Having problems playing the games?

The Anagram Fever website and Word Twiddle game are still fairly new and under constant development. As such, I am constantly changing things, and it is inevitable that bugs will occur. I try to do as much testing as is realistically possible, but unfortunately in the Internet world no 2 systems are ever exactly alike.

When a problem does happen, there are a number of fairly standard things you can try:

1. Clear your browser cache, then click the refresh button in your browser to reload the page.

The Word Twiddle web client has to communicate with the CGI code on the server. If I update the server code and your browser is still using a cached copy of the HTML/JavaScript then there can be a communications failure. Or if I have recently fixed a bug and your browser is still using an old cached copy of the JavaScript then you won't notice the fix.

2. Try using a different web browser

I endeavour to test the game play on Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. However, for whatever reason sometimes there is a bug that only happens on one browser. Or in some cases, the bug will only happen on one browser *on your computer*. You don't need to use the alternate browser forever, but in most cases it will at least be helpful to me when you report a bug if you can tell me that it happens specifically on browser X.

3. Try to logout and re-login

Anagram Fever uses a session cookie to remember who is logged in on each computer in order to keep a record of your scores. If the login session expires on the server but the client is still using the cookie, then most of the CGI requests to the server will fail. You can fix this by just logging in again.

4. Debug the issue using developer tools

If you are an experienced web developer or programmer, you may be able to help me debug the issue on your computer. Let me know if you have this kind of background. A basic qualifying question would be "Do you know what Firebug is?".

Reporting issues

If you have questions or issues regarding WordTwiddle, you can either contact me directly, post in the Anagram Fever online forums, or post in one of the Facebook groups such as "Save Word Twist" or "Petition to keep Word Twist..."

Most of the time, when you are experiencing a strange bug, that issue is only happening on your computer. The reason is that if everyone was seeing this bug, then multiple people would be talking about it on the Facebook groups and I probably would have fixed it already. Unfortunately, issues that happen only on one person's computer are the most difficult ones for me to solve. I appreciate your patience, and I hope you will at least try the steps listed above to try to solve the problem.

Last update: Wednesday Oct 05, 2011 by Andrew K