzles of various lengths and adding average points per word, I noticed that the smaller puzzles had a higher average. I removed the starting value and subtraction per word and noticed the average points per word was still higher in the smaller puzzles.

Changed the starting value of puzzles to 6,500 with no adjustments based on number of words. That number comes from 250 points for each letter in the alphabet. It was 2,500 with 2,600 feeling awkward.
Increased the value of vowels in puzzles to 1,000 points. The objective is to discourage players from guessing vowels, but I believe players will guess them anyway just to make the puzzles easier. If players only guess vowels when stumped, I'll take that. The number of each vowel is still irrelevant.
This also means that puzzle values will decrease by 250 for each letter guessed and 1,000 when revealing vowels. There's no change to points deducted from player's scores when guessing vowels.
I noticed a discrepancy when calculating puzzle values when manually adding up values for certain puzzles. There was a miscalculation in determining the number of words in a puzzle; however, it doesn't matter now that I removed the adjustment based on number of words.
The next few items deal with the jackpot:

Changed the value added to the jackpot for each unsolved puzzle to 5,000. I believe the odds of this happening are very low. In fact, I don't think that players will want to guess letters until revealing the entire puzzle.
Now, when players get a bonus for time left on the puzzle clock, the jackpot increases by the difference between the full points possible, which is 6,000, and the points earned divided by four. Adding 6,000 points to the jackpot is too much. Furthermore, it's impossible for a player to get the full 6,000 anyway, because a player cannot solve the puzzle until revealing one letter, and players cannot guess a letter until getting a question right.

Finally, the last update deals with the lengths of puzzles and word scrambles:

Word scrambles can no longer go above three words, ignoring articles and most prepositions. Even though the script doesn't scramble between words, the difficulty increases with more words. These are meant to be short, anyway.
The minimum number of words in a puzzle is four, once again ignoring articles and most prepositions. I don't really like short puzzles anyway. This now distinguishes the two. I want puzzles to be long.

Various bug fixes. No matter how much time I spend debugging, I won't get out all of the bugs.
I updated the Works Cited page. I changed links spelled out to links in the title or work published depending on the situation. The file size decreased a lot, and I posted the full version for those that may want to see that.
Expanded connection method number one on the Access page. I generated a link and added that to the page, so users can directly connect to DALnet's network.

13 Nov 2020

Changed system when displaying information. There are times when the script gives out lots of information using one or more lines. This could cause a flood, which could trigger flood protection scripts, which usually ignore the culprit for a short amount of time. I don't want to trigger those protections, so I added delays. The biggest one is displaying information when awarding points for a correct answer to the letter guess prompt or the prompt for the next question.
Fixed an issue when awarding points for revealing the entire puzzle. It wasn't awarding points correctly.
Fixed an issue when a prompt for the next question appeared instead of starting a speed round.
Added more error checking. When script testing, I inadvertently put a nickname that wasn't in the channel. I added code that halts if I enter the wrong nickname.

5 Nov 2020 -- Changed values of correct spelling bonus in questions and bonuses for when puzzle guesses match. The objective is to give points based on words instead of a flat number. Unfortunately, some words have common letters with a large number of vowels but can be just as difficult to spell. The punctuation marks take time to type. Some puzzles have zero, but others may have five or six. I'll experiment with this change.

19 Aug 2020 -- Changed formatting of text for this site, specifically the colors of text and headings. When looking at the site in the browser, I had trouble seeing the text. My apologies to those that couldn't see the text.

21 Jun 2020

I updated the point values of consonants in puzzles to match Scrabble, multiplied by 50.
I changed the graphics and fonts for the site.
Added Table of Contents to Full Rules page.

14 Jun 2020

I went through questions marked not to use for many reasons, especially not having choices. I created choices and resolved all of those questions.
Looking through the HTML code for the Works Cited page, I deleted redundant code to decrease the file size. Actually, it's metadata for displaying when using Zotero, but it looked redundant.
It is time-consuming to move the links to the correct text, but I did a few.

1 Jun 2020 -- On the full rules page, I put some example data into tables to make it look better. It even confused me reading them.

21 May 2020 -- I made changes to the scoring. I want to make all the scoring changes before playing a game, so it doesn't affect past players.

I changed the point values of some letters. Some letters were in the wrong category of how common they are.
When I put an example of scoring a word scramble, I noticed that the calculation was wrong:

It's not necessary to round to the nearest five.
The value of each letter was divided by five, not 10. I changed the rules page to match.

