61–70 of 83 posts
As a Nigerian, this makes me absurdly proud. As a mathematician, I am especially proud of the game-theoretic aspect of the win.
"Nigeria is beating the West at its own board game" I know that the definition of "the West" is pretty vague, but this journalism seems a decade or two behind its time with its "us and them" style. Scrabble doesn't belong to Europe/USA and Nigeria fits geographically, politically, economically, and religiously into common definitions of "the West".
- There's North/South, meaning Rich/Poor. Australia and New Zealand are in the North, though of course most rich countries are in the Northern hemisphere.
- There's West/Rest (or East, if you like), and this one is a bit harder to define. You can go way back and say it's to do with having intellectual roots in Greek/Latin parts of Europe. That's certainly what many people who studied Classics would say. You could also argue that the liberal democratic tradition is what defines it. That would make Germany, Italy and a number of other countries temporarily non-western. Or you could go with religion and say it's to do with Christianity. That would make Russia a western country.
So, where's Nigeria? Well, it's not rich. Politically it's inherited a colonial system from the British, though corruption perceptions are not close to what people normally expect of western democratic countries (IMO part of western political tradition is to act scornful of corruption). On religion, it's a mix of Christian and Islamic.
I wouldn't say Nigeria fits into the common ideas of what the west is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"they are applying the Chess strategy of thinking n-moves ahead to Scrabble" That isn't new, what is new is that they (learni from analysis of games played by computer) show is that the conventional strategy favours scoring points too much over keeping a rack that allows you to score decently in future moves and preventing your opponent from scoring heavily. This is presented as a totally new strategy, but looking at…
OK you guys. Here's the serious bit then: >> McKay probably saw this as a bit of a holiday, while the Nigerians saw it as work. That's probably his way of unwinding and managing his psychology after a match. It's a bit misleading for the article to bring it up as a disadvantage since he's obviously a strong player who has probably competed for some time, so he should be expected to know what works for him. Also, you…
Avoiding burnout is certainly important in the long run, but short bursts of intense training, with recovery time afterwards, can indeed work well.
"Bingo" often beats going bingo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"they are applying the Chess strategy of thinking n-moves ahead to Scrabble" That isn't new, what is new is that they (learni from analysis of games played by computer) show is that the conventional strategy favours scoring points too much over keeping a rack that allows you to score decently in future moves and preventing your opponent from scoring heavily. This is presented as a totally new strategy, but looking at…
OK you guys. Here's the serious bit then: >> McKay probably saw this as a bit of a holiday, while the Nigerians saw it as work. That's probably his way of unwinding and managing his psychology after a match. It's a bit misleading for the article to bring it up as a disadvantage since he's obviously a strong player who has probably competed for some time, so he should be expected to know what works for him. Also, you…
Back in the day (2001) I worked on the PalmOS version of Scrabble. One thing that surprised me when I was tuning the AI was that it played better when all words of seven or more letters were removed from its vocabulary. Apparently searching through the longer words was a worse use of time than searching for other placements of shorter words (except on the highest difficulty, where it was given a larger time budget).…
It seems to me like a restricted dictionary or smaller time budget (or, for that matter, dumber search algorithms) are all sensible measures of a low difficulty level. Otherwise you're using "difficulty" to mean "difficult for me to program cleverly" rather than "difficult to beat" or "like a human expert".
http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=22368#17
If Wellington plays his 86 point bingo, he empties the bag and if Lewis bingos back, the game ends and he'll get the value of Wellington's final rack added to his score. By not emptying the bag, Wellington keeps control of the game and prevents the only way he can lose.
It's not some crazy strategy, it's a pretty clear decision for a high level player.
Source: Played tournament Scrabble and memorized something like 50k words for about 4-5 years.
Back in the day (2001) I worked on the PalmOS version of Scrabble. One thing that surprised me when I was tuning the AI was that it played better when all words of seven or more letters were removed from its vocabulary. Apparently searching through the longer words was a worse use of time than searching for other placements of shorter words (except on the highest difficulty, where it was given a larger time budget).…
> We ended up giving the lower difficulty levels a restricted dictionary anyway, but this was to affect players' perception of the difficulty rather than the actual difficulty (the AI on "beginner" mode shouldn't be playing a lot of words you've never heard of) It seems to me like a restricted dictionary or smaller time budget (or, for that matter, dumber search algorithms) are all sensible measures of a low difficul…