Winster.com "Spell Squad" Strategy Guide / Analysis
In this little part of my life that I'll never get back, I am sharing with you the lowdown on Winster.com's "Spell Squad" game, from my analytical ADHD mind. You'll find out how to maximize your points earnings, which I'll present using basic math. I'm assuming you're already a member and familiar with "Spell Squad". If you're not familiar with either, then I have a description of what Winster.com is down below.
Update 5/31/08: I've cancelled my membership. There's no more value in the points. They reduced point values by more than half, (i.e. 2000 points instead of 4400) so now it takes twice as long to earn points. Couple that with inflation, and it takes 3-4 times longer than it used to when I first joined. The people are still cool though. And the Bingo game gets you the fastest points with the least amount of brainpower.
Sushi's Bingo tips:
- It takes 16 spins to fill up a board, since you don't spin the same number twice.
- Find a partner to trade with, using complementary boards, and take turns spinning and trading. The best boards to use when partnered up are the first and last set of boards (#1/#8 or #2/#7), because the net points is 2200 over 2 iterations. The 4 and 5 boards seem to be popular, but they only offer 2000 for the same number of spins, and more trades.
- Alternatively, on a #7 or #8 board, you can fill it up and trade away the white squares for an agreed-upon number of turns, then switch places.
- You can get multiple spins by rapidly clicking on the "spin" button. Click once when the button is red. It'll turn gray while spinning. Just before it turns red again, rapidly click and more numbers will come up. You still use up the correct number of spins, but it fills up your board twice as fast.
- Give away your white squares to someone before cashing in on your card. Everyone wins faster if you help them out, and you don't need the white squares anyway. But don't give away your numbers before you complete your board!
Disclaimer: If you have a conservative or Christian mindset, then you may find my prose offensive. This is my fucking site and you're welcome to read and enjoy it, but I'm a straight shooter and my obscenity threshold is very high. So if you were offended by the mere inclusion of the word "fucking" (oh gee golly dear, language like that is not necessary!), then you'll likely encounter problems with my rhetoric. I love the First Amendment. Maybe you should question why it is that you're offended by certain combinations of sounds or letters, and why you attach such negative meanings to those utterances (as opposed being offended by a word's intent). Why be negative? Educate yourself. <rant off>
Get to the point.
| letters | row # | points | points/spin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 1 | 275 | 91.67 |
| 4 | 2 | 495 | 123.75 |
| 5 | 3 | 990 | 198.00 |
| 7 | 1+2 | 2200 | 314.29 |
| 9 | 2+3 | 4400 | 488.89 |
| 12 | 1+2+3 | 6600 | 550.00 |
Here's the strategy in a nutshell. Follow this, and you'll be doing real good. Explanations are further down, if you're curious as to how I came up with this shit.
- Spin away, and fill up your board.
- Use anagrammer.com. It totally fucking rules! Fill in the letters you have, and it'll give you all the words you can make. Replace your unpopular letters with a "?" and it'll give you other letters that you can use.
- Aim for 9-letter words (words spanning the bottom 2 rows). "Spell Squad" takes combinations of 3, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 12 letters, but it'll take the smallest word possible, so the trick is to rearrange the letters to get the proper-length word you want, when you want it. Check out the chart. I'll explain the 9-letter thing in a little bit.
- The absolute minimal word length you should go for is 7 letters. But I say, don't even consider it. Go for 9.
- 3-letter words are ok if you need to discard those 3 letters to help complete your 9-letter word. 275 points for 3 letters is better than none.
The best "value" in this game is achieved by earning the highest points per spin (PPS). I'd say a good average is 400 PPS, which is 400,000 points in 1000 spins. I think I average more than that. To keep track, note the number of points you start out with, then the number of points you end with. If you want your PPS, just divide by the difference by the number of spins you get every day.
