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 HELLO FRIENDSI made a thread about this several years ago, it had some interest so here we go again! I've played competitive Scrabble since 2008. My word cred: Highest rank: 19th in North America Best major tournaments (in all of these I was in the top division): 2010 Nationals (18th out of 116) 2011 Nationals (10th out of 108) Arden Cup (prestigious 20 game tournament held in Chicago every year) 2011: 1st 2012: 2nd 2014: 2nd I also competed in the World Scrabble Championship in London last fall. I currently play in a larger dictionary (compared to what is used in North America) known as Collins Scrabble Words (CSW) which is used somewhat in the US, but is the standard in other countries for the English language game. actionjackson please tell me how you got to be a Scrabble superstar personStudy a lot, by that I mean anagramming. I've studied most words between 2-8 letters (there are 115,215 in total). I (and most players) use some kind of flashcard program and study "alphagrams" which are the letters in alphabetical order. So for example if I see BEEIQUZ I know that's BEZIQUE, and hopefully I see that in a game as well. The programs use the Leitner system for memory retention. I also use a website called Aerolith which gives me a random set of 50 alphagrams each day for each word length - you solve as many as you can within a few minutes. I rarely score below 95% (if I do it's probably because too many girls are sucking my dick at the same time). For example, I was able to anagram this entire list within the 4.5 minute time limit today (the number next to each alphagram is the number of solutions). See if you can do some anagramming! Why did you get into competitive Scrabble?I like words and language in general, but I'm also more mathematically minded (I'm a statistician). There's a lot of strategy to the game in addition to having a strong vocabulary. Obviously with studying pattern recognition is important. Plus you get to learn some pretty weird words, or words that just have bizarre definitions. A few of my favorites: BERDACHE - An American Indian transvestite SOUTPIEL - an English speaking South African. Literally salt penis, someone who has one foot in South Africa, one foot in Britain and his penis dangling in the Atlantic LAYDEEZ - ladies as pronounced in a mid-Atlantic accent UNUNBIUM - a synthetic element BOOTYLICIOUS - Slang sexually attractive, esp with curvaceous buttocks HOW DO I BEAT MY GRANDMA AT SCRABBLE1) Learn all the 2-letter words 2) Try to play parallel as much as possible to increase your score. Also look to put consonants on bonus letter squares on these plays. You can even get cool combos, like a high value tile doubled or tripled PLUS a double or triple word score! Wowzers! 3) Don't use an S unless you can get 20+ points extra by using it (unless you have a bunch of them at once) 4) Only use a blank if you can get a bingo (using all tiles, 50 point bonus) or a huge non-bingo play (for example, if you can play a word with a power tile like JQXZ on the triple letter score + a double word score) 5) Balance your rack - try to keep the distribution of vowels and consonants balanced - if you have an odd number of tiles, it's better to have more consonants than vowels 6) Avoid duplicated tiles as much as possible 99% of players just think about how much they score, without considering what their rack leave is. 30 points leaving ES is a fuckton better than 40 points leaving UU. Questions?
