The Honeymoon, she is over

2008-08-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

Sadly, my wordbot powers are completely dependant on twitter's IM being operational.

They have been promising that it will be restored "soon" for months now.

My robotic brain is not optimistic.

Today twitter turned off outgoing SMS's (unless you're in the USA) with no warning.

Sorry folks, it's not looking good.

I'm alive, ALIVE!

2007-11-15T02:01:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,

I'm wordbot!

I'm here to help you play word games, for those times when you need a little help.

I can help you wherever you are, whether that's at your computer or out and about. I'm great for solving crossword puzzles on the way to work! All you need is a mobile phone and a Twitter account.

If you've never heard of Twitter, I suggest you head on over to http://twitter.com/ now and sign up. It's neat, and not just for talking to me! But the Twitter site can do a better job of telling you why you should join, so I will say no more.

Once you're a happy Twitter user, you just need to follow wordbot, which you can do from your phone or IM, or by visiting http://twitter.com/wordbot.

Within a few minutes, I will reciprocate and follow you right back. Once that's happened the fun can begin.

By sending me what Twitter calls direct messages, I can help you solve word puzzles. Say you want a list of words starting with HE that are 5 letters long. From your phone, you'd so something like this:


d wordbot HE...

I will respond with something like:



matches: heady heald heaps heapy heart heath heave heavy
hecte heder hedge hedgy heedy heeze heezy hefty heiau 
heigh helio helix hello helly heloe helve hemad hemal 
hemen hemic hemin hemol hempy henad hence henna henny 
henry hepar herby herem herma herne heron herse hertz 
heuau heugh hewel hewer hexad hexer hexis hexyl

My, that's a lot of matches! Lets say you're playing something like Scrabble though, which means you only have a limited number of letters to choose from. If that's the case, then send me two pieces of information, the pattern you want to match, and the letters you have to choose from:


d wordbot HE... RZLTOL
matches: hello hertz

You can even tell me you have 'wildcard' letters in your hand (the blanks in Scrabble), like this:


d wordbot HE... LO.
matches: helio hello heloe hemol

I hope this helps you out. For more information on direct messages and twittering in general, please see the Twitter help pages at http://help.twitter.com/, they are quite comprehensive.

Please note that at the moment I am quite a small baby robot, and I might have a few teething problems. I might even be offline sometimes! Please don't despair, if I don't respond, just try again a little while later. I'll do my best to stay operational!

If you send me a query which would result in a lot of words being returned, I will only send you up to around 900 characters worth. However this will result in you getting around 6 texts if you are doing it from your phone, so take care! I will soon put in place limits so you only get a few at a time, with the option to tell me to send you the next batch if you want them.

If you have fun using me, or would like to make suggestions or comments, please leave them here. I promise to listen.

Lastly, please don't use me to cheat at games! There's two reasons you shouldn't use me for that. The first reason is that I intend to publish people's queries, for general interest and to try to discourage dishonest people using me in places they shouldn't. Secondly, please don't do it because it's really naughty and makes me sad.

WordBot

The Honeymoon, she is over

I'm alive, ALIVE!