January 27, 2010: Mahjong Safari, Thousand Island Solitaire, and SCRABBLE

Mahjong Safari Badge Challenge
Tile Tree Badge Badge
Make 30 5X combos this week! (10X combos count double and 15X combos count triple)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

MahjSaf Buddy is so cute and such a good player. I wondered if the difficulty level would give more or less combos and I found that the easy gives 6 and the normal gives 7 so I would assume hard gives 8 or 9 but why have the bot waste time working harder than it needs to when it can complete the levels lickity-split on easy? Actually this badge would have been completed faster than my 6 minutes if I wasn't investigating this! LOL! (and BTW I got an extra 1,378 tokens in that short amount of time!). Anyway, that's part of my curiosity and if I can find something helpful then it's worth it. :) In short: nothing difficult or crazy about this quick challenge.

Thousand Island Solitaire Badge Challenge
Captain's Log Badge
Play 200 Distance cards this week! (Distance cards have numbers like 25, 50 or 75 on them)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

An amazingly similar situation as Mahjong Safari. Bottom line: just let it run! Thankfully IslandSol Buddy doesn't have to WIN the game, it only has to FINISH the game to get credit for the distance cards. This was all wrapped up in 13 minutes, with an additional 1,616 tokens. Easy Breezy.

SCRABBLE Badge Challenge
Scrabble Rousers Badge
Create 30 5-letter words this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

This challenge attested to my brilliance and stupidity. How so? Well, allow me to elaborate.

Play Buddy doesn't have Scrabble Buddy (unfortunately) BUT I do remember Quirty Buddy and that you can enter letters into Quirty Buddy's GUI and use the solve feature to generate a list of words (dang I'm smart!)!!! WAHOO! Sure it's not as fabulous as an autoplayer but ya gotta admit it's pretty dang cool (love Play Buddy's one-of-a-kind features!!!) and certainly better than no help at all! <--- BRILLIANCE

However, one hour in I realize that I'm not receiving credit for my 5+ letter words and I realize that the words have to be EXACTLY FIVE LETTERS! So in other words, all my fancy 6 and 7 letter words I was proudly entering, DON'T COUNT! <--- STUPIDITY

So once I figured that out, I used the "solve" AND the 5-letter word filter on the Buddy and then it only took me 21 minutes to get my remaining 18 5-letter words. ALSO you have to FINISH the game completely to get credit for the words so make sure to play it all the way to the end.

And there it is. Hopefully you can glean from my brilliance and attain some wisdom from my stupidity and finish this badge more efficiently (and with more than an extra 1,060 tokens) than myself.

Late late LATE!

Just an apology to all my followers, readers, and fellow badge challengers for my huge delay in posting the weekly challenges! I completed them but had not posted them, so now here they all are! Again, I'm sorry for the late posting.

January 20, 2010: Everyone Wins Bingo and Turbo 21

Everyone Wins Bingo Badge Challenge
Frozen Acorn Badge
Pass 100 wilds this week! (Wilds passed to yourself do not count)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

One word: WOW. And this is in a good way and bad way. LOL Bad is the amount of time the challenge took. Good is the amazing mad skills Play Buddy's auto has. So allow me to elaborate.

One hour and forty three minutes later my EW Bingo Buddy acquired my badge and an additional 2,770 tokens. This challenge was like pulling teeth, and not because of the Buddy but just because it took that long to be able to start passing wilds. Anyway, the good news is that I definitely have some tips for making this challenge go by faster (I use the term lightly LOL).

First open up a 5-card room in the speedy games section.

Second open the Buddy's Options and select the "use wild card for wild bingos only" setting. "WHY?" you ask? Well, quoted from Pogo, "Wild bingos are regular bingos that also pass a wild to another teammate" and the goal of this challenge is to pass wilds. By turning on this option I got the "most wilds" award in 15 out of 17 games!

Lastly also in the Buddy's options, select the "Hold wilds" setting. "WHY?" you ask? Well, this setting is smart because it knows that you can only have 5 wilds held at a time so it will always "spend" the fifth one. Otherwise, it saves all of the wilds until AFTER all the numbers are called. This means that it won't waste a wild on a number that would have been called - only on numbers that weren't called! In other words, it maximizes the amount of wilds you will pass.

ALSO if you're an avid bingo player, this FYI from Pogo might be helpful to you: "If you reach rank 50 in Bingo Luau and Everyone Wins Bingo, you’ll unlock Double Wild Bingo buttons! Double Wild Bingo buttons will appear randomly on your bingo cards; calling a valid bingo with that button will pass two wilds to two different players on your team!"

With all that said, good luck and happy badging!
:)

Turbo 21 Badge Challenge
Convertible Badge
Get 200 Blackjacks this week! (A Blackjack is a 21 with only 2 cards)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Ya know, I'm really getting used to Play Buddy providing such an efficient bot for these challenges! 21 Buddy also made it so I could just open it up and let it play - this was one of those challenges where a smart bot combined with the luck of the draw made it so it could be completed only so fast; 1 hour 19 minutes in this case, with a doozie of 16,612 additional tokens for the time and effort. Thankfully the auto was self sufficient as usual so once again I just let it run and occupied my time elsewhere.

