Yahoo Games Unwritten Scoring Rules

Spelldown

I don't know why there is a range of high scores that awards no bonus time, but the pattern is clear. The most bonus time I have gotten for a single word is a 24-point 5-letter word for 50 seconds. The strategy in this one is mainly to play quickly, but also when you can, try to get the 3.5-4x and 4.5x+ time awards and avoid losing a big time award by playing words that fall in this gap. So you want 11 or 14+ for 3 letter words, 14-15 or 18+ for 4 letter words, and 18-19 and 23+ for 5 letter words. This is most important on the sets of three 3 letter words where it is sometimes possible to get 2 or 3 large bonus-time awards in one play.

In addition, you get bonus points for playing rare words: 10 for a word not played in the last hour, 50 for a word not played in the last day, and 150 for a word not played in the last week. This is tracked by some sort of background process so sometimes lags behind your play; sometimes you will get a backlog of a bunch of these bonus points together. Although this can be worth a lot, it doesn't seem very useful to go for them; I limit my rare-word-tries to trying to play non-plurals and words with combinations of uncommon letters and repeated letters.

It appears that the initial letter groups are assigned by taking word(s) to fill the blanks and adding three more letters, so it is always possible to fill the spaces without exchanging letters, though sometimes there is only one play.

Bounce Out

WhatWord

Word Mojo

The basic strategy in this one is to try to plan your words in the main round so you get 6 letters on the colored squares that allow you to form a 6-letter word in the final round. This is easy at first and tougher later as the positions of the colored squares and the letter distribution get tougher to work with. Failing this, try to maximize your score within the round to make the target score so you can continue.

Note that you can only form 3 to 6 letter words; longer ones are disallowed, and no 2-letter words count. This prevents the parallel plays that would otherwise be ultra-powerful in this game, but you can still make some interesting meshes sometimes. Also note that the game instantly verifies all correct words by flashing them in white, and the score updates immediately corresponding to whatever you currently have on the board, so you can 

Words score their sum of letter values, with vowels worth 10, easy consonants worth 20, and tougher consonants worth 30 to 50. A 6-letter word scores a 100-point bonus. If you play all 7 letters from a word set, to form any number of words, you get a 50-point bonus. Note that you re-score the points from words already on the board if you extend them in later letter sets; hooks are a good way to build up points.

In the Mega Mojo round, you try to form the longest single word you can from the letters you placed on the 6 colored squares during the main round. You score a multiple of the value of this word based on its length: 3-letters: 1x, 4 letters: 2x, 5 letters: 3x, 6 letters: 10x. The 10x bonus can be worth about 1000 points for the typical word, which is enough (combined with the most minimal main round play imaginable) to reach the target score for the round. You can hit the panic button in the Mega Mojo round to get half credit for the longest possible word; this seems mostly useful if you need more points to advance than you can get from a 5 letter word, but can't find a way to use all 6 letters. If you form a correct 6-letter Mega Mojo the round immediately ends without you submitting the word.

The target score is 570 for the first round, but increases as you play. The target score is always determined by adding some amount to your previous score; unlike some games, you cannot build up cheap points early to bank toward the goals for later, tougher rounds. In the first game I was tracking it, I reached a target score for the round of about 1300 by round 16. And I find that the target score is partly dependent on your past performance, so if you score 2300 points in the first round, you will find yourself already in the neighborhood of 1200 points to advance starting in round 2, while if you just barely make the total, it will stay in the 600s to advance for a long time. It may be based on your per-round score average, so one strategy may be to intentionally tank on some (or all?) rounds, just barely beating the target score, to reduce your average.

Bookworm

The only way to lose this game is by letting a red-hot letter sit on the bottom of the grid for one turn without being used. This is easy to avoid for a long, long time, although you may run into crisis mode at times where you have so many red letters you are spending every turn removing them. You can recover. The game is untimed, so spend as long as you want finding the plays you need to save yourself, or looking for that optimal play. Over the course of an evening I reached 1.75 million points at level 17 and was still going. I carried this on the next day to 2.77 million at level 22 before I quit.

Words score 10 x length x (sum of letter values + level number).