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May 14, 2015 23:17
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GORDON posted:If you've been ranked 19th in North America, who here do you think is going to be able to give you any pointers? When did I ask for pointers? Lot 49 posted:I got into scrabble a few years ago. I then got out a couple of months later when I realised just how much work it takes to be actually good at the game. 1. Small amounts. I got $600 from winning the Arden Cup. For finishing 10th in Nationals I got like $250. 2. Not that often. It's very rarely intentional. I have yes, though only against people who I have a significant edge on. 3. Yes. Actually I have a perfect record (6-0 I think) against the person who won Nationals in that episode (Joel Sherman). I saw it before I got into the game so it seemed weird at the time. 4. Yes, and I've met the author. I thought it was interesting. 5. Yes, Brian Cappaletto, Joel Sherman, Nigel Richards, a bunch of other people I'm sure. 6. Nigel. 0-6 against him, though two of those games I basically hosed up at the end in a close game. 7. Yes, there are a few others players that are close. Two are retired (Brian, and a guy from India named Ganesh). Komol from Thailand, Adam Logan from Canada are both incredibly strong. English language Scrabble is incredibly popular in Thailand and Malaysia. 8. Nah, it's pretty fun. I take little breaks sometime though. I didn't play much over the winter. I'm also not planning on travelling to tournaments very often anymore, as I'm interested in spending my vacation time going overseas instead. The next worlds is in Perth so gently caress that. The Valuum posted:What's your opinion on up-words? I played it once. It was okay, but I didn't find it particularly interesting. One game top players like to play (usually at tournaments after play is done for the day) is anagrams. Usually you have two sets of tiles (blanks excluded) placed upside down, and each person takes a turn turning over a tile. The idea is to take either a set of letters from the pool, or combine letters from the pool with another word that has already been made to make a new word. The trick is there is a minimum length (usually 8), and you can't steal a word if it's just a form of that word, or if there is no rearrangement of letters. For example, if the starting pool is DEFNOORS I can take FRONDOSE. If C and U are in the pool, someone can steal that word with COFOUNDERS. Whoever has the most letters among their words at the end wins. PT6A posted:Do you know anything about how Scrabble works in other languages? I assume the letter distribution is different, but are things like accents taken into account? Are there any specific languages that you know of that make for a particularly different game, in terms of strategy? It's pretty similar except for the tile distribution of course. Obviously some have unique letters. The main difference between English language Scrabble and most other languages would be how powerful the -S is. If you were playing in German for example, plural hooks would be a non issue as you usually add on two letters or use an umlaut to distinguish pluralization. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 21:27 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 21:13
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ImPureAwesome posted:Does scrabble bleed into other parts of your life? Do you try to rearrange street signs or dream tiles? Do you use scrabble words in normal conversation? Scrabble words are just words from a dictionary so I'm not sure what you mean. It is true that I habitually anagram things I see in real life out of habit. I remember I saw a VW Touraeg and said OUTRAGE immediately. Or I told a coworker that the shortest word you can make with all the letters in her name (Cynthia) is HYACINTH. If you can't guess I'm still single. chaos rhames posted:Are there particular words that pro scrabblers hate? There would be no reason too. Perhaps a few words that are hard to spell correctly like OEUVRES. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 16:47 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 16:44
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FactsAreUseless posted:What determines if a word is English for the purposes of Scrabble? I've noticed the Scrabble dictionary is full of things like defunct foreign currencies. They have several source dictionaries, and it counts if it is in at least one of them. I know, for example, with CSW that the Oxford English dictionary is one of the sources. You certainly could use a defunct currency in English language, like "The mark was the currency of Germany before joining the European Union."
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May 17, 2015 22:18
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ImPureAwesome posted:my impression is there are a lot of obscure words in scrabble, does it effect your vocab in conversations? Oh. I do on rare occasions use more obscure words, but I've always done that. The vast majority of obscure words only apply to specific areas of study which don't concern me, or I don't know the definition so I can't use it in practice. Sometimes I'll see them at work though, which is cool, like research involving genetics - "myc," "riflip," "homeobox."
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May 18, 2015 03:25
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flakeloaf posted:On that, what's it like to play against someone who doesn't actually speak English? I've only done that a few times. It's pretty much the same. The Thai players know enough English to get by. They obviously have a great vocabulary, they just don't know how to implement it into spoken language well. During the game itself you only really need to be able to say the score or challenge. SubjectVerbObject posted:So let's say I have BEZIQUE, but there is no way to play it. The best I can do is add BE somewhere and get under 20 points. Do you do that, or do you pass and hope to put it somewhere the next round? Obviously it depends on what is on the board and what is left, but I am looking for how you balance getting high value bingos versus getting letters out. It would be incredibly strange for your best scoring play to be BE for 20 with that rack. In any case, you want to unload your power tiles (QZ) as quickly as possibly for as many points as possible. The basic strategies for scoring come down to playing higher point tiles for larger scores, and then building your rack towards the lower point tiles that are far more likely to make bingos. Passing is never the right play, outside of some very rare circumstances which don't apply here (if you want an example of when passing can be correct, let me know). actionjackson fucked around with this message at 16:38 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 16:34
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turbomoose posted:I assume throwing tiles back happens fairly rarely as well? Yeah, the more word knowledge the more you can get out of bad racks, and with rack balance you end up with less bad racks overall. You're most likely to get a bad rack after drawing seven tiles, i.e. the starting of the game or after a bingo.
