Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 21:47:19 GMT
Server: NCSA/1.5
Content-type: text/html
Last-modified: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 16:13:13 GMT
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Quince Testing Ground
Quince - the Internet's Ultimate Wordgame
[Beta Testers]
[Known Problems]
[Rules of the Game]
Welcome Quince Beta Testers!
This is a work in progress. Some features are obviously not
implemented yet. Most notably, I haven't written the Quince server;
so what you see is just a dumb front-end. Please mail me if you find any bugs or have
constructive criticism of any kind (other than to get a life!).
Thanks for your feedback,
Ben.
Beta-Testers Hall of Fame
The following folks have either found bugs or made helpful suggestions leading to improvements in the game:
Daniel Prince, Chris Lukas, Felix Teitelbaum
These Quince heros will be credited on the "About" screen in the final version.
Known Problems
Netscape 3.0 for Unix
- Deletion from the word list is broken.
Explorer 3.0 for Win95
- There seem to be occasional white stripes across the board and the
timer -- they're covered by the board/timer, but they show just a little
at the sides. Hard to describe... I couldn't figure out a pattern to
when they appear and disappear. -Dan Prince
Rules of the Game
- Goal: find as many words on the board as you can in three minutes.
- Valid words consist of a sequence of neighboring tiles from the board.
- The neighbors of a tile are the tiles bordering it in all directions - vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.
- A tile may not be re-used in spelling a word.
- Words must be four letters or longer.
- If playing Euclidian, edge tiles have fewer than eight neighbors.
- If playing non-Euclidian, the neighbors of an edge tile are considered to "wrap around" the board.
Entering Words
- Enter words either by dragging them out on the board or typing
them into the text box below the board.
- Erroneously entered words can be deleted from the word list by selecting the mistake and pressing Delete or Backspace.
- When dragging out a word, you can back up by dragging over the tile just before the tail of your selection.
- When dragging out a word, wou can press and hold the Shift key to disable selection; this is useful when selecting wrapped words in Non-Euclidian mode.
- Clicking on the word list to the right of the screen displays the word on the board.
- Clicking on the buttons beneath the board has the following effects:
- "<" - rotates the board counter-clockwise
- "-" - flips the board vertically
- ">" - rotates the board clockwise
Sequence of Play
- When you first enter Quince, a dialog box appears asking you to provide a name for yourself and select a language (English only at first).
- Browse the channels of the Quince server with the channel selector.
- When you find a game that you what to join, click on the "Join" button.
- When that game enters a new round, you can begin playing.
- At the conclusion of a round, a window will appear that shows:
- The words found by each player not found by any other player.
- All the words found by the Quince server.
- Words found by a player, but not by any other player or by the Quince server are flagged as questionable.
- Point summaries for all players.
- You have 30 seconds to review the results of a round before the next round begins.
Scoring
- Points are only awarded for words that you find that no other player found.
- 1 point for a four-letter word
- 2 points for a five-letter word
- 3 points for a six-letter word
- etc...