On an aside note, I think for this specific badge challenge, it would be nice to have a couple of new options in 21 Buddy such as skipping the time bonus round and purposefully focusing on putting ALL 2-card 21's together, even if it means busting other lanes and getting less tokens. This would save a lot of time, although I'm sure as a result we'd only get a smidgeon of the tokens but hey, that's why they're called "options" right? :)

January 13, 2010: Lost Temple Poker and Addiction Solitaire

Lost Temple Poker Badge Challenge
Rope Bridge Badge
Win 75 hands this week! (Your payout must be more than your wager to win)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

I'm not sure that it matters because it's probably all the same mathmatics wise BUT just in case, I set my default bet amount to 1. In my head, I figured this is good since one rule of achieving the badge is that the payout must be greater than the wager and the smallest wager is 1. *shrugs*

So 40 minutes and 2,429 tokens later, Lost Temple Buddy completed my challenge for me. Since the drawing of the cards is completely random and the Buddy uses poker strategy to keep and discard the right cards, this challenge pretty much came straight down to luck of the draw. That said, I don't have any revolutionary ideas that would help make this challenge easier or faster.

Addiction Solitaire Badge Challenge
It All Adds Up Badge
Get 12 Jackpot Spins this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Even though this took 47 minutes (cha-ching cha-ching tho: 10,295 extra tokens!), Addiction Buddy made it so the game went as quickly as it could, and enabled me to get some chores done around the house while it worked. I mean, Play Buddy really knocked it outta the park with this amazing auto - I really fell in love with it, as I watched it play the first 10 minutes or so. Quick, smart, and good looking - what a package! Once again the efficiency of the bot rendered useless any ideas or suggestions: I have none for this challenge!

January 6, 2010: Trivial Pursuit and Jungle Gin

Trivial Pursuit Challenge
Rainbow Wedge Badge
Win 6000 tokens this week! (Completing this challenge requires playing several Daily Episodes)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

12 MINUTES and a whopping 7,187 extra tokens - ohhhhh yeah - doesn't get much better than that! Play Buddy sure has a winner with their Trivia Buddy. All I had to do was open it up and press autoplay and wham, bam, thank ya ma'am - DONE!

Jungle Gin Badge Challenge
Thorny Thicket Badge
Score 750 gin points (not tokens) this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Well, this challenge was the opposite of Trivial Pursuit: an hour playing time and only 1,432 tokens for the effort. Ack. But hey, it can't all be rainbows and sunshine now can it?! And at least I had Gin Buddy to conquer the challenge as I did other things. And even though the time was long, I'm pretty sure that it was faster than it would have been, if I had not changed the Buddy's Knock Limit (in the Options) to 6 instead of Gin. Oh goodness... if I had let it try to wait for Gin before knocking for every game, it'd probably still be playing! I mean, it was hard enough to the point where I swear Pogo rigged this one... half the time by Buddy didn't get to play because the computer robot was knocking and ending the round within three draws! Sheesh it was a doozie. But hey, like I said - rainbows and sunshine!

December 30, 2009: QWERTY and Pop Fu

QWERTY Challenge
Connect Effect Badge
Score a Connection Bonus 2 times this week! (Connect your own letters to your opponent's letters first)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

I could not believe my luck - whatever was Pogo thinking to gift TWO easy and fast challenges this week?! Wahoo! Of course then again if I wasn't using the amazing Quirty Buddy I probably could have tacked an extra hour or two to my time. BUT lucky for me it was Play Buddy to the rescue and with the help of this stellar auto, I completed the badge in 13 minutes and accumulated 1,955 more tokens. However, I quickly observed a couple of ways to make this time go by tons faster than if I had let the bot autoplay. Here's what I figured out:
When autoplaying the Buddy automatically plops out a word horizontally along the bottom BUT for this particular challenge we want to go up up UP since we have to make connections, and eventually over. So follow these steps:

Step 1: Instead of sticking the Buddy on autoplay, press the "scan" button at the start of your turn.

Step 2: Once the Buddy has scanned the board and your letters, press the "solve" button so the list of available solutions pops up.

Step 3: Click down the list until you find a word going in the direction you want (up up up then to the right), and play it!

Things to consider:

Play against a robot computer because they are faster and easier to beat than another human player (esp if that human happens to be using a bot, too!)
Be careful that you don't use words that are too big until closer to the end of the game / closer to the connection because if you go over the 800 points the game ends. In other words, you want to make the connection FIRST and then get mega words / mega points to end the game AFTER that connection happens.

So that should do it! Follow these guidelines and you're guaranteed to finish the badge as quickly as I did. :)

Pop Fu Badge Challenge
Kung Fu Cactus Badge
Pop 1000 balloons this week! (Balloons popped in the Speed Round do not count. Finish the game to check your progress)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

One word: WOW! 16 minutes and an additional 2,010 tokens tacked on top of the awarded 2,000 was impressive. Thank you Play Buddy! Aside from recommending the hardest level to pop more balloons at once, I don't have any helpful hints or tips for this challenge. In fact Foo Buddy was so fast and efficient that all ya have to do is turn it on and let it go and presto. Easy breezy (just how I like it!).