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May 18, 2015 23:02
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Khizan posted:I would like an example of when passing would be correct, please. This only works against lovely players, but if you open a rack that has no 7s but makes lots of 8s, you can pass, hope they make a play which will likely give a bingo. For example, IORSTUV makes no 7s but makes an 8 with every vowel. However smart players will just exchange in response unless they have a playable bingo of their own. More realistically: You are up by, say, 60 points. There is one tile left in the bag, and the Q is unseen. There is no place to play the Q on the board. Looking at the remaining tiles, you see that if the Q is in the bag, your opponent has a bingo in several spots (i.e. they cannot be blocked). If you make a play and your opponent bingos, he/she will end up winning because he/she will get +20 from your rack for the Q, along with his/her bingo score. The correct play here is to pass. If the Q is on his/her rack it won't matter either way, but by passing, your opponent will be stuck with the Q on his/her rack after playing his/her bingo. You can then go out (and you can simply play off one tile at a time to maximize your score, since he/she is "Q stuck" and is thus forced to pass) and win pretty easily. In this scenario, the only way to guarantee victory is to pass. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 23:21 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 23:18
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Hadaka Apron posted:What are your all-time highest single-game and single-play scores? Mine are 573 and 221 (for CHOWDERS on two triple word scores), and I'm sure that yours are much better. Do you play competitively at all? My high game is 665 which was in a Nationals. I think I had six bingos. Highest 3x3 was EQUISETA 212 against Quackle, a computer program.
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May 19, 2015 00:29
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I'm not sure why people are getting all pissed off in a thread about Scrabble but okay. I'll respond briefly. 1. Yes there are some very competitive people that can be annoying, however this is true of any activity. The vast majority of Scrabble players I've found to be pretty friendly. I wouldn't continue to play tournaments if I didn't like the people; I'd just sit at home and play on my computer. 2. Why would you be upset at someone playing a word you don't know? That's not the game's fault, that's your fault for having a worse vocabulary. If you study, you will build up that vocabulary over time. flakeloaf posted:It's no different from that one guy who's awesome at Goldeneye but still takes Oddjob and uses the golden gun anyway because that's just the kind of "fun" that makes your friends want to play again and again. Unless you're all entomologists, there needs to be a house rule against busting out ZYZZYVA. That's literally the most improbably seven letter word in the game. I'm not sure if it's ever been played. So it's kind of an odd example. Why would you have to be an entomologist to play a word that is a type of insect?? FactsAreUseless posted:Actionjackson, you talked about prison Scrabble having special balance rules. Are there any commonly-known balance problems with Scrabble? Most games played at a competitive level have identified balance issues. I never said anything about prison, that was the first person who responded in the thread. There is a huge balance issue with Scrabble which is the luck factor, which is why tournaments are more than a few games. However even then a person can be very unlucky or lucky in any given tournament. One metric people like is blanks drawn - the tournament I won, there were 20 games (so 40 blanks possible), and I drew over 30 of them. A player like Nigel is so strong that he can overcome a lot of bad draws, however he still has bad tournaments (bad for him meaning not winning). He finished out of the top eight at worlds last year, which was pretty shocking. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 16:27 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 16:23
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twodot posted:I'll start with the most important thing which is: Jeza is an idiot. That said, if a friend offers to play a game of Scrabble, and you don't lead with "I have every 2 and 3 letter word memorized, also I have a dedicated program for studying 7/8 letter anagrams", you're being a dick. Yeah I understand that, I don't play anyone that isn't a competitive player as well. It wouldn't be any fun anyway. Jeza posted:Food for thought: it doesn't count as vocabulary if you don't know what it means or can't deploy it in a reasonable grammatical sentence. It's more like parroting a string of numbers or symbols learned purely through rote. Given that many of the best scrabble players don't even speak English, I think that's a fair assessment. Well knowing the definitions isn't required, but I enjoy learning them anyway. But practically speaking, it would be just about impossible to memorize the definitions of over 100,000 words. If you have an objection to what words are acceptable or not, your issue is with dictionary makers, not Scrabble. Are you saying there are no two letter words you think are valid (which can't be right)? Or that two letter words simply shouldn't be allowed in the game? actionjackson fucked around with this message at 16:55 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 16:52
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flakeloaf posted:That's kind of what I was driving at. Some people genuinely do think it's fun to play people well beneath their own level and stomp them into a fine paste. gently caress those people. Well in tournaments they have divisions, based on rating, to account for this kind of thing. Some players like to play those much better than they are though as a learning experience. Even those in the bottom division of a tournament would pummel the vast majority of casual players though.
