Beterword - Free Buzzword Alternative

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gmaiorana22
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Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:30 pm

Beterword - Free Buzzword Alternative

Post by gmaiorana22 »

I am proud to announce the full release of Beterword! Beterword is a website that offers a very similar game experience to NAQT's Buzzword, but is completely free-to-play.

We are now in Week 3 of Beterword. After a soft launch in Week 1 and a larger release last week, all are now welcome to play the game. There will be a new 20-tossup game every week, and I am considering doing some single-subject specials as well. If you want to read a week and/or pick questions, please email the address listed at the bottom of this post.

Users are strongly encouraged to use valid emails and their real names when signing up for the game.

Beterword can be found at this link.

Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions. Enjoy the game!
Grant Maiorana
Solon High School '22
Purdue '26

Play Beterword! https://beterword.com
[email protected]
beter#6031
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Mike Bentley
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Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:03 pm
Location: Bellevue, WA
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Re: Beterword - Free Buzzword Alternative

Post by Mike Bentley »

What's the process for creating a packet / tournament on this platform? Is that something that's going to be open for anyone to do independently? Unless I'm mistaken, this capability isn't offered by Qblitz either.

I do think it would be cool if some platform made it super easy to create such a set. You could imagine even having a lower-quality experience where it uses a text-to-speech to read questions so someone doesn't have to record all the questions. (In my opinion, the best text-to-speech voices these days are comparable to a decent quizbowl moderator.)
Mike Bentley
Treasurer, Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence
Adviser, Quizbowl Team at University of Washington
University of Maryland, Class of 2008
gmaiorana22
Lulu
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:30 pm

Re: Beterword - Free Buzzword Alternative

Post by gmaiorana22 »

Allowing anyone to host a game by inputting questions and answers could be a good addition to Beterword, but I think part of the appeal of the game (and of the original Buzzword) is that everyone plays the same questions and that a new game is released weekly.

At this time, there is unfortunately no easy way for individuals to host their own games on Beterword. The website is structured to host one game per week. I think there is definitely a place for some kind of text-to-speech question reader (I know Michael Karpov was working on such a project a while back) and I would love to work on making it happen.

If anyone out there has development experience and would like to assist me in creating such a feature for Beterword or a spin-off website, please reach out. Also, if any of you have interest in helping me develop Beterword further, please let me know - I'm a complete amateur at web development and have probably overlooked or screwed up a lot of things.
Grant Maiorana
Solon High School '22
Purdue '26

Play Beterword! https://beterword.com
[email protected]
beter#6031
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