So, for instance, at level 1, SEA (1+1+1) scores 10 x 3 x 4 = 120, SIRE (1+1+2+1) scores 10 x 4 x 6 = 240, JIB (8+1+4) scores 10 x 3 x 14 = 420, etc. Note that the QU tile counts as 2 letters for length and scores as 7 for the Q and 2 for the U, even though it only shows 7 on the tile. QUA (7[+2]+1) scores 10 x 3 x 11 = 330; QUAY (7[+2]+1+6) scores 10 x 4 x 17 = 680.

Green letters add 2 to the length multiplier. So UMP at level 2 with a green letter scores 10 x (length) 5 x 12 = 600.

Gold letters add 4 to the length multiplier. So TAU (2+1+2) at level 1 with a gold letter scores 10 x (length) 7 x 6 = 420, DUO (3+2+1) scores 10 x (length) 7 x 7 = 490. BAUD (4+1+2+3) scores 10 x 8 x 11 = 880. AUDIO (1+2+3+1+1) scores 10 x 9 x 9 = 810.

Red letters do not affect the value of a word in any way different from any normal letter. A red letter that is not played will dissolve the letter beneath it, unless that letter is played or is a gold bonus tile or another red letter. A gold bonus tile will still be dissolved after a few rounds of a red letter sitting above it.

At the start of the game, a gold letter is awarded for the first play of 5 letters or more, and red letters are given periodically for 3-letter plays. As you progress in levels this gets tougher; gold letters are awarded only occasionally for 5-letter plays (and rarely for 4-letter plays) but most times for 6-letters on up; red letters are given sometimes for 4-letter plays and perhaps on two successive turns after a 3-letter play, and still later even more randomly. Green letters are awarded randomly, but apparently not starting until level 2.

In the web version, the dictionary is limited to 8-letter words. This matters rarely but occasionally, and mostly limits the amount by which you can set up large plays. More importantly, the dictionary is rather quirky at 7 and 8 letters; it has ENSIGN but not ENSIGNS, and other such oddities. The "Deluxe" version, which I have not played, advertises a dictionary including words up to 12 letters; hopefully it does a better job at the 7s and 8s as well.

The bonus word appears starting in level 2. The first bonus word is worth 1000 bonus points (only displayed after you submit the word, not as part of the base score displayed at the left), the second is worth 2000, then 4000, 6000, 10000, 15000, 20000, 25000, 30000, 40000, 50000, and then 50000 for all successive ones. If you try for these early you can get quite a few 3-letter ones, but starting in level 6 the bonus words are 4 letters long (at level 10, 5 letters). This bonus word feature is reminiscent of WhatWord.

If you can find the letters, the bonus words are clearly the best way to score big points. Compare to a 5-letter word made entirely of gold tiles, with 15 points worth of letters at level 10 = 10 x 25 x 25 = 6250. My best was FUNNELED (5+2+2+2+1+2+1+3) at level 13 with F, N, N, and the second E gold for 10 x 24 x 31 = 7440. However, once you start getting 5-letter bonus words they are very hard to make. They are still possible, though; I got several of these in my marathon session.

Clicking the worm to scramble the board wipes out any bonus tiles you had on screen, keeps all red letters (which eat the letter below them), and randomizes all non-red letters, AND makes red letters appear 1-2 per turn over the next few turns. This is clearly a method of last resort when you have a red letter in a place where it will be totally unremovable, or when you have such a clogged collection of similar letters that you have trouble making words of any appreciable length. I didn't find it useful for trying to form bonus words, because of the added red letters; you're better off just trying to save letters in the word and make words from the nearby letters.

Spellbound

In addition, you score a 2 point bonus for the 5th letter in a word, a 4 point bonus for the 6th letter, and a 6 point bonus for the 7th letter. Words are limited to a maximum of 7 letters, and the bonuses are cumulative so it is a 6 point total bonus for a 6 letter word and a 12 point bonus for a 7 letter word. These bonuses are multiplied by any bonuses for purple or red letters used.

The harder letters often appear in green cells which rotate between three letters, such as Qu-A-S. Each letter in such a cell is worth its normal points but you have the choice of which letter you want to use there.

