Bug Stomp

what are your ranks?

on those two questions, I have [20,5] and they both work

rank of 50

You: What is the first letter in the word elephant
Bot: Er...E

You: What letter does elephant start with
Bot: E

You: what does apple start with
Bot: I will say A

here it is
Considered BLAB (1).
Random Memory Number: 28 of 28
Memory Chance: 27 GossipTopic: 0 MemoryLevel: 1
You: what's the first letter in ark
Bot: Do ya still think, I blew the cbc?

Ok found the problem
You: what's the first letter in ark
Bot: I will say A
You: what's the first letter in the word arc
Bot: It starts with A

I had the keyphrase with (the word|) and it went to xnone. I went to a wild card * and it works.

There you go girl. Nicely done.

By the way... Who is CBC??

I think it means ChatterBotChallenge.

Play on words, Lars

Yep, maybe Bildgesmythe is still holding a grudge from last year when I told him he blew the Chatterbot Challenge. I still can't figure how (the word|) would make the AI engine go to blab1.

Not sure but did you hit the spacebar after (the word|), otherwise the engine would read ........(the word|)ark, etc.
Maybe (the word |) would work?

How did you get that keyphrase to work, the regexes I've tried don't work, any hints? Hope you're not working with plug-ins for each letter of the alphabet.

I used A([abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]+) (re) and made one for each letter of the alphabet
I still had a time ith the (the word|) so I just made a keyphrase for
what * does A([abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]+) start with (re)
what letter does u([abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]+) start with (re)
etc

The space didn't help
I am still going nuts because there are so many ways to ask what the first letter is. If I could use (letter|) (does |) I could cover a lot more in one keyphrase

See, the simple approach is often the best, I tried to avoid your solution and went for a one keyphrase catch all approach:
..([(abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz])([(abcdefghijklmnopqrst
uvwxyz]+) (re) and then hoped to be (key1) the first part of the regex and return (key1) as the result. Last night, after giving it some rest, I realized that what you found out already was the way to go, thanks though...

As a non native speaker I will not begin to try to think of all the ways one could ask for the first letter of a word, but maybe this will get you in a direction worth exploring.
Rather then trying (letter|) (does |), as in your example earlier, can't you list complete sentences like
(What is the first letter in the word|What is the first letter in|etc, etc..|) A([abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]+) (re)
or
A([abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]+) start with$ (re)

Still a lot of work and hard thinking to do.