AARP Online Community and Discussion Forums - Re: Codeword Game History Erased for Month

HokiePoq · ‎10-10-2022

Went to get my early morning Codeword fix and found a "Welcome to Codeword" message. Not sure what this meant, I went ahead and played only to find that the game had erased my previous nine days of play for October. For those who don't know, the scores are cumulative over the month. I am not a top ten player, so I will go back and replay the games and enjoy them again BUT the game scoring is wrong for the month. I enjoy watching who will be tops each month as the names have become familiar over time. A lot of time is invested for all who play regularly. This needs to be fixed ASAP. And while I'm complaining about Codeword: The monthly scores are invalid EVERY month. For some reason (times zones I'm sure), everyone's score is not reset at the same time. The true high players are not the ones listed in top scores for the month, but random players who play after others' scores are reset. No matter what time zone is used, ALL need to be reset at the same time each month. It appears EST/EDT is used and that is fine, but so would PST (EDT, PDT, whatever). Just keep the playing ground even and the scores correct and consistent.

AARPLynne · ‎11-17-2022

Thank you everyone for your sharing your concerns and experiences with playing Codeword. We have plans to update Codeword to the latest version available which we believe will address many of the issues noted here. Thanks again for being here!

Update 11/21/22: The latest version of Codeword is now live and can be found here:

https://games.aarp.org/games/codeword. Thank you!

TommyC960202 · ‎10-29-2022

Similar to others,I have been doing codeword quick and accurate.

Only to have my score erased and nullified!

I guess the people responsible for AARP CODEWORD working right might need to retire!

JoyG807130 · ‎10-13-2022

So I have a question that has been driving me nuts for a year! 🙂 Why is my score so much lower than the leaderboard? Like today I had 22620 and the leaders were over 160,000. How is that possible?

KeithB811680 · ‎02-28-2024

there is no way that any of those top scores could be reached without some form of cheating... no human could solve the puzzles fast enough to consistently get scores that high. i know because i cheated in order to test and STILL didn't score high enough despite completing every single game for a month in less than 10 seconds per game... i even 'won' todays game in only 2 seconds by automating the key entry with a macro... so i have zero respect for 'top scores' - it's simply not possible to be on that list if you aren't cheating and cheaters don't impress me.

(and as stated; I cheated for a month as a test... I certainly don't deserve bragging rights over it)

HokiePoq · ‎02-28-2024

I have a high score from the month that the game reset in the middle. We kept our accumulated score and could go back and do the first couple weeks of the month a second time.

Everyone must have done that as well as my unreal score was nowhere near the highest one.

CATICABOOM · ‎10-13-2022

So tired of this happening. I was told To reset and delete history. Didn’t work. Was on a roll this month but now am wiped out to 0 with no games played.

dk4579305 · ‎10-12-2022

I see the reset happen almost every month. But now my game is not giving credit for the “percentage completed correctly, without help.” The score comes out to about 1600 instead of 11,000 or so. This has made me not want to go back and replay the first part of the month. I also know something is changed because the alphabet list is in 3 columns rather than two.

lh79882785 · ‎10-15-2022

I have the same problem I am getting slightly more than one tenth of the score I should be because it says I got "0" right without help.

Carpediemetcurrunt · ‎10-16-2022

I received this response from an Arkadium representative when I explained that I was using the highlight error function:

"Currently, if the Highlight error function is activated, the game counts all answers as if they are completed with help. Since the highlight error function shows if your guess is correct or not, it helps you constantly."

I have started to play without the function and my scores are closer to my previous scores. They have changed the way that function works. So I'm even more impressed with the high scorers' quick thinking!

lh79882785 · ‎10-20-2022

Well, that certainly explains things. I don't agree with their logic, but at least I know what the new "normal" is for me and what is causing it. I only allow myself a certain amount of time on games per day as they can become a bit addictive for me, so I'm not going to be altering my way of play as crosswords can become extremely time consuming without that assistance.

