watervole | Entries tagged with scrabble

I'd been staying away from Facebook Scrabble. I was ill for ages with the vertigo and could only manage turns every couple of weeks when my brain was in gear. Then, just as I was starting to get back to something approaching normal, it deleted all my games (many of which were getting near to a well-fought finish) as a side-effect of a crappy bug-fix. At which point, I rather lost interest.

However, I took a peek today and discovered that they've added a dictionary! I can play a word like 'lur' and discover it's a form of Danish horn - at which point my brain goes 'ping' and actually remembers it from somewhere in context. This is great! One of the frustrations of Scrabble is seeing a word on the board and not knowing what it actually means.

Now, I can type in words like 'ennage' and instantly know that it's a printers term relating to the number of 'n's in a word.

Okay, who wants to start a game?

My apologies to my Scrabble opponents, both those who were close to winning and those who were close to losing.

It seems that a bug affecting many games (but ironically probably none of mine) made them decide to delete all games that had gone a week without a move. As I've been playing very slowly due to the vertigo making it hard to concentrate, my games were nearly all wiped.

I'll start new games in time, but I'll probably wait until the vertigo (being optimistic here) is gone. I'm seeing the specialist again next week, so hopefully I'll find out what, if anything, the MRI scan showed.

A general reminder.

If you're playing Scrabble with me on Facebook, accept from the start that I'm a slow player. My neck/shoulder pain are erratic and can make me unable to post a turn for a week or even a month.

Please do NOT force a win - even if I'm losing.

I don't give up games where I'm losing - I consider them a challenge.

Please do NOT force a win if I'm winning - because it's safe to assume that I don't want to abandon a winning game either.

I play on the longest turnaround games that the system allows for, but this is often shorter than I can physically cope with.

I don't mind people sending an email to ask if I've forgotten a game - that's fine. But please wait about a fortnight before getting concerned.

I try and make the problem clear on my Facebook status.

Today's Scrabble made me smile. One of my friends played 'shag' and another scored well with 'yoni'...

Both people who would never use such words to me in normal life, but in Scrabble, all words are assessed solely (and cheerfully) on their point score.

Naturally, I'm reminded of one of my favourite XKCD strips.

I think people partly got the wrong idea.

I wasn't frustrated just becasue I was losing, but because I was facing a player who didn't seem to be putting any thought into the game. Having realised why I was losing - board too blocked - I sacrificed a blank to create some open space and am now over a hundred points in the lead.

I'm still frustrated. If you're a Scrabble player, maybe you'll understand the frustration caused by an opponent who manages to score 6 on a triple word score (with lots of free space around it). She played 'at'. Having looked at the tiles left in the game, I'm sure she could have managed one of cat, sat, mat, bat, fat, hat, vat, etc. before we even look at longer easy words.

I play games for both the challenge and for the social element. This particular player isn't interested in chatting (I've tried a few messages) and seems to have no real interest in the game. I can only guess that for her its a pastime on the level that my great aunt used to play Patience. You do it a lot and it helps pass the time.

(Someone asked why I don't abandon the game. Fair question. Partly courtesy. It's rude to abandon a game part way through. Whatever her reasons for playing, she obviously gets something out of it as she plays her turns faster than anyone else I'm playing. I may find her annoying, but that's no reason to dip out on her.)

I'll stick to playing friends in future. All the seven other people I'm playing at present are players who put some thought into what they're doing. Some, like

megamole , are far better players than I am, but the game is fun. And knowing who I'm playing creates part of the social aspect for me.

I'm having one of the most frustrating Scrabble games of my life.

Owing to some bug in Scrabble Worldwide, instead of a game with

megamole , it set me up with someone else. As the other person seemed quite happy to play, I decided to continue with the game.

She's an absolutely terrible player (14% wins in 157 games), though I realised she was bad from her opening move which wasted a number of good tiles for hardly any score at all.

The laughable thing about it is that her playing style (all two and three letter words, spread out along the double word scores) is actually making it quite difficult to beat her (that and a lucky play that gave her a two letter word with Z in a good position that netted her 60 points). There's simply nowhere to play long words. I've already had to discard one bingo as there was nowhere to place it.

I guess it's good for me in a way. For once, I'm actually having to think hard about how to create hooks and bingo lines, whereas normally, I just rely on them appearing in the normal course of the game.

It's actually possible that she'll beat me through sheer grinding board-lock. (I'm not the world's best player, but I expect to win around 2/3 of my games - with a bit of help from Richard)

She's just blocked a 'I' that I'd set up so there would be something to cross through. I wouldn't mind so much if it had been a better use of the position. She wasted her Q there for 11 points, when there was a free U not far from a double word score which she could surely have used to much better effect if she'd waited to collect whatever she needed. (The U would still have blocked me, but at least I'd have felt it was doing something useful)

Anyway, enough moaning. I'd better try and set up a new bingo line. I nearly did it this time, but I could only make six letter words from the tiles I had in hand.

