I don't know about anyone else but I'm over it!

I'm over all the so called "professionals" with their lists of words who constantly win the crystal ball.

They have guessed 200, 300, 400 and even over 500 words each! Don't anyone of you tell me you don't have a bloody list of words to choose from. Hope you're feeling great you true sporting people!

Then there are us who have hardly made it into double figures, and who play by actually trying to guess a word?

This game really needs looking into! I've had people on my team asking "why bother." Some have actually asked "why bother being a gold member?"

The last time I mentioned this concern it ended up becoming a thread about who googles and who doesn't. So let's put that aside! Let's get crystal ball right instead.

Oh! By the way HurricaneBill, hope you have all the right words on your list! We don't want you to miss any do we?

Like you, I hope that the thread can stay on topic this time and not get hi-jacked.

I must be perilously close to being on your list of 'professionals' with over 150 wins, but I can assure you that the only list of words I have available is just as accessible to you. It's called a dictionary (the Oxford Concise Dictionary, if you're interested).

My chances of winning an hourly game are no higher than yours, though, and I don't understand what it is that you want sorted out. The more guesses that are made, the more words there are eliminated which narrows the remaining options. Taking out players after they've won a certain number of times may even reduce your chances of winning rather than increase them. I have only played regularly for about 13 months, and assume that the leading players have been taking part much longer to amass their wins.

The last ten winners consist of nine different names, with only one person winning twice (not the person with most wins as it happens). Two of the winning words I would never have guessed - trazodone and aciculate, neither of which appears in my dictionary, and no-one guessed one of these. I wouldn't have guessed pediatrician either, because that's not how I would spell it. It's really mostly a matter of luck.

I feel your singling out and naming of one particular person is unfair. No matter how many wins you have, it is still a thrill to see those green letters saying 'Correct!!'.

The only suggestion I can make is to play Word Wizard regularly too, if you don't do so already, as it seems that the same dictionary is used in both games.

I have won 3 times in the past 15 hours or so. I now have 109 wins in Crystal Ball. As you can see by my winning words, I am not using words of any great significance. Those words have been pudge, taupe and triple. I truly enjoy playing the game and as Rossian stated, I also enjoy seeing that my word was the Correct!!!!!!!!! one.

I do not use Google to find words and actually was offline for a good portion of last year due to computer issues. I am truly impressed by the player you mentioned and feel that singling him out is not right as well. You need to keep at it and the words will come to you. I personally do not play Word Wizard, but I do see where that game and Mind Melt would help increase one's vocabulary.

The Crystal Ball and both the badges associated with it are open to all members. Hence I don't see why any decision on whether to be a Gold Member or not should be taken based on this particular game.

I have only four wins. I get limited time for FT and prefer spending it on other stuff that the site has to offer. Others have already pointed out that having more people play helps as more incorrect guesses help in the process of elimination. The people who cheated on this game have already had their accounts banned by Terry. Some players just happen to be good at this game and enjoy playing it. That's no reason for them to be spoken to like that over here or anywhere else for that matter.

In my opinion trying to beat the best players is far more entertaining than whining about them in the forums.

My guess would be that the players who invest the most time and effort into this game gain the most victories. Hats off to them.

Some people do a ton (tonne?) of crosswords and have built tharselfs a mighty heap of a vocabularemy. Someday I howp two get me one to.

Well done on your wins, Iceman - you beat me to 'triple' by a nanosecond! Clusters of wins do come sometimes, greatly outweighed by the much longer clusters of failures.

Thanks Rossian! I know there is no worse feeling than seeing that someone else won and it was the word that you had just finished typing. Maybe worse is being one of the cluster who picked the same word as you and the fact that you picked the word first.

I think the worst feeling is guessing something like 'latinize' and deciding not to waste another guess on the alternative spelling of 'latinise' only to discover that the chosen word is exactly that. I have been known to let a groan of despair pass my lips on occasions like that. It really is a matter of chance and sometimes luck is on your side, but mostly it isn't.

I think the term is dumb luck. I learned alternate spellings with my very first word. I saw that Favour had been used and went with favor. I have won at least twice with licence instead of license.