I was using the numbers more of a guide for myself as to whether I am improving or not and my "joy" was coming from how fast (and how many) I could get on the first try. I do the NYT mini crossword with auto check on as well. NYT doesn't give you an ability to press a button for the actual letter, though. But since it is a "real" crossword puzzle and gives crossword clues, you can usually get it the mini fairly quickly (occasionally less than a minute if you know the subject material).

My entire life I spent hating crosswords because there is nothing worse game-wise (for me) than spending hours on a crossword only to find out you were off by one letter in a single word which cascaded because it caused you to enter other incorrect words. Well, that and all the esoteric words that are often used in the puzzle, but rarely in real life. I appreciate how some people can like the challenge. Just not for me -- I have other things I want to do with my time.

DianeS83436 · ‎10-16-2022

Thanks for the explanation! With this change, scoring is higher if you use the "reveal" eye for all letters. Score is still 0, but you can get through the letters ia a couple seconds, so your score for 'time' is high 😂

lh79882785 · ‎10-20-2022

Yes, that is ironic, isn't it? Not as fun though.

AlineB · ‎10-11-2022

The same thing happened to me. I had to replay all my games for October. Now when I play the new games after the event, my scores are abnormally low. Instead of my average 10,000 -11,000 points per game, I'm now scoring only 1,000 -1,500 points. What's up?

HokiePoq · ‎10-12-2022

@AlineB Wow, yours is worst than mine! I did replay and got normal for me scores. I'm still noticing the absence of the former leader and others from the top ten list. I'm still getting the "Welcome to Codeword" screen flashing so something is squirrelly about how the game is working for me. Hope the techies work this out. I should have filled in the online form with Arkadium. I did that once and they resolved the issue in a couple of days....not Codeword IIRC.

Carpediemetcurrunt · ‎10-11-2022

Yup wiped me out again, too. Tried replaying the 10/1 game but it doesn’t add to total for month. Oh well, not a top player, but I like to try to better my scores.

Wondering if saving scores on Arcadium’s website will work through the AARP site.

HokiePoq · ‎10-11-2022

@Carpediemetcurrunt If you find out how to do that, let me know. I was able to replay the games which I enjoyed doing and the score reduction didn't make much difference as I'd thought. I appreciate your confirming that I was not the only one affected. It seems the previous leader was as well as his name was way down the list from tops the day before.

WebWiseWoman · ‎10-10-2022

Probably what most of us have experienced many times; this is a "known issue" that Arkadium (games publisher) is working on.

It has to do with browser settings/history.

Here's the Arkadium Support article (opens in new tab so this will remain open for you): I've lost my progress. Why?

Note: from personal experience this happens randomly even with settings being correct, which may be why Arkadium is attempting to move the cumulative to web-based as noted in their article. So far, it's impacted my scores on different sites with score being transferred to site not played on the same day (not AARP; appears to be "*.arkadiumhosted.com")...

hth

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HokiePoq · ‎10-10-2022

Thanks for the reply and information. I can see your name still there...missing some others I am used to seeing, though. Maybe they will reappear later in the day. I will just enjoy playing more games as the 50 point per day loss makes little difference to my scores as it would for those contending for the top spots. First and only time it's happened to me in Codeword, though. It did happen in another game where I had a great score which I've never been able to equal again. Different situation as that was a card game and not a day to day cumulative game. The article didn't mention Codeword specifically and none of my other games lost data today, so the reasons cited don't apply in this case.

AARPLynne · ‎10-11-2022

Hi @HokiePoq & @Carpediemetcurrunt, did you happen to take any of the steps outlined in the article shared by @WebWiseWoman? This is the article and I've included the steps below, I've lost my progress. Why?

Most games save the player's progress in the web browser's local storage. It means that the game progress is associated with your browser and device. The most common causes of a game's progress being lost are:

Clearing the browser's cookies.
Changing device.
Changing browser.

HokiePoq · ‎10-11-2022

@AARPLynne No. If it were only me, it could be blamed on my browser, cookies, all the stock responses to any problem posters bring up in several forums. It happened to a number of people all at the same time. It only happened in Codeword at that point in time, not the other games I'd played with no problem the same day. That is a system problem, not an individual's computer problem.