Four types of bonus letters appear randomly, but more often after you form longer words:

The Star, Purple, and Red bonuses are the easiest ones to learn because it flashes the bonus effect on screen after you form the word. If you use many bonuses at once, only three of them appear on the screen, but all are scored. It is not hard to score thousands of points on one word by saving up doubles and triples.

Rocket Mania

The Rocket Mania on Yahoo seems to be a slightly broken version; I don't get any sound on any of my computers. Over at the MSN Gaming Zone you can play a version of Rocket Mania which has sound and some slightly different graphics, but is limited to 10 levels.

In Rocket Mania you are trying to build complete fuses to fireworks rockets by rotating various straight, curved, and 3 or 4 way junction fuse pieces in a grid 9 rows tall and 6 columns wide. The fuses need to connect any point on the left side with any point on the right. You need to launch a certain number of rockets within a time limit to advance from each level.

The main strategy here is trying to set off multiple launches by using the branching fuses. You get bonus points for doing so, plus coins dropped into the grid (which give you more points later), and also the multiple launches are generally quicker than an equivalent number of single launches, so you can complete more levels. To collect the coins (and other various objects) on the fuse squares, complete fuses which use those fuse segments. At the end of a level, any uncollected objects on fuse squares are lost; however, coins for a level-ending multiple launch are instead awarded at the start of the next level.

At the end of each round, your collected coins are used to upgrade rockets. Each 5 points in coin value upgrades one rocket one level. Usually it starts with the rockets in the middle, but occasionally it will jump to the outside rockets instead for no apparent reason. Each rocket can only be upgraded once per level, so if you collect coins worth 50 or more on a level, you will have a full upgrade unused that will carry over to the next level. Occasionally (especially when it upgrades the outside rockets) when you collect a lot of coins, it will not use all possible upgrades for no apparent reason. The maximum level for each rocket is 10; once you reach this point you will continue to upgrade your other rockets. If you are caught in the act of turning the final fuse segment needed to complete your final launch of the level as time runs out, you can trigger a weird sort of bug. It will say game over, award points for your coins (using them up), then complete and score the fuse, and allow you to continue to the next level with no coins other than anything collected from that final fuse.

Additional features are added as you increase in levels. Gems are randomly seeded on some fuse squares; collect these within a time limit to score extra points: 500 on easy; 1000 on hard. Some (one-sided) dead-end fuse sections make it harder to complete fuses. Bombs are randomly seeded on some fuse squares; when collected, these blow up nearby fuse squares without scoring them, which can be good if you need to get rid of annoying dead-end fuses, but is more often bad if you carelessly blow up gems and coins. A timer randomly seeded on some fuse squares stops the clock for a short period after it is collected.

My best score: 974115 at level 25 on easy, but I usually play on hard, where my best is 449410 at level 13. I played on easy while checking many of the scoring details for this page. The scoring seems mostly the same on different levels, but the time runs out faster and the advanced pieces like dead-ends and bombs come sooner. (On MSN where the levels are limited, the multi-rocket launch scoring is actually higher for the harder difficulty levels, but I don't have all the details.)

Scoring Details

Launches needed to complete a level: 10 at level 1; each additional level requires one more rocket.

Scoring for completing a fuse: You get 5 points for each fuse segment, plus 100 times the level of each rocket launched, plus 500 for each gem collected. If you collect more than one coin tile on a launch, multiply the rocket scoring by the total number of coins (not coin value) collected. In addition, there are bonuses for 5x launches and above: 5x 1000, 6x 2500, 7x 10000, 8x 25000, never managed a 9x.

Coins: For each multiple launch, you get some number of coins dropped into the grid, in as few coins as possible using 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. For a double launch, you get 2 (a 2 coin). For a triple launch, you get 6 (a 5 and a 1). For a quadruple launch, you get 12 (a 10 and a 2). For a 5x launch, you get 23. For a 6x launch, you get 30. For a 7x launch, you get 50.

Coin bonus: If you manage to get all the rockets to level 10 and still complete extra levels, when the upgrades would normally occur the coins are used up and you get 500 bonus points for each one. (I have only seen this on easy; the one time I got to this point on hard, it just let the coins keep accumulating.) At the end of the game any unused coins are likewise awarded as 500 bonus points.

Ranks: You get shown a rank at the end of each level and the end of the game, based on your score. The levels are: