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I have not yet seen words repeated yet. I also would not be surprised if your theory is spot on.

Are all the words from the physical game in this edition?

We played two games and had a word turn up in both games - made me wonder how big the word list was.

Have never seen repeats within a single game, but I've seen quite a few repeats between games now and I've played maybe ~15 games total.

I played 2 games and in my second game we had a repeat. We definitely need a longer word list or this game won't be very good for repeat players. I realise that this was a lucky (unlucky?) occurrence, but with 13 words per game and using the cards randomly you would expect to see repeats every 5 games or so. That's much too often.

If you play using the board game you don't have repeats because you will use new cards for each game rather than selecting randomly.

Is it currently possible to get the same word twice in the same game? Because I think that should be impossible and would consider it a bug (as opposed to this suggestion).

I have just put up a suggestion for 'Replace Word' button for when this happens

In the interest of providing another data point…we have played 3 times this week and have had just one word show up as a repeat.

I see repeats between games. But based on the high volume of play in BGA I also agree the word list needs to be increased. especially as people hit rematch and you're playing with the same group of people again.

As of today I've played 5 games and have seen words from one game come up again in a later game.

I've played 5 games so far. 3 of those games had 1 word that was in a previous game. 1 of those games had 2 words that were in a previous game.

Hi. I've now played 7 games and have seen repeated words at least 3 times : bracelet, mask, scorpion. I thought there was another word but I cannot think of it right now.

I have played 10 games or less, definitely seen a few too many repeats, had skate come up 4 times, twice in a row just before which why I came to suggestions!

Thanks!

A bit of statistical analysis to bolster this:

In 10 games, you see 130 words. Each of these words can be randomly the same as each of the 117 words outside its own game.
This means we have 130*117/2 = 7605 potential clashes between games.
But each such pair only clashes with a probability of 1/550.
Since 7605 / 550 is about 14, we should expect about 14 repeats in 10 games. So 4 repeats is actually quite a bit below average.

(This surprisingly large number of expected repeats in a pool is known as the "birthday paradox" - because you only need 28 people in a room to have better than even odds of a shared birthday).

My two cents of statistics after 17 games played myself:

3 words appeared in three of my games.
25 words appeared in two of my games.
131 words appeared in just one game of mine.

Big numbers don't seem biased, so I don't think the game has a particular problem with randomness.

However, I've seen in some games here and there some streaks of "what are the odds?" moments (like in Pandemic or Forbidden Island) which might pinpoint to the framework random seed used for all games. I think a few months ago there was a BGA announcement saying the random seed was gong to have an update, but I don't know if this has taken place or not.

Just had the same word in three games. Can't the code from 'Concepts' effectively be used to create the same card selection that's in the physical game?

If you play multiple games of Just One you will absolutely see a lot of repeated words.
This game really needs more words to be playable online.

@Geomattics, regarding 3 consecutive appearances of same word:

With perfectly random selection from 550 words, the odds of seeing the same word in 3 consecutive games are about 1 in 140 (or perhaps a little less because we don't actually see the full 13 words in each game).

If you play long enough, it's bound to happen (as will a lot of other "what are the odds?" moments). I see you've played an impressive 84 games, so the odds of this happening sometime during your games are actually quite high.

Patterns and repeats are more likely than we intuitively think, and do not indicate a problem with the random generator.

The problem isn't with the random generator but with the limited pool of possible words.

It's no big deal when a repeat happens and I'm playing with a different group of people on a different day since clues change, etc. This is, however, most annoying when the same group of people rematches 2 or 3 games in a row and gets a repeat. In one recent pair of games, we got a repeat and it was even the same person guessing that word as in previous game, which is just silly. Sure, it's an easy point to score, but it's not sa fun, and I think this game is more for fun than for points.

Yes, there is no way to completely get rid of this possibility, it's simple statistics after all, but it could be improved by widening the pool of words, or by adding an option to exchange a word as suggested in boardgamearena.com/bug?id=68193 -- that way when the same group of people gets a repeat they could vote to change it instead of just throwing the same boring clues at it.

If this feature is added, I'd like to suggest an implementation.

In the table settings, have a drop down with the following options:

WORD LIST
- Original set
- Expanded set
- Themed set #1
- Themed set #2


Themed sets could potentially be added later, and would be things like "TV and movies", "geek culture", "adults only", etc (these are just ideas/examples). I've noticed that many players like to play with references, like "Gordon" for "Flash" or that guy from Harry Potter for "worm", and themed sets could be fun in this context.

This complaint started July 9. The word list is WAAAAY too small. We're seeing the same words 10 or more times. If Wordle can do it, so can you!

Word pool was actually doubled when playing in French was enabled. :)

Out of 4 games, we saw 'Corner' 3 times so far.

Clarify the rule:
are SING and SONG allowed for each other?
Is HAT allowed for SOMBRERO? If so, is it an acceptable guess for sombrero?

I did exactly 10 games. There is a word that I have seen 4 times!

The original game has 110 cards, each with 5 words to guess numbered from 1 to 5. That is 550 words.
Maybe there is a problem in the draw algorithm? It may not take into account all the available words?

I confirm there are 550 words in the game, no more, no less. I've played with them all. It wasn't until my ~400 game or so that I got to play with the last one. I've kept track of the words from my finished games and they form a bell curve. After over 600 games, with my least played word I've played just 4 times, while with my most played word I've played 26 times.

For French I haven't played that much but I have read many game logs and collected ~520 words and I'm 1000% sure there are 550 words as well.

Even if I I upvoted this bug report myself at least a couple of months ago, I've learned to enjoy having the same set of words without any new ones (except for the "cornhole" replacement). Because there are a couple of meta-games that are actually really fun:

1) Clue polishing. Constantly trying to find better clues for every word in the pool by either research, own thinking or stealing them from other players. The goal is to have a great pool of clues to give for any word. And because players keep copying clues from each other, no clue is safe from clashing after a while, so this quest becomes like an eternal search for the holy grail.

2) Coming up with "smart" clues to challenge the guesser. The primary goal here is not to find the "optimal" clues to make the mystery word obvious (as above), but to give guessers the right ammount of challenge. These clues should not be too obscure (after all we all want the guesser to guess), just the right level of difficulty. This works great in 3-4p games with other experienced players because giving two clues allows for many interesting meta-clues.

In a nutshell: I understand why players ask for new words (like I said, I even upvoted it myself), but for me it's not a priority.

It seems that KuWizard is keeping the game faithful to the developers' creation, in that they are using the 550-word list, and no more. I don't know if they have their hands tied when it comes to adding more words.

If that isn't the case, could a community-created and curated word list be added on as an option? Those that suggested themed word lists are definitely on the right track... why not just a massively expansive general word list?

Just got to 24 games today and found this thread after I saw a word for the 3rd time. I didn't realize the corpus was so small.

I'd also enjoy playing with a larger set of words to guess from.

I've played 4 or 5 games and it's already mostly repeats--I'm surprised the wordlist supposedly has 550 words, as I've seen so many duplicates.

Maybe an optional setting when creating the game that adds an expanded wordlist for frequent players?

Would there be some way to globally randomize the list? ie, shuffle the list and when any game asks for a word, pull it from this full list? Then when the list is empty, refill it and re-randomize it. Would at least mean you'd see 550 words (globally) before the possibility of a repeat.

Ciffy’s suggestion, right above me, is good. I’d like to add to it. If we were to do this, it would likely need to be an available words list for each player. Then when a game starts, this list for each player in the game would have to be “added” together before then picking random words for the game.

I love Just One and your implementation on BoardGameArena. I've hit the issue of seeing words repeated with playing it so much offline.

There is an expansion but sadly it's only in German. boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/317124/just-one-neue-begriffe I know it would be an instant buy for me if they published it in English. I wonder if the publisher would consider a translation of that being offered as an additional word/card list?

There's also a fan expansion. boardgamegeek.com/filepage/223866/just-one-fan-expansion Potentially the publisher could be asked if they would be happy for that to be included? I've played with it a lot offline and I'd strongly recommend it. The only quirk is it has a small number of quite Australian words that are very difficult for those outside of Australia to guess and give clues for.

We've only played 4 rounds of Just One and unfortunately keep seeing words that we've already had come up.

I just played four different rounds of this game (on four different days) and, in the last game, I got 6 out of the 13 as repeat words. It was very frustrating. I read somewhere that the current English list is 550 words. That doesn't seem right, given the number of repeats I just experienced.

We have to giggle how the game with hundreds of words will put pearl, necklace, screw,. Box, tongue, pie all in the same game. Just a bad game for dirty minds?

The game is in dire need of new words. The player base has significantly lowered because of the words being too easily guessable.

@KuWizard my comment was not targeting you specifically, I will try and contact repos but if I'm the only one doing so, sadly not much can be done about it.

I am happy to let you know that Repos replied to me saying new words should be implemented in the upcoming months.

Repos Production m'a répondu qu'ils comptaient ajouter de nouveaux mots dans les prochains mois.

ibb.co/27Jx59Ds

Have you had any updates by chance?

Umm... the stats are solid and all, but might be missing something. In the real game you flip a card with 5 words and, yes, the guesser picks one at random. However, if any clue giver has just done that word recently, they can prompt the guesser to choose something else, thereby directly avoiding repeats. I get that that's an "undocumented feature" of the physical game and I'm not suggesting it needs to be implemented on BGA, but it might mean that the 550 words repeat less in practice than the stats would indicate.

We’ve just added 550 new words from the latest Just One edition, available in both French and English!

Plus, you now have the option to choose whether to play with or without cultural reference words.

Have fun and enjoy the game!

Great News, thanks to Shassdow for reaching out the publisher!