Increased points for matching a puzzle guess to 500.
Increased correct spelling bonus in answers to 350.
Decreased scoring for educated guess questions from one-fifth to one-tenth of the question's point value.
Changed bonus points for choosing a random level. Instead of adding just points, it now adds 25%, which is worth up to 250 points for one correct answer questions.
Added bonus points for choosing a random category of 10%, which is worth up to 100 points for one correct answer questions.
Added bonus points for choosing the random category and level of 40%, which is worth up to 400 points for one correct answer questions. That includes a bonus of 5%.

I felt that a bonus of 50 points for choosing a random level isn't enough, so I changed it to a percentage to encourage it. It also means a better chance at getting the jackpot.

When I updated the rules page this iteration, I got the feeling of too much information. Specifically, I added more examples in the scoring section.

After typing that last paragraph, I got the idea to move the examples to their own section. That way, players that don't care or want to know can just skip it.

18 May 2020 -- I just noticed that the date below said 2010 instead of 2020. Oops.

I spent the last few weeks making tweaks to the script to run more smoothly.

Making sure automation in the next step is smoother.
Reprogrammed the speed round to stop if everyone playing is idle.
If the person in control leaves the channel during a speed round, the script moves on to the next player.
Removed unnecessary and duplicate code.
Fixed bug when adding time during the bonus round for levels above four.
Added warning when players change their nickname. Scores do not change from one nickname to another. This is in case a player has technical difficulties during the game.
The script only says the puzzle has no more consonants once. It annoyed even me when script testing and playing.
During a word scramble, when the script finds a match, it waits for me to verify the player is first before continuing. I added the same function for guessing puzzles.
Added checks to make sure a player is in control before starting a speed round.
Moved bonus question text to display when getting a question instead of after.

I forgot to put that the jackpots start at 5,000 points per player instead of 7,500 and zero previously.
Changed pause times during the game. The pauses allow players to get ready and prevent floods.
To any programmers that are reading this, make sure to delete code that you don't need and not delete code you do. I deleted unused code dealing with the clocks and the code to count them down. I bring this up, because it's funny and to hopefully prevent someone else from doing the same thing. It took me some time to realize this.

19 Jan 2020

At the end of the game, the jackpot goes to the player that solves the final puzzle or to the first player that got the last question right.
Players now get entries to win the jackpot for solving puzzles and word scrambles using a similar formula for questions.

9 Jan 2019

Added feature to add time in the bonus round for levels five to eight. This is to encourage players to read the question and not worry about time.
Increased time clock bonuses after solving the puzzle from 5 and 10 to 10 and 25. Solving the final puzzle with time left on the game clock is very difficult, so the bonus should be bigger.
Jackpots now start with 7,500 points instead of zero.

25 Dec 2019 -- Did a game reset to start anew:

Reset questions asked and adjusted point values if applicable. (Sidebar: Some questions' point values didn't change to prevent the score from going outside its range.)
In response to above change, I removed the rule of point values of questions changing outside their ranges.
Archived statistics by moving the information to the end of the page and resetting the format.

8 Dec 2019

Finished changing point values, most of which got increases. Working six days a week didn't give much time to work on this.
Removed a lot of questions, a few of them duplicates. Specifically, I had questions about temples being in city limits. While it is fascinating, I feel it's not very spiritual and thus removed them.
Added a few multiple choice questions that I missed.
Some questions didn't make sense, so I marked them to look through later.
Made question format consistent. Some questions weren't fully changed to formats I developed after writing the question.

20 Oct 2019

Changing point values of questions. The main reason is to add another point value to level one, so those questions' point values will vary from 50 to 150. Some of those questions are difficult to determine difficulty. Of course, I adjusted the other levels. I'm going to adjust the points for all the questions, a process that may take a while.
I got the kinks out of the scores displaying when earning points. When awarding points for answering questions, points won't display until the end to avoid confusion. Only the players that earned points will see their scores.

16 Sep 2019

Added Scriptures category. This category includes Bible, Book of Mormon, Old Testament, New Testament questions, but it allows questions with the answer coming from the scriptures.
Point values of puzzles now display with the puzzle. I'm hoping that seeing its value will help players strategize ways to get more points for puzzles.
There's a slight change in the puzzle scoring:

Puzzle values start at 2,500, plus 4,000, and minus 500 for each word but not to go below 3,500 points. The 2,500 represents each letter in the alphabet. Well, almost every letter. 2,500 looks better than 2,600 regarding point values. The probability of guessing every single letter is very low.
Each guessed letter subtracts 100 points, whether it is in the puzzle or not.

I forget that players of most trivia games see their scores when they get a question right, so I'm programming the script to show player's scores privately at certain times, but that hasn't fully been implemented to my liking.
When displaying player's scores in channel, I changed the format to display everyone's scores on one line and put number of correct answers and percent correct in parenthesis.