Why 12 letters is teh suck.
| letters | points | max possible PPS |
# spins before value sucks |
# spins before value sucks harder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Hover over a number below to see the formula.) | ||||
| 5 | 990 | 198.00 | ||
| 7 | 2200 | 314.29 | 11 | |
| 9 | 4400 | 488.89 | 14 | 22 |
| 12 | 6600 | 550.00 | 13 | 21 |
Obviously, a 12-letter word gives you the best value for your spins. The chart proves it. Many people go for it. But it's not the best combination, by far! Why?
- They're hard to come by.
- They fill up all your tiles, which makes it harder to trade letters.
- The time it takes to complete a 12-letter word makes it not worthwhile.
- The value of a 12-letter word is not much better than a 9-letter word, which gives you fewer chances to complete the word. You only have a margin of 1 letter (a total of 13 spins) before the PPS becomes less than that of a 9-letter word. Check out the chart.
In case you can't figure out my obscure chart, here's the explanation. 5 letters is something you should never go for. It's included as a baseline. 7 letters will hold its value for up to 11 spins. On the 12th spin, you're getting fewer PPS than 5 letters, so you might as well make the 5-letter word. Same pattern applies to the 9- and 12-letter words.
The holy grail is 550 points per spin, which is spinning 12 letters and creating a 12-letter word. What are the fucking odds of that? Trading letters does increase those odds tremendously, but you may be stuck waiting forever for someone to spin a rare letter like X or Z.
As a corollary, the max number of points you can get in a 1000-spin session, assuming no free spins, is 550 points per spin * 1000 spins = 550,000 points. Near impossible to get.
Why 9 letters is awesome.
- You get the best "padding" on PPS. You spin 9 times, then you have up to 5 more spins to get your letters, before it loses its advantage over a 7-letter word. And it takes a whopping 22 spins before it loses its advantage over a 5-letter word (due to the shitty value of the 5-letter word). However, if you have to spin that many times to make a 9-letter word, then you have extremely shit luck, or people don't like you.
- You have at least 3 other slots where you can store letters to use or trade. Most people like to get something good in return for giving you their letter. Makes them feel like you're not just taking. (I personally don't give a shit. I just like to help out. You know, karma.)
- The 3 extra slots gives you more flexible combinations of letters. Instead of going for a single 12-letter word, you have the option of several words, so your chances are that much better that you'll complete your word.
- 12-letter words lose their value after the 13th spin. Which means that, on the 14th spin, your PPS value is than a 9-letter word! That's just fucking retarded.
- Conclusion: 9-letter words are the sweet spot.
How to get 9-letter words on anagrammer.com.
You may notice that certain letters suck ass. Q, X, Z (of course). I also don't really like B, C, D, G, H, J, K, W, Y. LY combo seems ok; CK, CH or GH combos sometimes work. B, J, K and W almost never work. Those are my first to go.
Anyway, when you punch your shit into anagrammer, and you get a max of a 5-letter word, then you probably need to replace at least 2 letters. So pick the 2 you want to get rid of and substitute each letter with a ? (question mark). See what comes up. Look for a combination of boldface letters that would be easy to get — like E and T.
Then, spin away, or trade away!
Fuck the bonus points. Free spins is where it's at.
| for a 9-letter word | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| desc | spins | free points | points | points/spin |
| baseline / straight-up 9 spins | 9 | 0 | 4400 | 488.89 |
| no free points, 1 extra spin | 10 | 0 | 4400 | 440.00 |
| 1 spin with 30 points | 10 | 30 | 4430 | 443.00 |
| 1 spin with 100 points | 10 | 100 | 4500 | 450.00 |
| 1 spin with 250 points | 10 | 250 | 4650 | 465.00 |
| the only good scenario | 10 | 500 | 4900 | 490.00 |
Sometimes a spin automatically adds points to your score. I've seen 30, 100, 250 and 500 free points. They all suck, except for 500.
Here's why. If you spin 9 times and get enough letters to make your 9-letter word, then your points per spin are 488.89 over the 9 spins. During your 9 spins, if you spin a 30-pointer, your points per spin are 30 for that spin, but the spin counts against you. That's only slightly better than if you got a completely useless letter that you had to discard.
What we can see from this table is that any amount of points lower than your PPS will hurt your score.
