Contents

Overview
How to play
Scoring
Game Commands
Start Playing

Overview

The bot version of Finders Keepers is based upon the old Talk City human version game of the same name. The automated version was created by Kenrick J. Mock and Talk City, Inc. The bot was implemented by Kenrick J. Mock.

Your job, in two minutes or less, is to find words within a randomly selected word. The words you find must be at least 3 letters long.

The automated version of Finders Keepers is hosted 24 hours a day by a bot named FinderBot. FinderBot begins the game by presenting a randomly selected word that is at least 10 letters long, for example, "REFERENCES". Your job is to find new words using the letters of the word provided by FinderBot. Use the letters in any order, but only as often as they appear. For example, "REFEREE" and "FENCES" are valid words, but "SENSE" is not because there is only one "S" available.

The longer the word you find, the more points you will receive. Each round lasts two minutes. The player that has the most points after five rounds wins the game!

Valid words are those found in FinderBot's dictionary. How do you know what words are in the dictionary? Watch for FinderBot's word lists at the end of each round.

If you think that another player entered an invalid word, you may challenge that word. If the challenged word is not in FinderBot's word list, then you will earn that word's points and the player that entered the original word will lose double the word's points. But if the word was in the dictionary, then you will lose points and the player you challenged gets bonus points!

How to play

Note: We have more than one game of Finders Keepers running at the same time. If you are playing in chat room #Games-Finders2 instead of #Games-Finders, then the bot will be named differently. Please substitute the bot's actual nickname in all the interactions below.

When the round begins, FinderBot will present the word and set it as the topic of the room. If you are using a chat client that does not show the room's topic (like WebTV), then you may wish to write the word down on a piece of paper before it scrolls off the screen. If you are using an IRC-II client, you can use the "/window new" command to create a new window and then use "/msg FinderBot show word" to display the word in the new window so you can refer to it.

Once the word has been presented, simply enter the words that you find into the room, one word per line. If you think that another player entered an invalid word, you may challenge that word through the command:

challenge word
or
ch word

The following is a short game transcript from the point of view of "Gordo." The text the player entered is in red:

In this short segment, players post their answers and the bot responds. The bot displays the results to the channel.

Scoring

• You receive one point for each letter in your word, so longer words will earn you more points.
  
• Only the first person to enter a word gets points for that word.
  
• If you successfully challenge a word entered by another player, you earn the word's points and the player that entered the invalid word loses DOUBLE the point value for that word.
  
• If you unsuccessfully challenge a word entered by another player, you lose that word's point value. The player that entered the original word gets the point value for that word again.
  

Game Commands

help	Gives you information about Finders Keepers
show word	Displays the current word
show scores	Displays scores for the current game
show top wins	Displays players with the top 10 wins of all time
show top scores	Displays players with the top 10 scores of all time
show stats nick	Displays nick's wins and best score

Start Playing

• Click here to enter room Finders and begin playing Finders Keepers using the Java Chat Applet.