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!).

December 23, 2009: Dice City Roller and Aces Up

Aces Up Challenge
Pilot Wings Badge
Serve 500 customers this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Play Buddy has a great bot in Aces Up Buddy - as my extra 3,791 tokens can attest to - but during the 1 hour 43 minutes it took to complete the badge, I noticed a few little buggies that could make this bot even more of a flying ace. For instance, one time-waster was a loop that the Buddy would get stuck in when it ran out of moves; sometimes it would keep pressing "undo move" time and time and time and time again. So if you happen to see this, you can complete the badge faster just by clicking new game on behalf of the bot. Similarly, sometimes in those "dead end" game scenarios, you can see the dead end on the board before the Buddy does... starting a new game immediately at that time also speeds up the process.

Dice City Roller Challenge
Slice and Dice Badge
Correctly place 350 dice this week! (Finish the game to check your progress.)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Sadly no Play Buddy for this game, but at least the game was pretty fun and easy! So first off, bid for extra dice if you're playing the auction round, but I highly recommend playing the "No Auction" option since it goes a lot faster. I started out with the auction verson, not immediately realizing there was a no auction version and this definitely contributed a chunk of time to the 42 minutes it took to complete the challenge. Once I was in the no auction room, the dice count sped up noticeably and at the end of it all I earned an extra 1,937 tokens.

WARNING: You must get through all 4 quarters before you're awarded the final dice count.

December 16, 2009: Makeover Madness and Canasta

Canasta Challenge
Hooray Beret Badge
Make 25 Canastas this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Thanks to Canasta Buddy I CAN CANASTA! Honestly, I never knew what a canasta was, let alone how to get one so thank goodness for this canasta Pogo cheat. And actually, now I have a pretty good idea about how this game is played, thanks to my helper. Anywho, on to the juicy badge challenge details...

If I had known how to play and had been paying closer attention at the start of the challenge, I could have reduced the 57 minutes it took to achieve this badge (but hey, can't shake a stick at the appealing 6,346 extra tokens I won in addition to the challenge token bonus!). HOW?! You ask? Well, I had "meld cards immediately" checked under options and during Canasta Buddy's play, I noticed that it would use a 2 and joker wild cards to make a meld with cards in my hand (ex. I have 244777 in my hand so it selects ALL the cards to meld, applying the 2 to the 4's) but I'd place it with cards that were already melded, to increase my canastas (ex. I have KKKKK already melded, so instead of using the 2 in the prior example to go with the 4's, I apply the 2 to the KKKKK instead).

Final comment: remember to play against a computer robot, as they are easier and faster to beat (and is only 1 player instead of the group canasta games that you can play).

Makeover Madness Challenge
You're Gonna Make It Afterall Badge
Serve 500 customers this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Ahhhh, for a while there I forgot how nice it is to have a Play Buddy. And now this week it's back to two (YAY!). I love love LOVE that Makeover Buddy was available - I shudder to think how long this badge would have taken me on my own - as I wrapped this challenge up in 24 minutes with an extra 1,198 tokens. Make sure to put the difficulty level on "Holy Cow" because you get a whole room full of seats and clients, and Makeover Buddy is able to handle it all. I watched, mesmorized, at how game pieces were flying around the room and customers were zooming out of their chairs... it really is remarkable, especially considering my bumbling struggle with three chairs / customers on the easy level! Anyway, the challenge flew by and was a breeze thanks to my Buddy.

December 9, 2009: Lottso! Express and MONOPOLY

The Lottso! Express Challenge

Express Yourself Badge
Reach the fourth goal 6 times this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Sadly, no Lottso express Play Buddy to be my partner in crime this week (although there is a really awesome Lottso! pogo cheat available). And WHAT A SURPRISE from Pogo! The badge on the game page and badge challenge page says that you need to reach the 4th goal 6 times BUT after exactly 2 HOURS of playing (and 6,178 tokens) later, the green text that displays the progress in the chat room said I had reached 6 out of 15 4th goals! And once you log out of the game and return to the badge area, it says "COMPLETED" after the 6, even though the "badge complete" does not pop up and you don't receive the extra 3,000 bonus tokens. Of course who knows with this Pogo glitch... is it truly completed after 6 or did it suddenly change to 15, I dunno. As I was completing the MONOPOLY badge, Pogo put an announcement of this issue in the chat room but it had not yet been resolved.