I used to be frustrated when the same people kept winning over and over. However, it really is just a case of playing yourself. You can use a dictionary list if you want, but I think you'll find that the word can be relatively simple like "tack" - does the player with the dictionary have much of an advantage then? I think not. I hadn't played the Crystal Ball that much recently, but as I'm concentrating on hourlies this month, I've been playing the Crystal Ball whenever I can too, as has my sister. We've both managed to amass about a fifth of our total wins in this month alone, simply because we've been playing often.

Instead of being bitter about this, have a proper think about it and see if you can find a possible explanation as to how someone can be cheating? I recently got three correct words in a row that was a complete fluke and surprised me as much as the next person. Did I cheat? Certainly not. How could I? Obviously players like HurricaneBill play much more often than you do, and with my current trends for the month, it seems I would amass hundreds of words over several months too. I can't believe you'd single him out and accuse him of God knows what just because you can't get a word! Different people have different strategies, such as using their five guesses as soon as possible, while others like me wait until the :55 mark, with the risk that the word will be discovered by then.

The way I've come to look at it is that there are only two important outcomes for the Crystal Ball game as far as I'm concerned: (1) I win. (2) I don't win. In situation (2), whether it's HurricaneBill every time or a different player doesn't matter. I still don't get the win.

I couldn't agree more with this. If I could, I'd Facebook "like" it!

I don't have much time to play this game, and I don't have double digit wins, but I still enjoy playing when I can and love seeing that green check mark. When the "Who's the Smartest" is a topic I'm terrible at, I don't play, but I don't begrudge those who are good at it their shot at playing and winning. There is so much available here, play what makes you happy.

Yep I'm having a whinge, which is my right unless some new rules have been brought in that say I can't.

I don't care how many people say that I whinge or carry on about this game, something needs to be done about it.

Don't bother looking this word up in your dictionary I've supplied it for you:

whinge: To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.

And I'm whinging that something needs to be done!

Wow! HurricaneBill won how many today? Look it up!

This game surely needs to be addressed.

Some go to Peewee's Playhouse and ask Jambi what the word will be but Jambi just says to ask Conkey who always knows the secret word. AHHH SCREAM, Secret is the secret word AHHH. SCREAM. Wasn't Hurricane Bill a character in the Playhouse cast?

Bubbatom, there is nothing wrong with the game. I'm sorry to say this, but getting mad because you don't win every game isn't going to change it. I've tried to win one, and am at zero; I don't even have the badge. From now until :45, we all have equal chance to win, and we all get one, and only one guess. How is that unfair? After that, we all get five additional chances, provided the word isn't guessed by then.

There are words that don't even get called out. Look at the word in the 10pm hour last night; it was skipped over as no one got it. We all had sixty minutes to get it.

There is a bit of strategy to this game and while I have mostly figured it out, I didn't really find the motivation to apply it consistently as it requires building your daily time schedule around the game which I don't like.

To the strategy: You cannot guarantee a win in Crystal Ball, but you can optimize your chances. In the first 45 minutes, you don't have many options - you get one guess. All you can do is not use the first word that comes to mind but try to think of a more obscure one in the hopes of being the only one to use the word, so when you DO have the right one, you win outright instead of having a 1 in 3, 1 in 5 or worse chance.

After the first 45, it gets more interesting - you get additional information bit by bit which narrows down your guessing space, thus decreasing the denominator of your "5 in X" chance and making a correct guess more likely. However, on the other hand, other players will guess and chances are they'll get it first. So once you realize this, you'll want to strike when the probability to guess right starts is higher than that of the game making it to the next info bit (there is never an advantage from waiting within one level - you either guess or wait for the next one).

For that strategy, you'll of course need to know or estimate just how many possible words are left for the known clues and guess list given and you need to be able to come up with five fitting words. Some players may do these two tasks with a dictionary or word list, others from their head. It's just like with googling - it's not what we want to happen but since we can't prove it, we can't forbid it.

With perfect timing and strategy, you can probably pull a lot of wins unless others in the field use the same tactics. I've personally decided that, after a few experiments and having the luck of blowing 50%+ chances, I'd not burden down my day with up to 14 minute "reload, reload" sessons and planning. I finally won the game once on a bunch of random guesses made just after the 15 minute mark, without any strategy and since then only occasionally send in a handful of random, non-strategic tries.

