Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
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Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
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Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#2That is a very nicely done analysis. I too have wondered what a 'modern' valuation of letters might look like, this approach seems reasonable.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#3"More broadly, I think Valett can provide the foundation for answering other interesting questions in word games, such as how to quantify the difficulty of Boggle boards."
Well, you can already quantify the difficulty of Boggle boards pretty well just by counting up all the points you can make on them (it's a small enough problem that you can do that pretty fast). I think the topology of the board is important enough (whether those I N and G blocks are next to each other or not makes a _big_ difference) that a simple histogram of letters isn't going to be sufficient.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#4"More broadly, I think Valett can provide the foundation for answering other interesting questions in word games, such as how to quantify the difficulty of Boggle boards." Well, you can already quantify the difficulty of Boggle boards pretty well just by counting up all the points you can make on them (it's a small enough problem that you can do that pretty fast). I think the topology of the board is important enough…
I was thinking that you could sum up the transition probabilities from the actual transitions available on the board as the main measure. Then you could use frequency by length to weight legal Boggle plays (3/4 letters and up, so 2-letter words wouldn't even count).
You're right that with a Boggle board you could just count up the available Boggle points by finding all the possible words, but that might miss some aspects of how hard the words are for a human to find.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#5The problem, of course, is convincing us "old hat" Scrabble fanatics to change our minds on the point values. "Only 5 points for an 'X'? Nonsense!". Then again, competitive Scrabble and the original foundation of the game have little in common, methinks. Rather frequently I think about the Scrabble-likes (Words with Friends, Literati, etc) and the boards themselves. I am more curious about the designs and placements of the premium squares than the value of the tiles.
Interesting analysis though.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#6[deleted]
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#72-letter Scrabble words are more offensive than curse words, and anyone who insists on them deserves only two: "F" and "U".
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#8as a competitive scrabble player, one mistake that I think he might have made is overweighting corpus-based probability versus game playability. his transition-in and transition-out weights are a good start, but there's also the fact that n+1 letter words that can be made by "hooking" (adding a single letter before or after) n letter words are far more useful than those that cannot. also the layout of the premium squares, and the letter distribution of the bag, factor into how playable certain tiles are. intuitively, at the least I'd expect one more point for the U, and for the V to catch up with the Z, though of course it's very easy to fool yourself about these things when using strategies based on the current letter values.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#92-letter Scrabble words are more offensive than curse words, and anyone who insists on them deserves only two: "F" and "U".
Sorry, they're part of the game. It's like getting offended at a chess player for castling.
Re: Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles
#10as a competitive scrabble player, one mistake that I think he might have made is overweighting corpus-based probability versus game playability. his transition-in and transition-out weights are a good start, but there's also the fact that n+1 letter words that can be made by "hooking" (adding a single letter before or after) n letter words are far more useful than those that cannot. also the layout of the premium squ…
Maybe you and the OP should petition the Words With Friends people to give you a statistically significant data-dump of real games so you can analyze and revalue the letters.
It would be a service to us all.