The Shiny Monkeys is a Words With Friends club.
All three of the Hale siblings were playing the Scrabble-like online game Words With Friends from Zynga. Ben had discovered that in addition to just playing the game you could join a club and earn trophies for the club. He told the other siblings and we all joined the same club he was a member of (The Donuts). Thanks to our competitive natures we soon found that The Donuts weren't nearly as interested in advancing up the ranks as we were. None of us were officers of the club so we had no control over who could be added or removed from the club. We decided to create our own club.
On 9/25/23 the Shiny Monkeys club was formed by Tod (brother-in-law) and we were all made officers and we started recruiting for our new club!
Where did the name of the club come from? There are two TV series that we all liked immensely and each word came from one of those TV Shows. “Shiny” was something they said in the series “Firefly” that indicated that something was “cool” or “neat” or “awesome”. The word “Monkeys” came from the TV series “12 Monkeys” which is a Sci-Fi series with a lot of time travel in it. I think it might still be available on Netflix if you are interested in time traveling Sci-Fi shows. Really well done.
So there you have it! Shiny Monkeys!
John seemed to have the most time and interest in running the club so he is the president. The other officers in the club are Tod, Torso Jack, Ben, and Gayla.
Overall, we have a pretty good club. We are friendly but not overly chatty and we have a core group of players who like to play a lot. Our club currently bounces between the Platinum 1 and the Gold 2 level in the standings depending on the other clubs we are up against each week. I don't think we will ever be one of the top clubs with their 5+ million trophies in a week (who has time for that?!?) but it would be nice to be able to stay at the platinum level without struggling to stay above the cutoff line each week!
Here is what happened with the John Hale Words With Friends account. When I tried to play the game this morning, I got a pop up that said, "YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN BANNED" It went on to say, "This account has exhibited unsporting or illicit behavior and has been banned. The safety of our players is a top priority." And then there was a link to their Terms of Service.
I guess I don't know for certain what happened, but I think the reason for the banning is that I was experimenting with collecting game completion trophies on a second phone. Honestly, I wasn't sure if it was adding trophies to our club totals or not because when I would go back to my main phone, most of the time it showed nearly the same totals as what I had before collecting on the second phone. I was just doing it in case it was increasing our totals (I guess it was). And I liked watching the numbers go higher on the second phone! If it was increasing our trophy count, it wasn't by much. I surely don't think it was the difference between our advancing to the next level or staying at the current level. I don't think any other team got cheated out of anything and I certainly don't think I put any player's safety in danger!
If they had just sent me a message telling me to knock it off (and specified what "it" was), I would have stopped. The difference wasn't enough to matter. I don't know if it is a lifetime ban or just temporary. Yes, I know I can create a new account and start playing again. And maybe I will eventually. But for now, I will step away for a bit and take my punishment. :-)
The goal for someone in any club is to earn as many trophies as possible to advance the standing of the club. If someone just wants to play a few WWF games a week with family and friends, that is fine - but they don't really need to be in a club to do that. If someone is in a club, they should be making a concerted effort to play as many games as they can to earn as many trophies as they can for the club.
Trophies are earned in several different ways.
All of the trophy counts mentioned above can be DOUBLED if you are playing or watching the Trophy advertisement videos, or collect the Daily Rewards while there is a DOUBLER going on!
Doublers have to be “bought” using the in-game coins that you can earn (see next section). Assuming you have enough coins to buy a doubler (25 coins buys 30 minutes and the much better deal is the 2 hour doubler for 50 coins), select the “Clubs” menu item in the lower right, then select the LEADERBOARD menu option near the top middle of the screen, then scroll all the way to the top. There you will see a “Trophy Boost” section. If there is already a doubler going on, it will show you how much time is left in the doubler. There are also 2 buttons in that section where you can select either the 30 minute or two hour doubler. Whichever one you want to buy, just tap the button once. Be careful here! I have done this when I had a bad internet connection and it didn't look like it took my purchase so I tapped it a few more times. I ended up buying 8 hours of doubler time! So tap it once and give it a minute to show the doubler has started.
There are a few ways to earn coins.
Each day you can watch up to 10 videos and earn 3 coins per video. You can earn 30 coins per day this way. Yes, the advertisement videos are annoying but again, there is no law that says you can't be doing other things while those videos are playing!
To get to the videos, select the “Store” menu item near the lower right (next to the “Clubs” menu item). On the screen that takes you to, there is a blue button near the top middle that says “Watch to earn”. Tap that button to watch the first video. You have to watch them all the way through to get credit for them and earn the 3 coins. When that is done, tap the button to watch the next video. The game will let you know when you have watched all you are able to watch in a day (which is 10).
If there isn't a doubler currently going on, watch all of your coin earning videos for the day.
You can play all your pending games if you want to of course, but I much prefer to play when there is a doubler going on. If there isn't a doubler, one thing I like to do is play all my pending games up to the nearest 50 level so that my next play in the game will earn some trophies. I call that “cinching up my games."
If there IS a doubler going on, watch your Trophy earning videos first. That is an easy 1600 trophies! If the Wordle Puzzle game is available to play, be sure to play it while there is a doubler going on. Then play as many games as you can as fast as you can!
You can play whoever you like whether they are a part of the Shiny Monkeys or not. Any trophies you earn will be added to the club total. But ideally, you will be playing other Shiny Monkeys club members so that the trophies accumulate from BOTH players.
The way to get a list of the people in our club (and see how many trophies everyone currently has) is to select the “Clubs” menu icon in the lower right and then select the LEADERBOARD menu near the top middle of the screen then tap on the Shiny Monkeys group listed there. That is a list of everyone in the club. You can click on someone's name in that list to start a game with them.