At any rate, I did discover that it's helpful to get the big Lottso card early in the game like goal 1 or 2 so you have time to fill it up. It gave over 800 points on average, which is a significant amount more than the single cards which would give me around 60 points on average. HOWEVER it's hard to fill that large card up when you're running out of balls to play, so stick to the single cards later into the game. Also, get at least 1 bonus ball on the single cards so ya get 1.5x extra... do 2 balls if you can spare them since that gives 2x bonus.

BTW, to make things move even faster, start a new game as soon as the green sign pops up saying you've reached the 4th goal; even though you're prompted with a "are you sure you want to start a new game? All of your credit will be lost" your 4th goal accomplishment IS counted towards the badge.

MONOPOLY Badge Challenge

Monopolizing Badge
Roll doubles 15 times this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

The bad news: be prepared to have your butt kicked by robots and watch everyone get doubles except for you!
The good news: this is an easy no-brainer challenge... just requires you to keep clicking "roll" and cross your fingers and hope for the best (and while there isn't a PB Monopoly Buddy yet, I did see one for Monopoly Slots)!

WARNING: even when you make your 15 doubles, do NOT stand up in the middle of the game; Pogo doesn't say this, but the doubles are counted up only at the end of games so you have to complete the entire game even if you get your 15th double on turn 1 of the game like I did (I had to learn the hard lesson... thought "great! Now I'll leave since I know I have 15 doubles!" WRONG!). By learning from my mistake, you'll likely complete the challenge faster than my 1 hour 32 minutes. And if you're really lucky, you'll beat my extra 2,120 tokens too!

Helpful ways to make this challenge go by faster are to:

1. Play against robots (they're much faster than humans)
2. Checkmark "Speedy Dialogs"
3. Buy everything when you land on it (otherwise auction has to transpire)
4. Reject all offers (otherwise have to transpire through that process)

December 2, 2009: Word Search Daily and BATTLESHIP

The Word Search Daily Challenge

Winter Search Badge
Find 120 words this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens

And as Heidi Klum would say... "One day you're in, and the next day you're out." Last week I had a Play Buddy to help with every challenge and this week *poof*. No Buddies. *sad face*. Anyway... at least this game was fun (in my opinion). Now, on to the challenge details.

Three words: PLAY ON EASY! I started this challenge on medium and while medium provides more words at once, it's not easy finding all of those words and it took a lot of time. On average my puzzles took over 5 minutes when on medium; switching to easy I was breezing through 'em like Super Woman. To solve the puzzle even faster, do what I did: use the HINT feature. You can use the hint (that's right, ya only get one hint for the whole puzzle) and the word will still count towards the badge. I suggest using my strategy of saving the hint until you've solved all but 2 or 3 of the words. If you can't find them in a few short seconds, blast that hint on the shortest word since those are harder to find than longer ones.

PLAYER BEWARE: the "Random" puzzles don't count towards the badge. Unfortunately for me it took a couple of those to figure it out. So, all in all, my 34 minute finish with an extra 1,266 tokens was well done indeed... especially towards the end - I figure I did as well as any bot could on my last few puzzles! ;0)

BATTLESHIP Badge Challenge

Direct Hit! Badge
Get 300 hits this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens

45 minutes into this badge and I realized WHY I LOVE Buddies, and why - if it weren't for them - I'd have pulled out all my hair and quit Pogo games a long time ago! LOL This was a doozie at 1 hour 33 minutes of blasting ships out of the water and receiving a doozie of an extra 6,903 tokens in the process. Thankfully I was playing against the computer robot which is MUCH easier to beat than a human player, and on the basic game (NOT classic which lets you shoot only once per turn... oh goodness that would take years!). Basic math will tell you that if you win the game, you're closer to clearing the 300 hits than if you're losing the game. So definitely DEFINITELY play against the helpful robots for this challenge.

Some strategy for winning: go for the powerup squares on your first move to get an advantage; I placed a hit in 3 different squares, trying to get a powerup AND hit a target simultaneously. Try to get a powerup almost every turn, especially if you're not hitting / sinking targets. BUT SAVE 2 POWERUPS! If things get desperate (i.e. computer sinks 2 of your ships) OR if you're close to winning but can't find the last ship, this is when you hit BOTH powerup squares so that you can get 2 powerups at once which turn into the heat seeking missles (i.e. your sure-fire win).

Oh please Play Buddy... what I want for Christmas is a Battleship Buddy before the next Battleship challenge!