Scribblenauts’ 22,000+ Word Dictionary Leaked, Knows English Better Than You
I was at first massively impressed with the sheer size of the recently leaked Scribblenauts dictionary, which sits at a whopping 22,802 playable words, but I was more surprised to learn what a poor grasp I have on the English language. Here are a few usable words that I can’t even tell you what they mean. Yes, I went to a good college.
- Abscissin
- Abten
- Abyssina
- Acapnotic
- Acetabulu
- Achronite
- Acreage
- Actinomet
- Adenoma
- Adequan
- Adespoton
- Adminicile
- Adriamycin
And as you can tell, this is only in the Aa-Ad section. And I skipped a bunch. I don’t think I’m alone here, even spell check doesn’t understand most of these.
This has me thinking, has Scribblenauts gone too far? What the hell is the point in programming in thousands of words that quite literally only a handful of people can recognize? I applaud them from being thorough, but this is borderline ridiculous.
But this brings up a larger question. With 22,000 programmable words, I’ve yet to read any sort of explanation of just how the programmers did it. Not only did they have to make physical in game objects for each word (though some overlap), they had to program how they interact with each other. Unless production started on this game in 1929, I can’t imagine how they did it in such a short amount of time. Can anyone explain this?
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[...] The complete Scribblenauts 22,000 word dictionary – [Double Kill] [...]
I can’t explain any of this, but I look forward to the copy of Scribblenauts that my husband has ordered to arrive tomorrow…The 22,000+ dictionary got me wondering how many words there are in the English language. Any clue?
Also, I felt equally dumb at your word list, other than acreage. Isn’t that just a parcel of farm-land?
You are correct, though I can’t imagine what exactly a parcel of farm-land is going to do for you in the game.
> even spell check doesn’t understand most of
> these.
Speaking of spell check, a good program is Spell Check Anywhere (SpellCheckAnywhere.Com). It adds spell check to all programs.
If you play the game, you can tell that there isnt much else to program in it other than the dictionary. The movement isnt very good, the graphics are good for the DS, but they are on the DS, there is no story etc. I think that Fifth Cell knew that this project would take a lot of work, so they focused on the easiest system to develop on and put all of their time into the dictionary.
I remember reading an interview with the lead developer and he was saying that they had categories that they could assign all the different objects to, which helped cut down on the work as many objects fall into similar categories. As for object interactions, I think the same philosophy stands. They could chose which thing the object was going to interact with, and they had a list of ways objects can interact (so the pianist will head over to the piano and play, and the guitarist will head over to the guitar and play). Of course there are unique interactions, but you’d be surprised at how many animals just get angry and attack everything in sight.
As for the word list, I think it makes perfect sense to have words in there that people dont know, so that you can market the game as ACTUALLY allowing you to spawn anything (though I couldnt spawn an incinerator for some reason).
Also, acreage spawns two trees, a lamp post and a bench.