Scrabble - Classic or Dud?

Writing the computer opponent was a real challenge... in so far as doing some web research into the algorithms used and then implementing it in BBC BASIC is considered a challenge. Problem was trying to please everyone, ESPECIALLY with regard to the two letter words. Here's what I wrote in the "read me" that goes with my lexicons:

"The valid two-letter words always cause arguments. According to the makers of the Scrabble® game, there are a 109 2-letter words that are acceptable in the British English version of their game. Interestingly, though there are only 96 in the North American version, it is not a sub-set: there are 12 extra words not in the British English version (AB AG AL DE ED ET HM MM OP PE UH YA).

I have 3 half-megabyte lexcions: ChampOSPD2 and ChampTWL98 which both contain the standard North-American set of 96, and ChampENABL which contains all 121 (combining the English and North-American words)."

I won't post the lists for obvious dull-related reasons

Scrabble is grebt and very VOCAB ENHANCING innit!

Filthy Crossword is the greatest thing ever.

I am all for selective rules in Scrabble as it seems each person has their own variations. This should be declared at the start of each game, the same as 2 Men Down, wildcards ect ect. This solves a lot of problems and is how I started playing Scrabble when we got a house set.

I agree with Dirty Crosswords. Just in general. Todger Poo.

UK Wopper.

The same goes for that C4rt3r record.

Scrabble is silly. I would rather be lying on the sofa eating Quality Street (= the only other available Christmas activity).

I think our house would be perfect for a game Sarah particularly with its hem medieval plumbing.

I think it was yawning post-Friday staying up late festivities.

Alang if you remember ME joining in this Carter set then you are just sick and perverse. If I had been present I would have GLOWERED.

Actually Tom with your Cornish bouze our house is quite the medieval dungeon, albiet with a swedish sauna stylee living room.

Pam is much better than me; although I seem to have a slightly greater vocabulary, she has letter-juggling skills par excellence and seems to nail two or three seven-letter words per game. She averages up in the 360s, I nudge over 300 once every other game. I never know what to do with the 'K', and blanks just confuse me.

i will kick ALL your asses

also, how can I be quite good at Scrabble, but not too good at Clive Doig's Trackword.

as for literati, i welcome all challengers. I'd watch out for JuliaA.

I have to say that the internet has taken much of the fun out of the game for me (too much time in online Scrabble groups).

I could go for a game of Candyland or Life right now.

I've been on the wagon for five or six months, so I didn't need to read this, but fascinating nonetheless:

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/gaming/2012/08/scrabble_cheating_the_real_story_behind_the_stolen_blanks_scandal_at_the_national_scrabble_championship_.single.html

(They must be trying to honor the game with the pointlessly lengthy URL.)

http://magratheazaphod.livejournal.com/333131.html

http://p.twimg.com/A0WqdLtCEAAB4--.jpg

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/04/news/scrabble-dictionary/index.html?sr=fb080514scrabblewords130pStoryLink

"Hashtag," "selfie," "mixtape," "bling" (I've been waiting for that one--had it turned down by various computer opponents many times), etc. That's good. I hope they don't get stupid and start adding internet acronyms, though. Those things need to be eliminated from the world, not encouraged. (I can guess the next post.)

What happens when you play too much Scrabble: you're looking at E-F-L-O-R-W-?. You immediately spot F-L-O-W-E-R-S, but you pause, because you're not 100% sure it's a word. "Flower...something that flows...yes, that should be a word."

Had to laugh when Meadow Soprano laid "oblique" (season 3, the episode where she's sick and playing with Jackie Jr. in her dorm) in such a no-big-deal way. I've never played "oblique"--not even sure I'd recognize it on the rack if the letters were scrambled enough. She didn't mention the 50-point bonus, either.

Same scene, three years later: Jackie Aprile, Jr., worst Scrabble player ever. (Three words: "ass," "poo," "the"...laid two s's so he could get four points. (Actually was after more than that, but that didn't work out either.)

Totally legit: "quashing" on a triple-triple for 216 + 50 = 266 points (729 for the game). I knew I was headed for a high game score, so I wanted to take a screenshot right when the game ended--it was Pogo against the computer--but I forgot they immediately go to a different screen, so I didn't get a chance to.

legit flex

If you were trying to figure out the theoretically highest-scoring play you could make, I have to believe "quashing," situated so that you could hook an 's' onto the beginning for "squashing" (a triple score) and start a triple-triple in a downwards direction (you'd need to hook onto another letter in the middle of that word), would be part of it. You could probably score over 400 points on a single play.

I'm still sore about this 12 years later:

https://live.staticflickr.com/3292/2830369713_c6d93b2d28_c.jpg

SK(A)TINGS, 167pts penultimate move, overcoming my 155pt lead.