I suppose I'm what would be classed an 'average' overall player, not brilliant, but not bad. Some games I'm better at than others, but on the whole, when looking at all the hourly and daily games, the number of times I've actually won can be counted on the fingers of an average mitten. In Word Wizard, for instance where I am actually better than average, a certain Mr dsimpy wins on a more than regular basis (god alone knows how many times he's won, but its LOTS). Am I jealous? Well, yes, I am a bit; but I respect his ability and wouldn't for a moment expect him not to play because he's won too many times. As regards the Crystal ball, I've won 41 times, so in actual fact, when related to all the other games, it's the easiest of the lot! So just because one or more players have won it loads more times isn't an issue. Perhaps if I really wanted to do better, I'd use a list or dictionary, the option is always there to apply yourself to increase your chances of winning, which others have obviously done, and good luck to them I say.

I am truly impressed by Surdoux's mitten being 41 digits and all.

(It was on special offer)

From the :00 mark, we all have the same chance. Strategy is important, yes; it's better, in my experience, to keep the five bonus guesses until the :55 mark, where we are ALL given the third letter to the word. But strategy does not always work. The same goes with dictionary vs. no dictionary - you have to consider the fact that some people's vocabulary is simply more vast than others. And vast vocabulary aside, often the word is a simple one.

It's the luck of the draw, and the nature of the game has never implied that every player would sit in the rankings in a uniform fashion, all of us with more or less an equal number of wins. I've won 13 words in the month of February alone - this is a large proportion of my wins as a whole (52, I think it is). There's no 'skill' involved, per se - I just got lucky this month. There really is no way to cheat on this game, notwithstanding having multiple accounts (and that player was dealt with a while ago now). It's a case of 'whoever wins the word gets lucky', and no one said it would be easy even to win one word. I know I spent a long time guessing before I won even once.

What exactly needs to be "done" with the game? Do you propose some solution? Banning high-ranking players from guessing? I'm at a loss here trying to imagine what exactly you mean by "something needs to be done". Sometimes some players are better (and in this case, 'better' refers not to skill, but luck) at certain games than others: c'est la vie.

Same as Dave above, I've won three of four times, and if I win, added bonus.

The fact that HurricaneBill won at least three times yesterday means that he played the game a lot yesterday. If you played any game a lot, I`m sure you would do well a few times.

Plus if you notice, many people with 100+ wins win their matches after :50 past the hour. That is when they have a list of words guessed incorrect, as well as clues to help them. That is why they win these games, because they are dedicated to it.

Bubbatom, you keep saying that something needs to be done, so what do you want to see?

Speaking as a person with one win to his name, will admit can be a little bit depressing not having more but does it stop me trying, no it does not. I tend to bung in one guess and leave it at that but thats how i play it. Just because so and so has so many wins to there credit should they stop playing a game they are doing well in or be stopped from taking part, no as many players do well in certain games ie expert, easy and hard. Can you imagine the uproar if people was stopped playing the expert once they got their century win. Plus when you do get the win over the better players it's a legal high if it only lasts for an hour before i'm back amongst the average folks.

Maybe a runner up mini badge (wooden spoon) for those who guessed the right word but didnt get the outright win. Only had that happen a couple a times since the game started.

Quick question, do you only get the 1000 points for the first win only or do you get the points for every win?

Every win gets you 1000 points.

Thanks Iceman61

Now can understand why those players keep on playing it then, dont have problem with them getting the points and fair play to them if they do. One way could be to cap the points at a certain level say 100,250, 500 or a 1000 wins (Like the buzzy bee is capped at 10 wins going of the top of my head) so you still get the win but not the points.

Like i said i dont have a problem with the people play this game or how many wins they have, i'm just chuffed with me single win and preparing to streak round the garden if i every manage the 25 wins. Can hear the sighs of relief from my neighbours that Terry set the bar that high so they dont have to see that sight

Early Bird is set at 10 wins, not the Buzzy Bee. You can win Buzzy Bee as much as you want, but can't get any points for it.

Like i said it was of the top of my head, knew it was one of them took a punt with the bee.

If anyone is good at a game and discover that bubbatom isn't, I'd urge them to please stop playing - the man obviously needs help!

I'm with others here: what exactly would you like to see "done about it", Lesley (bubbatom1)?