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On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

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Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#51

Post by scotty79 »

gareth_untether wrote: post #48

Every year my family plays Scrabble on Christmas Day. The score book goes back about a decade. Until 2016 my sister was ruling champion. Enough was enough. I installed a Scrabble game on my phone. Played every day and took the crown at our next Christmas Scrabble game. The win thoroughly surprised everyone. That year I had read Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset. Which the Scrabble win nicely illustrated.

How's your sister? So many years of winning might make your sister incorporate being a scrable champion as a part of her identity. And nobody feels good after part of their identity gets shattered.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#52

Post by greenbit »

jodrellblank wrote: post #37
hackcasual wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a few that aren't exactly vernacular. I'm still angry about "parer"

https://scrabblewordfinder.org/dictionary/parer Someone who reads is a reader , viewer, writer, dancer, God loves a tryer, and someone who pares should be a parer. Although I often try that pattern and have it denied, if you can shelve a project it suggests shelver which is in, if you can table a motion it suggests tabler which isn’t.

Wouldn't a tabler be a person who makes tables? =P

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#53

Post by mbg721 »

jrumbut wrote: post #19
bee_rider wrote: post #9

I wonder if dominos on a scrabble board, or something like that, could be fun. Anything to replace the spelling. The game described in the article: > There is something magical, however, about realizing how to play Scrabble even one step above beginner: using the bonus spaces, creating overlapping words, hitting your first bingo. You also learn how to play defense. > The first time you realize that your opponent is s…

The two letter words and the common q-without-u words are enough to unlock a much more entertaining version of the game than the one you can play with a normal vocabulary. Since you already know most of them you're only memorizing a few dozen very short words. Then a few vowel dumps wouldn't hurt, short V/X/K words...

That reminds me, I have to check on the qat.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#54

Post by mbg721 »

iopq wrote: post #31
jrumbut wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about going the other way, adding more short words that make the game flow better (how about VI? Or just allow any two letter combination?). My experience having briefly gotten into competitive scrabble 15 years ago is that memorizing the short words is the price of admission for a more fun game. Knowing the short words makes it possible to fit the long words on the board.

If you're going to go that way, the obvious word to add would be ov, a more "cult" spelling of the word "of" instead of "za" I would suggest "ze" as a pronoun for a non-binary person

What do you suggest as a substitute insufferable way of referring to pizza?

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#55

Post by paulcole »

> Once your brain is attuned to anagrams, you start seeing them everywhere.

I had a moment like this when I was obsessed with Scrabble — studying and playing 20+ hours a week.

I saw a guy at work with Demetrius on his nametag. Instantly I saw that “with another U you could make ‘deuteriums.’” It was the weirdest feeling because I had no idea where that realization came from.

I lost probably 4 years in my 20s to Scrabble and then quit cold turkey. I’m about 40 now and I’m pretty good at Wordle and the other NYT word games but that’s about it.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#56

Post by RandExt »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #25
charcircuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qi is a common word and being 2 characters definitely makes it simple.

Not really. I am yet to hear someone use it in an everyday sentence. It is also a romanisation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_(standard) I see this usage here more often than the mysticism one.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#57

Post by scotty79 »

paulpauper wrote: post #2

I thought I was good at scrabble but then I realized that playing against my parents does not count. Experts just memorize dictionaries. Just anther example of a game that has been optimized. Would not surprise me if we see a cheating scandal similar to professional chess.

Nice games are the ones where rules or some important factors are modifiable.

The way we played Quake was by taking hundreds of user made maps and playing them one by one untill they got stale.

It's completely different way of playing than what modern games do. Basically learning just a handful of maps by heart up to specific timings, sound and few pixel spots.

Basically rigidifying naturally variable parts of the game to make it more boring and repetitive for the sake of creating controlled conditions of competition.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#58

Post by CarVac »

powersnail wrote: post #29

I had a brief interest in scrabble, but when I played against online players and computers, I lost the interest all together. The problem was that Scrabble dictionary is too inclusive, and the Scrabble game rewards making multiple words. So, instead of learning fun and obscure words, it’s more important to spot how to make viable grids that gives you five words with one move, while involving some high-scored letters.…

I still remember the time I played "quincunx" across a triple word score…

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#59

Post by njarboe »

jrumbut wrote: post #21
groggo wrote: post #3

It would be interesting to have a "simple english" Scrabble dictionary, without QI and similar words. One reason Wordle is awesome is because they manually filtered down the possible 5 letter words.

I wonder about going the other way, adding more short words that make the game flow better (how about VI? Or just allow any two letter combination?). My experience having briefly gotten into competitive scrabble 15 years ago is that memorizing the short words is the price of admission for a more fun game. Knowing the short words makes it possible to fit the long words on the board.

Part of what I liked about older scrabble dictionaries (you can use any dictionary you like) was the variance in difficulty in using various letters. Get an 'X'. That is a nice letter to have with high scoring potential with lots of two letter words. A 'J', not so much with only JO as a two letter word. Z, high value with a large word set, but can't go two ways (no ZA). Q, high value but a bit of a pain in the ass and you need a U. Maybe you should turn it in. Now with QI, QAT, etc., the Q is not as cool. But nothing says you have to accept those words. Often we don't play with them.

As suggested elsewhere, we play with a two letter cheat sheet to make the game more fun for those that don't know all those words.

Re: On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast

#60

Post by bena »

gillesjacobs wrote: post #36

Been casually trying to increase my ELO on Wordfeud. When you know the dictionary by heart (Wordfeud has rather restricted dictionaries) and have the basics of bonus hunting and hooking down, Scrabble becomes a pure game of imperfect knowledge and strategy. The known information is the prior letter distribution, the played letters on the board and in your rack. The unknown information is your opponent's rack. However…

Tangent: Elo, not ELO. The rating system is named after the creator Arpad Elo, it doesn't stand for anything.
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