(I'm not really; Pam used to kill me on a regular basis.)

and a callback to the first post in the thread!

"Skatings"--I'll never understand some of the permissible pluralizations of -ing words in Scrabble. Even "skating" as a noun seems weird to me ("We had a great skating yesterday afternoon"?--wouldn't you just say "We had a great skate"?).

I thought about (s)quashing, and I don't think you could get over 400. If you hooked on "sizzlers," with the first 'z' a blank and the common 's' in the top left corner, you'd get:

squashing = 22 x 3 = 66
sizzlers = 26 x 9 = 234
bonus = 50

total = 350

Which is less than the record play, 392 for "caziques."

http://bestlifeonline.com/highest-scoring-scrabble-move/

Now I'm compelled to figure out "caziques" hooked onto "quashing." That might do it.

looked @ some screenshots, its almost the 4 yr anniversary of someone playing 'uniquest' on me for 275 pts in wwf (final score of that game was 737-428, i kept it respectable lol)

This has already been a big issue a couple of times in the past (going back to the late '70s, I think).

http://www.cnn.com/2020/07/09/us/scrabble-slurs-ban-trnd/index.html

This was a good article on the debate, especially on the reasons not to ban them:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/scrabble-players-debate-slurs.html

Thanks, I'll read that for sure. It was Stefan Fatsis I blame for my addiction in the first place--his Word Freak got me started 15 years ago.

That was interesting, thanks. Yeah, it's a tough call. Words are often offensive based on how they are used, or certainly how they are received, but they're still ... words, with meanings, offensive or not, that could and do appear in books, and music, and movies, in all sorts of contexts, sometimes to be offensive, sometimes to comment on offensiveness, and so on. Removing these words from Scrabble play seems like a slippery slope, not because of censorship or because it's any great loss, but because there must be countless dumb semi-words in the Scrabble dictionary that probably have equal basis for removal once you apply some sort of (non-point) value to it. At the same time, there are some words whose complete erasure from the English language would probably make the world a better place, so ... I dunno.

Hmm, thinking about it a couple of more minutes more, I think a better solution could have been to allow those words but penalize their play. Fewer points, or subtracting a few points, something like that, which would both disincentivize their use and also acknowledge their offensiveness. Just like in professional sports, there are certain things you can do to foul or draw a foul or otherwise do something wrong on purpose strategically, even if it comes at a cost. Playing these words could have been recontextualized as desperation moves that come at a price, which I assume is kind of how they were often played, anyway.

Kudos to Gabriel in The Americans (Frank Langella), who plays both "phlox" and "stygian" against a very skeptical Philip. (Philip lays "askew," no blanks visible, and is credited with 20 points on a double-word score. The only way that works is if he extended "as" with the "kew," but why would either of these very good players have played "as"?)

Usual disclaimer: against the Pogo computer, where you're allowed to "steal" a blank (i.e., if the blank's on the board and you have the matching letter on your rack, you can switch). So scoring is much easier (I'm over 400 about 90% of the time).

I think this is my highest single-game score ever, and also the first time I laid two triple-triples ("quainter" and "braiders"--the first was for 203 points). I took a screenshot of the board right before my final play, but then accidentally replaced it with this.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/778.jpg

sweet!

I can't seem to post photos anymore on ILX, so you'll have to trust me here...Highest single play ever, I'm pretty sure: "mesquite" across a triple-triple, with the 'q' falling on the double-letter, 311 points (261 for the play + bonus). I laid down "quite" initially--the 'u' was already down--which would have been worth 72, noticed 'mes' still on the rack; "'mesquite,' that sounds familiar..." It was my third play of the game: I started with "cutties," then "tux" for 26, so I had 411 points after three plays. Followed with "wailers," and I started thinking of an 800-point game. Finished with 735.

Pogo, computer, etc.

I can post photos again, so here was my "mesquite" play from two months ago.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/mesquite.jpg

Also, I took Scrabble as my category for a Zoom trivia group tonight. My questions:

1. What are two most valuable tiles in terms of point value?
2. What are the two most valuable tiles strategically?
3. Which three consonants are the most common tiles (name one)?
4. What is a triple-triple?
5. Within 100 points either way, what is the highest game score ever in tournament play?
6. Within 10 years either way, when was the game invented?
7. What is the 7-letter word that uses the ‘q’ and all five vowels?
8. What is the meaning of either ‘qi’ or ‘za’?
9. Name one of the two famous game companies that rejected Scrabble?
10. In the film Rosemary’s Baby, what does Rosemary learn when she spills out all the Scrabble tiles and starts anagramming?

Obviously, some of those are giveaways. My categories for the last three--movies, post-war presidents, and the Beatles--produced average scores of 2 or 3 out 10, even though I thought most of the questions were basic. So I'm feeling pressure to up those scores. Meanwhile, I routinely score 2 or 3 out of 10 on categories like Italian cooking or inventions. I live in a different universe, evidently.