The Fast Play method is the same game as WWF but with a different objective. In the regular play of WWF, the objective is to score more points than your opponent and win the game. In the Fast Play method, the objective is to accumulate as many trophies as you can as quick as you can for the benefit and advancement of the club. It doesn't matter who wins the game.
As mentioned previously, there are two ways to earn trophies during game play. The first is by getting to 50 points and then to 100 and so on. The second is at the end of the game when winner and loser trophies are awarded. One thing we discovered was that if both players have at least 100 points and the game is resigned, end of game trophies will still be awarded. The “winner” (the one who does NOT resign) will get 100 trophies plus the 50 trophy winner bonus (double those numbers if there is a doubler going on) and the “loser” (the one who resigned) will get 100 trophies (double that number if there is a doubler going on). It doesn't matter who has more points when the resignation takes place, the one doing the resigning is considered the loser for the purposes of awarding trophies.
You might be wondering how trophies add up any quicker if you are playing a game to 100 and then starting a new one and playing that to 100 as opposed to just staying in the first game and playing that to 200 or 300 or 400 at the end. Turns out, it is easier to make bigger scores on wide open boards than it is in the traditional game where you get down to where you can only play 1 or 2 tiles at a time. And often those games are already decided as far as who is going to win so it just wastes time if the goal is to accumulate as many trophies as possible as fast as possible.
Many of the people we have taught this method to have commented on how much more fun the game is when both are playing this way. There are a few more “rules” to this style of play that help it go even faster and smoother so let me outline them now.
Remember that the objective is not to win. The objective is to accumulate trophies for the club. If I get to 100 first, I am going to keep playing while I wait for you to get to 100. During that time, I may go over 150 or 200 or even higher. Great! That is more trophies for the club! Since we don't care who wins the game, I don't waste a lot of time looking for the very best move I can make to get the most points or worry that I may be setting you up on a triple word score. In fact, if I am already over 100 and waiting for you to get there, I will look for ways to set you up so you can get there quicker!
Let's look at a couple scenarios to see how this plays out. Suppose I am at 115 and your next play takes you to 102. When it is my turn, I will first check to see if I can get to 150 on my next play. If I can, I make that play because those are easy trophies to get! If I can't get to 150 on my next play, even though I have more points than you, I will resign the game. I will get the 100 loser trophies and you will get the 150 winner trophies because I resigned. That doesn't seem fair, does it? After all, I had more points. But like I said, the objective isn't to notch more wins, the objective is more trophies! Besides, I figure it all evens out over time. You will resign games to me when you are ahead some time in the future.
Here is another rule that we have been following. The person who is behind when the resignation takes place is the one who challenges back. It doesn't matter who resigns, it matters who has the fewest points. So, in the scenario above, I resigned but I had more points so I don't start a new game. You will see on your side that you have a completed game. You open it and it awards you your trophies and tells you that I resigned. You look at the scores and see that you had fewer points so you know to hit the rematch button. If everyone plays the same way, it will keep from getting too many games going between the same two people.
Speaking of which, I have found that having 4 games against each opponent playing the fast method is the sweet spot. With that many games, it seems like every time you cycle through your games you are either going over 50 or 100 or resigning and collecting trophies.
Here is another scenario. If I have 210 and you have 94, I can't resign because both players aren't over 100. So I play and get my score to 215 (stupid rack full of vowels!). You play a monster and go all the way over 100 to 142. Now it is my turn and the score is 215 to your 142. I will look to see if I can make it to 250 (but I can't because of all the vowels) so I could resign the game now because we are both over 100. But before I do, I will look to see what your score is. If I think (and it is just a guess) that you will be able to go over the next 50 mark on your next play, I won't resign. I want you to get those easy trophies on your next play! My rule of thumb is that I will let you try if you are within 15 points of the next 50 unless there is a tight board and no chance for double or triple word scores. Since you are at 142 I will go ahead and play instead of resigning and get myself up to 230. You play and get to 155 so yay! You got those trophies I was hoping you would get. Now it is my turn again and I do the same thing. Check to see if I can get to the next 50. If so, I play it. If not, I prepare to resign but I check your score just to be sure. If I don't think you can make it to your next 50, I resign it.
All that takes a long time to type and to read, but believe me, after you have walked through the scenarios a few times it becomes pretty much second nature. Sure, “mistakes” will happen (Oh! I should have resigned that last time or Oops! I resigned when you were at 149. I should have let you play). No big whoop. Just play on to the next opportunity to resign.
Another scenario I just thought of. If you decide it is time to resign and the score is tied, you are the one who will challenge back. It just works out best that way.
There are quite a few people on the Shiny Monkeys who like to play this way. If you are interested in giving it a try, please reach out to John or Gayla Hale in a game and we can play through a few games to make sure there aren't any questions.
You may be thinking…. “Isn't this cheating?” I don't think so. We are playing within the rules of the game set up by the maker of the game. If they didn't want us to be able to play this way, they could update the game to make it not work. And they might at some time in the future. Until then, this method of play is faster, more fun (in my opinion), and accumulates trophies at a faster rate!
In May of 2024 I started keeping track of team stats in a spreadsheet. This covers our team totals score and the scores of some of the top players. If you find that kind of thing interesting, take a look!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lPSoT2V9kmdmVO3hIiIxZfALButXsu0EP6_Z32c7AU4/edit?usp=sharing
Another thing I am planning to set up is a Shiny Monkeys chat room outside of the Words With Friends game. When I have that working, I will let everyone know about it. Obviously, participation will be optional. I have a home lab and I just like to tinker. :-)