How Villagers 'Read' Your Letters in Animal Crossing

As the holidays close in, it’s a great time to write letters to your friends and family… but what’s the best letter possible in Animal Crossing? How do villagers read them?

Music credits:
—
5 P.M. (Snow) - Animal Crossing
We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Instrumental)
Animal Crossing (Winter) - Mario Kart 8
7 A.M. (Snow) - Animal Crossing
5 P.M. (Snow) - New Leaf
Toy Day (Arranged) - The Noble Demon
O Christmas Tree (Instrumental)
—

0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:07 Letter Scoring Checks
0:04:54 Highest Scoring Letter?
0:07:08 Bugged Trigrams
0:08:17 Closing Remarks

#hunterr #animalcrossing #technical

[Hunter-R.]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone who watched my channel this year! This video is a bit short and sweet, but I've been running around preparing to go see my family these past few weeks! I'll see you all again soon with more videos. 🎄

Good Letter: "I. I. I. [...]' -> Villager: "Awww, you're sweet."
Bad Letter: "i. i. i. [...]" -> Villager: "HELLO, HUMAN RESOURCES?!"

[screamy_]

as a kid i always thought angus was reading my letters because i would ceaselessly insult him and he would without fail every time respond with something equally as aggressive, like we were mortal enemies

[Star_sweeper]

Throwback to 6 year old me, who could read decently well but wasn’t great at writing, getting frustrated to the point of tears that my villagers hated all my letters.

[lunondisposable]

I remember as a kid thinking "Ok it's a computer so it can't _really_ read, but it probably looks for certain words" and would just fill letters with friendly words. I never would have imagined it looked for _punctuation_ above all else!

[stupidscoutmain]

So theoretically you could write the most heartfelt, loving and well mannered letter just for the villager to react angry, or write straight up death threats and receive a positive reaction

[williamdrum]

I love how every well-intentioned computer algorithm inevitably rewards absolute lunacy.

[indie.]

i like to think the imposing nature of a letter filled with "I." makes the villager think it's safer to respond positively, rather than reason with the madman next door

[willoux_]

oh my god are you telling me ive been sending hate mail to my villagers this entire time

[VampireofEmotion]

I remember in Wild World I hated Baarbara and wanted her to move, so I sent her loads of mean letters, but I guess because they were technically well written she always replied positively. Then I sent her one telling her I loved her and she got offended and moved not long after 😂

[squawk-box]

3:48 that's hilarious actually. they really said "i can tolerate not using punctuation, but i draw the line at run-on sentences".

[AugustQ-pw]

When I was little and couldn't write very well I would get so upset that my villagers always hated my letters that my older sister convinced me that animals actually used "opposite day" speech and when they said they hated something, that meant they liked it.

[Timmzy]

I can’t remember if it was Wild World or New Leaf, I once wrote a letter to a villager saying something like “Please send me some apples” as they were a fruit I didn’t have at the time, the reply included a gift of apples.
I don’t know if this was a coincidence or they actually “read” my letter and was like “yeah, alright my guy, here’s some apples” but it absolutely made my day and I immediately went to work planting my apple tree grove

[clementpruvost]

The letter: "l., l., l., "
Random villager: "Ok, will do!"

[sombreset]

As a kid, ofc I REALLY thought that the villagers somehow understood your letters because they certainly ripped you a new one if it wasn’t written “well” enough. So I always tried super hard and got so frustrated when they still basically made fun of me for being illiterate lmao

It’s cool to hear the actual logic behind it!

[Kawa-oneechan]

I just confirmed New Horizons still does a trigram check. But without the out-of-bounds termination, of course. The tables are quite similar, but expanded, and there are separate trigram lists for birthday wishes and winter events like "hap new yea".

[wjjam]

I'm really interested in how this works in the Japanese version, since most of the concepts used to grade the letter dont exist in Japanese.

[jackpijjin]

This reminds me of the time my cousin wrote a letter to a squirrel villager telling her he'd love to have her ass mounted on his wall over the fireplace. She wrote back absolutely elated.

Though he was a pathological liar so I doubt I can believe him, but this at least means it was plausible! Lmao.

[KirbyMario_]

Imagine if Mario 64 started with:

Dear Mario,





~ Peach

And then Mario thinks out loud; "Couldn't you at least use capitals?"

[LazKoal]

Hunter: I.I.I.I.
Bob: 😊
Hunter: i.i.i.i.i
Bob: 🤬