Journal of PlanetMike

My dad and I played LetterPress last March and ended up playing 1,578 words. We made a few mistakes early on that cost us a few extra words. We probably could’ve gotten close to 1,600 had we paid closer attention.

Here are some tips and hints for doing a long LetterPress game:

• Hope for only a few “bad” letters” so that you will have an easy letter to avoid using. We had four “v”, and “q” “x” “z” and “y” so I believe it’s very possible to have a longer game. We definitely would have traded a “v” for an “r.”
• Hope for easy plurals, such as “s” and “es” and “ies.”
• Hope for four or five vowels, “a” “e” and “i” at least.
• Always submit the first few letters of a word before trying a long word. We used “batty” as our fifth word, locking out “ba” and “bat” and possibly “batt.”
• If you’re going for a longest game score, you have to work with your opponent. Decide together what letter to avoid using.
• It’s very easy to get excited and type in a really long word that either ends the game or disqualifies a lot of other words.
• Try funny words. That’s how I found the word “squit.” It turns out we have several British words in this game.
• Don’t worry about your score. The lead will go back and forth. But the score isn’t the point of the game. The point of the game is to keep the game going.
• You can view the game to see what you’ve already played. Make sure you go back and try the plurals!
• If you see a word, write it down so you don’t forget it.
• Allow some time! This game took about two weeks of on-and-off play.
• Make sure you send the replay of the game to yourself so that the world will have proof of your accomplishment.

Enjoy!