365 points on one play ("quizzers")--she out-mesquited me.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/chatham-scrabble-word-score-quizzers-1.5915155

The fuck.

ha that is great, I love that the app enables some official validation

Not only did she draw two z's and a q, but also the necessary u, plus some other nice vowels and an s. Her word play was excellent, but her tile draw was off the charts and over the moon.

I think best of all, it's not some obscure word that no one has ever heard of.

Classic until somebody starts trying to tell me I can't have Antinazi cos they want it to need a hyphen.
Gorlumme what a complete load of tosh. plenitude of irrational convolution, like.

After almost 20 years and approximately ___________ games of online Scrabble (too embarrassed to fill that in), first time I ever played "gumshoe."

https://phildellio.tripod.com/gumshoe.jpg

Scrabble Go accepts the word "grrrl".

Just thought you should know.

This has happened to me before, and it's pretty much the best evidence I can think of that you play way, way too much Scrabble: you're looking at f-l-o-w-e-r-s on your rack, and your first thought is "Is that a word? Someone or something that flows?"

There is a great story in Gwen Raverat's "Period Piece," her memoir of growing up in the Darwin household, where they're playing anagrams and Charles Darwin wanders through, looks at the board and goes "Moth-er? There's no such word as "moth-er."

Sounds about right. You just start to see words differently, automatically breaking them down into recognizable building blocks, and four-letter-verb + "ers" are the easiest bingos to spot, hence "flow-ers."

Online, "remixers" for 239 points (189 + 50):

https://i.postimg.cc/13SyR976/remixers.jpg

In real life, not as good.

https://i.postimg.cc/zGk8V94Q/vowels.jpg

every week my wife and me play online at http://www.isc.ro. it's wonderful that this 1.0 style website is still online and has no ads...!

I used to play a lot on isc.ro 20 years ago and it was already considered old school then. I had no idea it was still around.

(xpost) I've been off isc.ro for months, but let me know if you ever want to play (I'm verlander).

A friend made me a Scrabble quilt.

https://i.postimg.cc/Nfd5DQxk/IMG-5309.jpg

Scrabble Go accepts the word "asshat".

Just thought you should know.

But does it accept "cockfarmer?"

I still occasionally pop open Psion Scrabble in a ZX Spectrum emulator and have a best-of-three:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/4375/ZX-Spectrum/Computer_Scrabble

What with Scrabble still being a commercial thing there aren't any easy ways to play a versus-the-computer, without-adverts version of Scrabble, and I'm so bad at Scrabble that a ZX Spectrum can still beat me. It's one of a tiny handful of ZX Spectrum games that hasn't really aged, along with Chaos and... I can't think of a third. Because it's just a board game. I've tried online Scrabble, but it just degenerates into a game of who can remember the most two-letter words. Besides which it's hard to have an emotional connection with people behind a screen, whereas there are few things more cuddly than a ZX Spectrum.

I remember going to play "taser" at one point. And then it came to me. The game was published in 1982! The vocabulary doesn't have "taser". Or "faxes", even though faxes were technically a thing in 1982. There's a whole bunch of words from the 1980s and 1990s that it doesn't recognise because it's ancient. "Blog", for example, or "queef". Sadly the game uses a for-its-time advanced compression scheme to fit a whole dictionary into 48kb, so you can't just POKE new words into the dictionary.

Psion Scrabble uses the cursor keys, which are 5678. The ZX Spectrum had a bunch of joystick standards. The cursor keys were shift-5678 (left, down, up, right), so there was a Cursor joystick that just emulated those keystrokes. And confusingly there was an Interface II joystick that used 6789 (left, right, down, up), because Sinclair wanted to sell its own joysticks. There's a whole generation of British and Spanish people my age who had to deal with the switch from QAOP+Space and Kempston/Sinclair joysticks to WASD+Mouse, and I like to think that we are a cut above the average person.

A cut above, because it's not toughness or intelligence that guarantees survival. It's adaptability. Women desire my seed not because I'm tough, or intelligent, but because I am equally skilled with QAOP, 5678, 6789, and WASD+Mouse controls. It took me a long time to get used to dual analogue sticks, but I managed it. I have no doubt that I would be able to cope with a VR headset. Meanwhile swimmers such as Michael Phelps are moron losers because all they can do is flip their fucking feet around. Big woo!

i've been playing someone with dn LesterBangs in crossplay (the nyt scrabble app). is it one of you guys? you're kicking my ass if so

Funny...I played "bespoke" yesterday on Pogo, no blanks; first time ever.

https://i.postimg.cc/KvypT4DM/bespoke.jpg

I had to join NASPA so I can play in the yearly tournament in Stratford here in September. Not sure how well I'll do--I'm so used to playing automatic validation online. I'm a terrible poker player, so someone who bluffs me early will have a field day.

