[jessriedel]

> We ended up giving the lower difficulty levels a restricted dictionary anyway, but this was to affect players' perception of the difficulty rather than the actual difficulty (the AI on "beginner" mode shouldn't be playing a lot of words you've never heard of)

It seems to me like a restricted dictionary or smaller time budget (or, for that matter, dumber search algorithms) are all sensible measures of a low difficulty level. Otherwise you're using "difficulty" to mean "difficult for me to program cleverly" rather than "difficult to beat" or "like a human expert".

[asdfologist]

I think you missed the point that a restricted dictionary actually increased the difficulty to the user.

[jessriedel]

I don't think so? The restricted dictionary is for the AI, not the user.

[asdfologist]

"it played better when all words of seven or more letters were removed from its vocabulary."

[jessriedel]

Oh, I see what you mean now. Thanks, I think you're right.