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May 19, 2015 17:14
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twodot posted:I think there is a pretty clear divide between games where there is a large skill divide, but a poor player understands what's happening, and where a poor player doesn't. For instance, I'm pretty terrible at chess, but there's no strategy so advanced that I wouldn't think it's legal. Then there's games like Magic where the rules are very complicated and advanced players routinely do things I think are illegal, or tell me what I'm doing is wrong. Scrabble is almost entirely about knowing what's legal better than other people (and rack management and board placement). An advanced Scrabble player is free to player gibberish against me, and I'm basically coin flipping on whether I should challenge or not. If you were playing someone like me I would give you free challenges flakeloaf posted:Hey, speaking of chess, are there any mind games that go on during your opponent's turn? Shenanigans like wandering away from the table, singing idly, staring at the little clock (is there even a little clock?), clacking your remaining tiles around on your rack, that sort of thing? http://protiles.net/ The wooden tiles don't work because you can feel which letter is on each. Also you need a tile that is different on front and back so people can't put one on the board upside down. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 18:44 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 18:34
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Bitter Mushroom posted:qi is a bullshit word. its a loving chinese name, why is this poo poo legal This isn't a "justify words for me" thread. Please contact Merriam-Webster.
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May 20, 2015 18:17
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No one cares, please stop making GBS threads up my little thread thanks
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May 20, 2015 18:31
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slap me silly posted:I know lots of words but I find that I'm average at best among casual scrabble players. Next time I play I am going to take your advice about leaving a good rack after a play because I literally never thought about that before. Yeah it's really important and I never thought about it either when I played as a kid. Once in a blue moon I'd get a bingo; now I average a bit over two a game over the long term. I'm not really into boggle, but yes I know some people that are insanely good at it. I don't know if there are tournaments or anything, but there are groups where people get together to play. I would agree that there would be less luck, though there doesn't seem to be any strategy.
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May 20, 2015 20:16
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turbomoose posted:Are there any other boards for scrabble? Like have you ever tried playing on like a rectangle board or one with the double/triple letter scores in different spots (and do things like this even exist?) No, and those boards do exist, words with friends uses that. And speaking of, I don't play that because of said board orientation. The orientation of the board affects strategy.
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May 21, 2015 00:11
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junidog posted:Sure it affects strategy, but why don't you like that? I'd think it'd be an interesting change of pace/chance to try and adapt your strategy. Or is the thinking more "this wouldn't help me get better at scrabble as played in competitions, so I don't care"? I mean, the only people I play are other tournament players, and they don't really use it either because there are apps where you can play the game on the actual board. Also the lexicon is different to some degree, though I have no idea why. You can't really plan your tournament strategy like that with out some sort of collusion, which is expressly prohibited. There are definitely players that are more offensive than defensive. I wouldn't say I change how I play much personally vs. them. In the larger word source that I use it's harder to "shut down" a board since there are so many hooks you can make. Karmoderm posted:This is the most interesting thing to me as well. I used to play competitive Magic: the Gathering (if there's any place where it's okay to let that slip it's surely in a competitive Scrabble thread) and I watched Word Wars and honestly the similarities to competitive Magic was uncanny. Especially when the guy with the dreadlocks was complaining to his friend about how his opponent drew both blanks when he drew none and if it had gone any other way he would have won - I must have heard people tell me similar things in exactly the same tone of voice hundreds of times. Do you play any other games at a similar level to Scrabble or know anyone who plays another game at a similar level, and have you ever found similarities in strange places? lol that guy in the dredlocks is named Marlon Hill. He bitches about everything.