I've been out to the aforementoned Scrabble club half a dozen times. There are three provincially ranked players in our club: #12, #31, and #50. I've had six games against the three of them so far. I'm 1-5, but almost beat the #12 player last night. Was way behind for most of the game, but played "snogged" for 88 points on my third-last play, almost pulling even--lost 373-368. Played the #50 guy next; he'd beat me twice previously, but I won 400-341 last night.

As I predicted, I don't have have enough nerve to challenge or risk challenges. A couple of weeks ago, against the #31 guy, I was ahead when he bingoed with "opuntia." I didn't challenge, which was good--it's a type of cactus. But I had a chance to play "longers" underneath, with a triple-word tile linking both words, and I didn't because I wasn't sure if the word could be pluralized (wasn't even sure at that point if it was valid). It would have worked and probably would have clinched the game. I went on to lose 460-383...I'm just so used to automatic validation online.

Played in my first tournament yesterday. Going to be really lazy and cut-and-paste what I posted on Facebook (would end up saying exactly the same stuff)...
__________________________

After 25 years of playing online, I participated in my first in-person Scrabble tournament yesterday in Stratford. (I joined the Stratford club a few months ago.) There were ~45 players divided into four divisions. Not having a NASPA rating yet, I was in the ‘D’ group.

I won! I ended up 7-1 for the day, with a point differential of +385, and in the ‘D’ final played Bill (brother-in-law of Ross, who I play tennis with) for the second time. My games:

W: 410-357 vs. Ani
L: 382-440 vs. Samuel (from Buffalo)
W: 395-368 vs. Mark (ditto)
W: 347-298 vs. Shubha (from Rochester)
W: 353-318 vs. Bill
W: 380-291 vs. Lisa (also in the Stratford club)
W: 349-323 vs. Eileen
W: 458-292 vs. Bill

You’re playing very good players in the ‘D’ group. If I were to analogize with golf, I think it’d go something like this:

‘A’ - A scratch golfer who goes out with the expectation of beating par. These players are lethal, Word Freak (the Steven Fastis book that got me started down this road) savants. You’d have about the same chance of winning against one of them as you would playing a well-programmed computer.

‘B’ - someone who routinely shoots in the low 70s.

‘C’ - mid-high 70s, let’s say, but on a really good day might challenge par.

‘D’ - 80-83, could maybe shoot 75 if everything fell into place.

To be competitive at the ‘D’ level, you pretty much have to lay a bingo at some point in the game. I had 10 bingos for the day--one per game for six of my matches, two each in the other two: trailer, bandito, service, taurines, reputes, tangler, grooving, gelating, planers, outages.

I definitely had good tiles throughout the day. Not so much an unequal distribution of the most important tiles--the two blanks, the four ‘s’s, z/q/j/x/k--but a good balance of vowels and consonants the whole way, lots of w/h/m/b/c’s, and only very rarely the kinds of racks that can make you hate Scrabble. I only remember one game where I hit a rough patch.
Outside of the win, my three highlights for the day:

1) Right near the end, there was some tricky rules matter to be adjudicated, so John (one of the two organizers) asked everyone to quiet down so he could call John Chew, head of the NASPA (based in Toronto, I think). I immediately had this mental picture of John Chew sitting in an empty room with a red phone under glass, just like the one Commissioner Gordon had in the old Batman series.

2) The Kid. My division included a 10-year-old prodigy from Toronto named Allan. Thankfully, I managed to duck him--he was 5-2 in his first seven games, one win shy of the final, but his point differential was better than mine. One of his opponents who lost to him told me that Allan was able to track tiles (like counting cards in Vegas) in his head, rather than on paper (perfectly legal in Scrabble). We asked him later if he played chess; yes, but he said he wasn’t nearly as good at that as he was playing Scrabble. “Not comparatively,” he added--know a lot of 10-year-olds who drop “comparatively” into their everyday conversations?

3) I lost the one challenge I made during the day: “milf”! (I let a few words go for various reasons: i.e., I was ahead and didn’t want to risk missing a turn, one obvious misspelling--“nexis”--set up a bingo for me, and sometimes I just didn’t have the confidence to challenge.) I was absolutely sure that that would have been one of the words dropped from the Scrabble dictionary in the past few years...Arie Sinke, who won the ‘A’ division (ranked 5th in Ontario), gave me a mini-history of all that over lunch. He said there was a push to clean up the dictionary--i.e., rid it of anything racist, misogynist, profane, etc.--that picked up speed after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. And a lot of words have been eliminated since then, But somehow, “milf” is still in there.

I now have a severely inflated NASPA rating (1240), so next year I expect I’ll be moved to the ‘C’ group and come up against a very sobering reality check.

poor Bill