The 1.1 update of IsoWords has been out for over a week, and over 25,000 games and words have been submitted to the leaderboards. Up until this point I was used to dominating all my friends at this game, but now I see I am barely hanging onto the top (btw, if we aren’t friends on Facebook or Twitter then my scores will show up under “mbrandonw”).

Words

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For those who haven’t played IsoWords yet, the score of a word is determined by both the rarity of the letters used and the length. Every letter is given a point value just like in scrabble (A=1 pt, B=3 pts, etc). So to get the score of a word I first add up the points for each letter, and then I multiply by the length of the word minus 2. I subtract 2 so that 3 letter word does not get multiplied at all, a 4 letter word gets multiplied by 2, and so on.

The highest scoring word leaderboard is pretty much the only leaderboard for which I am at the top. My QUIZZER and MINERALIZE finds are just barely hanging onto the #1 and #2 spots. I also hold 5 of the other top 40 word scores, including QUANTIZE, QUARTZY (of which I didn’t actually know was a word until I tried submitting it) and SQUABBLE. However, someone who goes by the handle “danisse” is the most prominent in this leaderboard with 12 of the top 40 words belonging to him/her. Also, so many high scoring words have been submitted that it takes at least a 120 point word to break into the top 40 all time leaderboard.

In the Spanish version of IsoWords, also known as IsoWords.es, there have been over 2,000 words submitted, and there is currently a 3 way tie for #1: CARROCEROS, AQUEJARAS and RAZONABLE. More amazing to me is the 11 letter word that Carlos Sánchez found, DESCANSARAS, even though it was only worth 126 points.

Games

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My favorite game type in IsoWords is free play. It can be soothing to sit down with a puzzle for 30 minutes or longer, trying to piece together every prefix, suffix and root word you can find for long words. Before releasing the 1.1 update for IsoWords I had never broken the 900 point barrier. So, imagine my dismay when I saw the free play leaderboard on the right. 1,120 points?! Incroyable! This “danisse” person is just freakin’ awesome…

Daily Challenge

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I had some reservations about implementing the daily challenge feature. My fear was that it would not be used very much, making it a creepy, isolated place where you get 1st place just if you participate for that day. However, people are using it. In fact, somewhere between 40 and 50 people play it everyday, which is a lot considering the relatively small number of people who participate in the leaderboards.

I’ve taken the 1st place spot in 2 of the daily challenges, both of which just barely nudged “danisse” out of the top spot. So, in the end I am glad I took the time to implement this, and I hope it becomes more popular as IsoWords gets more players.