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May 21, 2015 16:20
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Kaal posted:lol, s33med approps I've definitely heard people say "a slice of za"
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May 21, 2015 22:10
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flakeloaf posted:They sound today like the people who say "hashtag" out loud will sound in ten years. Yeah definitely. I know PH used to be good in the international word source. VIN (wine) used to be good in the American word source.
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May 21, 2015 23:14
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PT6A posted:If a blank tile is played and is ambiguous (two or more letters would form a valid word), how do you keep track of what it actually is? Does this ever come up as a problem? In tournaments it's written or circled on a slip of paper. As to player personalities there is a wide range, from really nice people to overcompetitive assholes.
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May 26, 2015 00:26
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Startyde posted:Is ISC the place to play online? The client looks sketch as all hell. Yeah it's pretty hideous though. I don't use it. I play in a club each week though. I also play against a computer program called Quackle. Keith Atherton posted:How do you deal with a Z J or Q that you can't immediately score big with? Do you dump a Q to play QI for 11 points rather than keep it around hoping for a better rack? I've never noticed an advantage either way but I'm a casual player. The Q is the worst individual tile so you should get rid of it asap, unless you have a very specific situation, like there is a favorable imbalance of U's remaining in the pool. The J is somewhat good, the Z is amazing, especially in the international dictionary.
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Jul 15, 2015 16:57
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*takes a chomp* posted:Do you often see multiple words on your rack, but you decide to choose a word that's less points but more stylish against your opponent. Like "loser" or "terrible" how often does that happen? No not really. If I play something that's less points than the alternatives it's for rack balance and sometimes defensive purposes.
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Jul 15, 2015 17:58
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Hadaka Apron posted:I always saw the V as the worst individual tile, since it's not in any 2-letter words so you can't dump it easily. On the other hand, the X is amazing since it's in AX, EX, XI, OX and XU. (These are all with the US dictionary) V is the second worst. The last post mentioned C, which is actually one of the better tiles (it has a positive valuation as you can see) because it's in so many words. For example in CSW, there are 7471 seven letter words with a C, and only 1727 with a V. I'm pretty sure more bingos start with C than any other letter. For example take this website, and put a C on your rack. You will then see the two leave valuations with C and every other letter. Half are positive. If you use a V, there are no positive two tile combinations (excluding a pair with a blank of course). http://cross-tables.com/leaves.php actionjackson fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 18:47
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Lot 49 posted:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33606449 Yeah I've played Nigel and talked to him a decent amount. Dude is insane.
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Jul 22, 2015 18:15
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No
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Jul 22, 2015 23:02
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Antifreeze Head posted:As the Scrabble dictionary continues to evolve and include more and more loan words and internet shorthand, should there be a rebalancing of tiles values? With stuff like "bezzy" (sadly not "beezy") and "thanx" now being acceptable, shouldn't that make those letters more common and thus of lower point value? A few words aren't going to make a notable difference in overall letter distribution because the number of total words length 2-15 is enormous (270K in the international word list that I use). An X is still much more rare to find in a word than an E for example. There are 6922 words with an X, and 187,543 with an E. The distribution of the number of each tile and point value is pretty fair in my opinion. The only exception that was made to the tile distribution is the S - since it is so incredibly powerful, there are much less of them than there should be.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:47
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PT6A posted:How often have you seen words with two or three Zs played (using the blank tiles, of course)? I don't know, maybe 2-3 times. I think I went out with ZUZ once. But it's rare to use a blank that's not for a bingo, and much rarer to have a double Z word even if you could do that. Actually in my club a couple nights ago my opponent almost had a good setup for ZIZIT (tassels on a Jewish prayer shawl). It would have been a triple word score with the Z doubled, making the second Z a blank.
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Jul 24, 2015 00:57
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