- After you start or join a game, you'll get a "Waiting for the game to
start" page. Type your message in the box next to the Check Time
button then press the button. You can also chat after the game, on the
results page.
- Just send the message subscribe jumbalaya to
majordomo@netfrolic.com
- Try the "Check Results / Chat" button. Results are updated as players
submit their lists of words they found, and pressing that button will
get you a fresh copy.
- If you found a word that the computer didn't recognize, check the
Merriam Webster
site and see if it recognizes your word - if so (and it's not
capitalized), send us a note.
You can also send us a note if the computer got credit for a word
you're sure isn't actually a word (look it up in the MW dictionary
to check). Note that proper nouns
aren't valid in the game, and aren't in the dictionary for that
reason.
- You can keep their chat from showing up on your screen by using the
"block" command. Just type /block badhandle into the chat box. To
unblock them, type /unblock badhandle. To see who you're
currently blocking, type /blocks.
- Seems to happen to Windows machines, and might be
related to client-pull messages (which cause your browser to go grab the
warning telling you to go Back and do something).
keefer reports that Windows browsers leak resources when
handling forms, and suggests that you check your Resource Meter (win95).
When your system resources dip below 20%, restart your browser.
recordman and Hockey_Freak report that using your Back
button after a game to get back to the games page (rather than using the
button bar) helps. Also, if you're using MSIE 3, upgrading to MSIE 4 may
help.
A report from recordman: If at the end of each game, you
return to the start page via Jumbalaya in your favorites menu you should
have no problems with crashing. I, along with Ratamacue have been
doing this for months now and have had no problems since. We both used
to crash constantly before doing this.
A newer (12/02/98) report from recordman for those running MSIE
under Windows: Hi gang, I notice quite a few people are still crashing
and I assume they are using MSIE with Windows. I found a much easier
way to avoid this. I have Jumbalaya as my home or start up page and at
the end of each game instead of following the links provided I simply
click on "HOME" to get back. I have been doing this for the better
part of a year and have not crashed once. Hope this might be of some
help.
The use of warnings is optional. They're on by default for taking you
from the "Waiting" page to the game, but you can turn them off by
updating your handle info.
- They hopefully represent how strong a game you played apart from
the actual score you got, and is the formula we're using to handicap
the computer when you play against it. So a ranking of 5 is saying
that you played as the computer would have played if you had it
play at level 5. It takes into account the # of words appearing in
the grid, how long the game was and the length of the words that
you found.
For those who just have to know, here's the formula. Don't say we didn't warn
you.
Rank is figured separately for each length of word in the grid, then they're
summed (in a pro-rated way, so if 5-letter words are 30% of the words, that
ranking is 30% of the total ranking).
N = number words of that length in the grid
D = duration of game in minutes
L = word length
P = percentage of words of that length player found
Rank = 4.95 + (P - (74.6 / (N + 185)) + (.05 * (L - 5)) - (.05 * (D - 5))) / .0516
- It's either
- A new item on the Starbucks menu, or
- Lamborghini's low-end commuter car, or
- A mathematical sequence in which the next number is the sum of the
previous two: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 ...
- Just go to the update form.
- Client-pull is a way for the server to tell your browser "ask for this
page in a little while". To see if it works, go to the
client-pull test page. If it works,
you can use warnings.
- The timer is an animated GIF. To see if your browser can handle those,
go to the timer test page. If it can, you
can use the timer when you play.
- Some users have reported a problem with the timer working a few times but
then no longer counting down, or just counting down part way and getting
stuck. It seems to happen mostly with Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE),
so the best fix is actually to switch to Netscape. MSIE does things kind
of strange that we've seen cause various problems for users, and in our
opinion Netscape is a better browser in general, and certainly causes
fewer problems for our users.
If you don't want to switch, there are some options in your browser
you can try changing that
might help - under the "View" menu item, go to "Options" then "Advanced" then
under "Temporary Internet Files" select "Settings" and on that page see
what your setting for "Check for Newer Versions" is. If it isn't
"Every Visit to the Page", go ahead and switch to that, and try
whatever you were having problems with again.
If you've got MSIE 4.0 and can no longer get to some pages (for example, this
one), you may need to turn off the use of HTTP/1.1 in
View/Internet Options/Advanced, and then restart Windows.
- Leonard Kaufer has written
plans for building a 6-by-6 board. Check it out!
- This appears to happen most often with Netscape 6.2. Check the cache
settings and make sure that it is set to check the URL every time.
The vendors usually set that to "Once per session" and then you get the image
from your local disk cache and not from the server.
How do I chat?