Amazing Word Game (app) - NE LITE

Graham Jaggers (LN  1963-67) has developed a word game, NE-LITE, which can be downloaded now. Graham tells us all about it:

I would love to hear from anyone at King's who PLAYED the oral word game DONKEY.

Covid hit us in 2020 and as a septuagenarian, I was ordered to stay indoors for three months. Boredom set in. My mind turned to a word game I used to play at King's called "DONKEY". Players (any number) would say letters in turn towards making words. You lost if you played a letter that completed a word (or one from which a word could not be made) and every time you lost, you collected a letter towards DONKEY and were eliminated upon collecting all the letters making up DONKEY.

For example with four players:
Player 1 says the letter: C
Player 2 says the letter: R - so we now have the sequence CR
Player 3 says the letter: E - so we now have the sequence CRE
Player 4 says the letter: A - so we now have the sequence CREA
Player 1 says the letter: T - so we now have the sequence CREAT
NOTE - if player 2 said the letter E, he would lose for completing the word CREATE and collect a letter towards DONKEY - but!
Player 2 says the letter: I - so we now have the sequence CREATI
Player 3 says the letter: O - so we now have the sequence CREATIO
Player 4 says the letter: N - so we now have the sequence CREATION
and Player 4 has lost for completing the word CREATION and will collect a letter towards DONKEY
NOTE - The game has a nice element of BLUFF. Player 4 could have said another letter, for instance a "U" to make the next player think that he knows a word beginning CREATIO'U' - maybe CREATIOUS. Player 1 would then have to decide whether to challenge Player 4 and divulge his word for group arbitration or continue playing having been successfully BLUFFED.

I would play this game for hours with King's friends and family, especially when travelling long distances in a car.

I remember at the time saying to other players, wouldn't it be fun if we could place letters more randomly, say in front as well as at the end, or even anywhere but keeping the same order with the utltimate challenge being anywhere plus being able to reorganise the letters being played - basically in real time, evolving anagrams!

I was generally agreed that it would indeed be fun and quite a challenge but not something that we could test as orally, it would be just too complicated for our memories.

So, my Covid boredom gave me the time to have an app developed to enable all those extra refinements, titled 'Easy', 'Medium', 'Expert' and 'Genius' levels which can be individually selected within the app.

This was a huge challenge as apart from the coding, the game required a specialised reference dictionary as that dictionary required ALL words in the English language to be spelt out in full including all the verb tenses and all plurals. Plurals were particularly important as clever 'pluralising' can be the difference between winning and losing. So I developed a 127,000 plus word dictionary. Some feat I assure you!

Other features are:
(1) You can be ranked locally, nationally and world wide by your age Under 11, Under 15, Under 18 and All ages.
(2) Become a monthly winner. The app resets all scores on the first of the month effectively making it a monthly competition and setting a level playing field for all on the first of each month.
(3) The app provides players with their own BESPOKE VOCABULARY CENTRE which collects all the words that they didn't know allowing players to study and learn them in their own time. I am particularly proud of this feature.

I called the game "The Never Ending Game" which has been abbreviated to NE where the "NE-LITE" version allows players to play against AI and "NE-CONNECT" enables ONE v ONE play.

This is not a sales pitch as the game/app is 100% free to download and play. I Having said that, the app has failed to attract players in any serious numbers. I would just love to see people of all ages playing and enjoying the challenges that the different difficulty levels offer.

I play at "expert" level most days and very much enjoy having to reset my thought processes as each new letter AI places forces me to re-evaluate what words can be made. My player ID is graj48 and I would love to have some competition!

I really look forward to seeing some new players having a go and as I opened with - I would love to hear from anyone at King's who PLAYED the oral word game DONKEY.

To download the game, seach NE-LITE on Google Play or the Apple App Store.