Example: You spin 4 times and get 1000 points — wow! Calculate that to be 250 PPS. But, check this out — if those 4 spins were to contribute to the completion of a word, you'd have gotten 488.89 PPS, which is over 200 PPS more than you got with those "bonus" points. And that is why free points suck.
Free spins are exactly the opposite. They increase your PPS. For example, if you complete a 9-letter word with 9 spins + 3 free spins (a net of 6 spins), that increases the PPS for that word to 733.33! The value of the free spins diminishes over more iterations, but still, they only help you out because they give you more opportunities to score and take nothing away!
Prize value.
Another factor in maximizing your playing strategy is to pick a prize that will give you the best bang for your buck.
To figure out the best value when you cash in your points, you divide the cost of the prize (you'll have to look it up using the info they give you) by how many millions of points to get a number. The higher the number, the better the value. For example, the iPod shuffle
By contrast, the absolute worst value was The Beatles book (also no longer available). 3 million points for a $10 book, which is $3.33 per million points — less than half the value of the iPod! Maybe I was looking up the wrong product or something.
You can also calculate how long it would take to earn enough points, and if it takes you more than 30 days, then you might want to take into account the next month's membership fee as well.
One of these days, I may have a chart here showing all the numbers, so you can figure out what prize you want to go for. But they change prizes often enough that I don't think I will. Keep hoping; you may get results.
It's free to create an account, but you have to become a member if you want to claim any prizes. I tried to stretch out my free membership as far as it would go. Their marketing strategy is very good (and very much like crack), I'd have to say. They initially give you a handful of spins, plus enough points so that you can claim one of the cheap prizes very easily. If you keep coming back to use the free account, the number of daily free spins you get gradually diminishes to 5, which means you can't do shit unless you pay up.
It's not a total scam though. Their membership costs range from $5 to $10 a month, which is very reasonable for a place where you can earn almost-cash prizes. You'll have to figure out what prizes are worth the most value. Just look up the price, then calculate (price / points * 1,000,000 points = dollars per million points). Higher is better. Your net profit in a month can be up to $60 or more. The catch: it takes a good chunk out of your day to earn the points!
For me, 1000 spins on "Spell Squad" takes me about 3.5 hours and usually nets me around 380,000 points. I watch shows during that time, but I'm very unproductive otherwise. If you have a desk job where you sit on your computer doing nothing all day, then Winster will help kill the time. But otherwise, the rewards vs. the amount of time you put into Winster isn't that great of a value. I still like it though. I'm ok with that.
Update 5/31/08: Point values have gone down and prize costs are up as of early May or so. Suck!
What Winster.com means to me.
Not much. But here's what I think of it.
Winster.com is a cool, laid-back and quaint little co-operative gaming community where you score points, and help out others in the game room in which you're playing. You earn points and trade them in for gift certificates or coupon codes for Fandango.com, Amazon.com
The people on Winster all seem pretty cool and will help you out when they can. The game room environment feels squeeky-clean and old-fashioned. Kinda like a Tupperware party (no shit). The more you help others out, the more they help you out. Quid pro quo. (I like that phrase.) It's kinda strange being the only guy in a room full of women talking about their grandkids or pets or husbands or kids. Lots of sweet women there. Though they'd probably gang-rape you if you displayed any testosterone-guided actions.
The games, for the most part, are pretty retarded. They all involve spinning a slot-machine-style spinner, for which you get a certain number of spins every day. You take the result of your spin and arrange it with your existing hand to score points. The best game to play, by far, is "Spell Squad". Although it takes more skill than the others, you can get mass points on minimal spins. Which is what this page is about.
Special thanks to LadyBree for confirming my theories. (Brie also happens to be one of my favorite cheeses, and by extension, one of my favorite names, even if it's spelled differently.) She only goes for the 9-letter words, but she already figured that out without the aid of my awesome charts. I knew there was some sort of method to the madness, so I made charts and came up with numbers.
So, what the fuck are you waiting for? Sign up and have fun! Make some friends! Earn some gift certificates in your spare time!