10 Jul 2019

Stored sources in Zotero reference software to auto generate a reference list. It has its flaws, like not placing the link in the title, but it's much better than doing it manually. I can now track which sources I use and ones that are waiting for me to write questions.

6 Jan 2019 -- First update of the new year.

Added code to have the script match answers for the word scramble without using a command. After finding a match, the host programmed the script to verify that the person was first, so the host can give control to the correct person. There's a possibility of two players scoring points for the word or phrase.
The !guess and !pick commands are now optional. It even works on the wrong command, so if a player types !guess instead of !pick, the script will accept it anyway. The !puz command changed to the player(s) not in control do not need to use the !puz command. If that is confusing, just use the !puz command regardless of who is in control.

30 Dec 2018 -- Last update of the year:

Added Works Cited page. The objective is to give more details for sources shown in answers. Entries added, changed, and removed from the Works Cited section will not show up here.
Moved Question Formatting and Reusing sections to Works Cited page.

27 Dec 2018 -- Updated instructions for Apple users along with other corrections on that page. I was able to test their use during Christmas. (Thanks goes to the in-laws for allowing me to test it.)

20 Dec 2018 -- Made some changes to the script:

Changed some code when adding scores and processing jackpot entries for multiple players.
Added code to stop the clock and tell me when every player submits an answer in the first part of a question.
Changed the way scores are displayed at the end of each round. Three lines will appear with points, questions right, and percent correct for each player. Unfortunately, it's not known how to sort based on score.
Added two bonuses. When the script prompts a player to choose the next category and level, any player that has a 13 or a 666 in their score will get a bonus. There are two reasons for this: One, it can be difficult. Two, 13 is a good number. I'm not sure if this bonus has superstitious origins. I want it to be humorous, but I don't know how many will see it that way.

2 Dec 2018 -- Added ability to accept answers to pre-game questions and award points for correct answers. As of this writing, no one is on the notify list to get the pre-game questions, but they are sent out most of the time. (Shh! Don't tell anyone.)

23 Nov 2018

Added pre-game sections in the rules section. Subscribers to the notify list will now get three questions to answer before the official start of the game.
Corrected errors found in the website.

23 Sep 2018

Removed when the next game occurs from the main page of the site. Sometimes, I forget to update it. For right now, I announce games in two locations and hope to get e-mail subscribers to announce times only there, but it's early.
I made changes to the text that are too numerous to list and can't remember.

29 Aug 2018

Went through site and made edits to the text. One link on all pages wasn't displaying properly, so I fixed that. I hope visitors can go to the Sound Files page now.
I've worked on the script and fixed some errors that I noticed, including the individual winning streak bonuses.
Some text in the script added delays to avoid flooding.
Changed some text in the script for consistency.

15 Aug 2018 -- Added information on how to connect to the game through iPhone or iPad.

12 Aug 2018 -- Made some corrections to the script based on errors from game on Thursday.

21 Jul 18 -- Made some script changes after the game. Things weren't working correctly.

Added swearing detector to enforce no swearing rules. Some words get a warning; other words get an immediate timed ban where the player can't talk until the ban ends.
Added commands to enforce no swearing rules manually. Some words aren't in the swear word detector. For example, most of the time when people use God's name, it's not in vain, but the swear word detector can't tell the difference. (By the way, using God's name in vain in any form gets an immediate ban.)

15 Jul 18 -- Three major changes:

Changed formula for winning the jackpot. Still won't list it here.
If playing with two people, the winning streak formula changed to add 50 points. It's a little more difficult with more than one player.
When a player gets a correct answer in the second half, the other half of the points go to the jackpot.
More script fixes.

14 Jul 18 -- Updated e-mail links to new e-mail address specifically for this site. I'm hoping to add a mailing list script to automate it for me.

12 Jul 18 -- This is the initial posting of this site. The game has been in the works for about a year and a half. Some major changes have occurred since the last game about 18, 19 years ago. I'll start with the changes made within the last month:

I added a winning streak record. Breaking the record gets bonus points; however, earn more points when breaking the record fewer times. The record bonus is for each game, not overall.
I added more stat tracking. The script now tracks the number of questions asked, the number of those questions were correct, the percentage correct, and the average point value for each question. Individually, the script tracks each players' number of correct answers and calculates the percentage correct.
Added more opportunities to add points to the jackpot, which is mostly points not picked up by players, including missed word scrambles and puzzles.
Added a pause based on question's length after asking a question to allow players time to read them. That's one of the most important aspects of the game. Some questions are so large that they would take most of the time allotted just to read them.
One change is to further automate events in the game. When starting to work on the script about a year ago, automated events occurred, like having the letter guess prompt appear automatically. The objective is to speed the game up. There are pauses before the next event, but those pauses are there to help players prepare and prevent flooding.
Of course, more script testing.

