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Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

theguardian.com

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Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#61

Post by alasdair_ »

alreadyaword wrote: post #18
glitchc wrote: post #5

Next: KO

KO is already a valid word in international (English language) tournament play. Personally, I am sad about this. Serious scrabble play is largely about rack management - i.e. trying to get a set of tiles that you can play all at once for a 50 point bonus (bingo). That means dumping tiles that make it harder to score a bingo (duplicates, difficult letters) while taking into consideration the likelihood of drawing bett…

>There will be (very nerdy) riots if a 2 letter 'V' word is ever added.

Found the Emacs user.

:)

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#62

Post by Sebguer »

Someone wrote: post #38
hammock wrote: post #24

I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for sw…

”the board remains MUCH more open the whole game” I think that’s a sign of suboptimal play. The goal isn’t to score as many points as possible, it’s to score more points than your opponent. Opening up a line towards a triple-later or even triple-word square only is worth it if your word scores really high. Also, there often are high-scoring moves that ‘weave’ new words inside the existing grid. An extreme example is…

This article is a great extension of your point here: https://meeplelikeus.co.uk/scrabble-1948/

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#63

Post by mattkrause »

stordoff wrote: post #56
mattkrause wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is good enough for Austin, Byron, and Chesterfield, not to mention Shakespeare, then it is good enough for me. The catch is that it sounds best when there's no specific antecedent: "Every user of the workshop must be responsible for their own safety." It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender." I think this is the niche that '…

> It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender." I suspect it depends on dialect. "their" just sounds more informal to me, "his"/"her" sounds slightly more formal.

Hmmm, interesting idea.

I looked at some older examples of singular-they and they almost exclusively refer to an unknown or unspecified person ("Everyone loves their mother"). Using it for a specified person seems to be fairly new: Time Magazine had a piece describing how their (in this sense) was the 2015 word of the year.

http://time.com/4173992/word-of-the-year-2015-they/

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#64

Post by muteh »

MagicPropmaker wrote: post #59
hammock wrote: post #24

I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for sw…

> Source: my grandmother, who played these rules with the inventor of Scrabble back in college, before he had sold the game for mass distribution (they changed his rules to simplify them) The inventor of Scrabble graduated college in 1924. He conceived of and developed the game in the late 30s while he was working full-time as an architect. He didn't start producing the games 'til after WW II, in 1948. He sold the ri…

I mean I'd love to hear the story as well, but clearly for different reasons.

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#65

Post by paulmooreparks »

wiredfool wrote: post #32
chrisweekly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(tangent to scrabble per se) I like the idea of "ze" (gender-neutral pronoun), but this is the first I've come across it. Hopefully it'll catch on as IMHO it's a big improvement over alternatives like "they". While on the topic of "missing" words, when will our language finally get something reasonable for "you (plural)"?? Extant "y'all" (southern) and "yous" (NJ) are not cutting it!

Y'all is often singular. Y'alls and All y'alls are plural. There's also youse, seen in Irish english. (at least in the Dublin dialect, can't say I've heard it much in the north)

I grew up in the South, and I never encountered the use of "y'all" in a singular context (I'm 48). I'm not sure where that idea started.

Edit: I should instead say I never encountered it among actual locals using the word in normal speech. Later on, the plural was sometimes used jokingly after the idea that "y'all" was plural had taken hold in popular, non-Southern culture.

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#66

Post by wiredfool »

rsynnott wrote: post #54
wiredfool wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all is often singular. Y'alls and All y'alls are plural. There's also youse, seen in Irish english. (at least in the Dublin dialect, can't say I've heard it much in the north)

‘Ye’ is also used in some parts of Ireland (and was used in archaic English).

Yeah, definitely see that (mainly from a Donegal speaker), but I think it's more an indeterminate number. "How're ye getting on" is pretty common in verbal and informal written forms, directly to one person.

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#67

Post by Zanni »

frogpelt wrote: post #27
hammock wrote: post #24

I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for sw…

How are Q and Z getting reused so much? There can't be that many times they can be replaced with another letter can there? Also, after I saw how many "words" are in the Scrabble dictionary I realized that Scrabble was not a vocabulary/spelling competition like I thought when I first played. Some of those "words" are a joke, a few are mentioned in the article (eeew being one example).

quiz -> quit -> suit recycles q and z.

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#68

Post by newen »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #45
Someone wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”the board remains MUCH more open the whole game” I think that’s a sign of suboptimal play. The goal isn’t to score as many points as possible, it’s to score more points than your opponent. Opening up a line towards a triple-later or even triple-word square only is worth it if your word scores really high. Also, there often are high-scoring moves that ‘weave’ new words inside the existing grid. An extreme example is…

Unless you're playing competitively, the goal is also to have fun, and games are much more enjoyable when there's room to expand and you're not forced to place sub-optimal words.

The goal in Scrabble is to crush your friends and hear their lamentations as I get double words scores while blocking their potential expansions. It is not this fun thing that people keep talking about.

Re: Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

#69

Post by hammock »

MagicPropmaker wrote: post #57
hammock wrote: post #24

I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for sw…

This eliminates a lot of strategy where you try to "block" an opponent from making a bingo, and moves based on knowing what letters are left.

We definitely still keep track of not only what letters are left in the bag, but what letters are in others' hands - since you can watch them pick them up from the board.
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