That's all I can think of changing in the last month, so I'll go through changes made since the last game about 18, 19 years ago.

I added a jackpot. The only time points go to it were from missed questions. I added the algorithm on how to award the jackpot. That is a secret.
Various script changes that are too numerous to mention. Most of them are the updating of the score window that displays more information. (I have two custom windows that show the game clocks and each players' score.) I did some script testing to find bugs in the script, but I don't think I found them all. I hope the bug doesn't cause a problem that affects the game.
I cut point values by five for educated guess questions. I wanted to reward players for getting the question correct.
I'm going to talk about features removed from the game when starting this reboot:

I removed the secret letter and the corresponding jackpot. The secret letter just gave extra points to the player that chose it. The jackpot, however, was hard to get. It was done by guessing a particular letter in a puzzle and then solving the puzzle in a specified time. Players would end up choosing that letter too early and thus not get the jackpot.
I removed all penalties. I had it set up that the script would track penalties and take points off based on the number of penalties, which caused double penalties. I became obsessed over them, so I don't want that to happen again. The main penalty I took out was an illegal guessing pattern. I would look for patterns in players' guessing and disqualify them from the question if I found one. Well, I found patterns that players weren't making, which lost my players, and I don't want that to happen again. Guessing vowels in the puzzle is the only time points decrease, and that's not a penalty.
I removed something I called Question Points. When players did something in the game, players earn these points. Most of it is just answering questions. Players could then convert those questions points into regular points. The objective is to give players a chance to catch up. It didn't work.
I removed double points. At the 15-minute mark on the game clock, the points for the rest of the game would double. The objective was to give players a chance to catch up. It, too, didn't work.
I removed puzzle round and question round. Two rounds were special where the entire round is solving puzzles or answering questions. I don't want to focus on just questions and puzzles.
I removed two features that I may bring back down the road:

Brain Speed Test -- A question or category that has more than three correct answers. Players would rack their brains for 20 seconds just typing up answers. When the first buzzer sounded, players get an additional five seconds to allow players a chance to press the enter key and submit their answers. Correct answers got points.
Triple Church Mystery -- This is the original title, although it changed to something I don't remember. The host chooses someone or something with three clues given in the form of puzzles. After each solved puzzle, players got an opportunity to guess. Players got points when correct, but the point value decreased with each clue given.

Finally, I'll go over features I added or changed:

I added Educated Guess questions. Its purpose was to prevent players from throwing out guesses and my trying to find patterns. This also allows players to get points for not knowing the correct answer. Of course, some players may know the answer, but they're labeled that for this reason.
The main thing I changed is how players answered questions. Originally, questions asked were free for all with two parts. Players can post as many answers as possible before the buzzer. Each player that posted the correct answer got points with the first player getting double and a letter guess. For two answer or multiple choice questions, this allowed players an opportunity to guess each choice. A rule was added to stop that. In the end, it got more confusing than it needed to be.
The point values changed for the questions. Instead of point values, I thought of levels. There were already questions that required two or three correct answers, but adding the levels added the opportunity to increase the time given for these questions. Further, I could create a point system based on those levels and perceived level of difficulty.
The puzzle updater, word scramble, and control pick got a rewrite.
Finally, I removed a three-in-a-row limit on picking. If a player picks the same category and level three times in-a-row (excluding random), I would award the player points, take control, and then do word scramble to see who would get it and ignore that player's answers. Because I added levels, I felt this was no longer necessary. I put it in there, so I wouldn't run out of questions at that point value.

Background picture from BoxedArt.
Line and banner graphics obtained from Celine's Original GIF's. (The link no longer works.)

Game format and questions written by me are copyright 2017-2022 by Jeremy Adderley. Feel free to use the game's format and questions as long as no money exchanges hands. Please give credit. Questions written by others are properly credited in the answers. Please send an e-mail to request permission and/or make payment(s) for their use when it involves money.

So far, I wrote most of the questions, so I'm adding a disclaimer that I do not talk about the questions with anyone that I feel may end up playing the game, especially my wife. This is so they can play, and other players don't feel those people have an edge over them.

There are two mailing lists: newsletter and notify. They're separate just in case a person only wants one. The newsletter contains a summary of the game, including scores of everyone who played, corrections to scores, updates to the game, and even high score lists. The notify list announces the time for the next game; however, the most important aspect is asking three random questions the day before the game session. Answering these three questions before the game officially starts will earn points. The three random questions will only appear in the notify list.

There is a page on Facebook about the game, and I post when the next game will be and updates to the site/game.

The only purpose for collecting email addresses is for sending newsletters and announcements for the next game. They are not sold in any form. Any real names collected will not appear on this site, unless they contributed something that deserves credit.

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