Trying to get a decent Scrabble game these days is a real gamble.( What current options are there for playing email Scrabble? )

I'm definitely getting better at Scrabble. Yesterday, I decided not to put down a word worth 20 points as I was really close to having a rack that might make a seven-letter word. The gamble paid off. I picked up two very good letters and was able to put down a 72 point word today.

( More thoughts on Scrabble tactics )

I've just had 'avizes' played against me. This word isn't defined in any Scrabble dictionary I could find (though it is agreed to be in SOWPODS). Even the OED couldn't find it!

I've just played 'roon' which I freely admit was a guess to try and use up my last three letters and end the game, but at least it's a real word! (a remnant of cloth, usually involving the selve-edge)

What puzzles me is how some of the words that aren't in any dictionary I can find are still able to get into the Scrabble word lists.

I've discovered that my local library allows me online access to the OED. This is a good thing.

Just as LJ can't understand words like itemise, neither can the TWL word list in Scrabble. Life is simpler when everything ends in ize, but they're not the spellings I grew up with.

Which is why most of my more recent games are using SOWPODS, but it's still damn annoying when it costs you a seven-letter word in an older game that is still TWL.

SOWPODS is like a combination of UK and American dictionaries.

'Geas' isn't even in SOWPODS.

Whoever compiles dictionaries obviously never played D+D - that's a word I started using at least 20 years ago!

Managed to break the diagonal pattern of the game in my last post with a word that used all my tiles.

Feeling good about that.

'relearnt' wasn't in my paper Scrabble dictionary, but I tried it in SOWPODS and it was fine. 66 points.

I need a Scrabble icon...

This is one of my current Scrabble games. I've never seen a board quite like it before!

Just started a new game with J, Q and X. Got rid of one of those, only to pick up Z.

Individually, I view them all as opportunities, but not all at once, please!

I think I'm going to have to get a new Scrabble dictionary.

I like to print my Scrabulous turns out on paper, so I can take them away and study them at leisure. If I think of a good word, I check it in my Scrabble dictionary.

But there's a lot of different Scrabble word lists, and mine has a lot of differences from the one Scrabulous uses.

I'd found a wonderful position to add an 's' onto jerking and play a seven letter word from that. Sadly although jerkings is allowed in my dictionary, it's not in TWL. I'd say about a quarter of the words I check are valid in one, but not the other. It's getting very frustrating.

Tried 'triggest' in the hope that it might relate to triangles or something like that. Was rather disappointed to find that although it was a valid word (68 points), it means 'neatest'.

What do you mean, 'mornay' isn't a valid word?

I learnt that one at school in cookery lessons - 'in a cheese sauce'.

Sigh, I expect it's in SOWPODS but it isn't in TWL.

Ah well, that's why they have official word lists - it avoids any arguments.

I'm definitely getting better at Scrabble. (having six games going at once is giving me plenty of practice)

I'm getting much better at hooking words onto other words (though still not as good as Waveney) and I'm managing to get the magic seven letter words now and then. Got one today which I was pleased with - they're still a novelty to me, this is about the third one in my entire life...

It's easier since I picked up a useful tip on rack building from

dougs. I'd never thought about that aspect of the game before.

I find my preferred technique is to print out the board and then go away and play around with it for a while with a pencil. I juggle anagrams best by writing the letters down in a jumble and letting the eye jump between them in different patterns. I've printed out the two letter word list as well. I find that very useful to have to hand as different versions of Scrabble have different lists of which ones are valid. Our Scrabble dictionary at home has a different set from either of those used by Scrabbulous. (Mind you, I looked at one web site which listed all the different Scrabble word lists and nearly had heart failure - there's around 20 of them)

How do other players go about looking for words? Do you work best on screen, on paper, with actual tiles?

I'm playing four or five games of Scrabble at present, and several times now, I've thought - well, that sounds like a plausible word, let's check it out in the dictionary.

So, I look it up in the dictionary and get the really irritating reply that "This word exists in the Scrabbulous dictionary, but we do not have a definition for it"

Two other online dictionaries that I try don't know it either.

eg. 'bien' is in my son's copy of 'Scrabble Words' and in SOWPODS online (though not in TWL, so I can't actually play it in any of my current games), but what does it mean?

I like to play words that I know the meaning of!

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Judith Proctor's Journal

Ramblings on morris dancing, 17th century re-enactment, and gardening

Entries tagged with scrabble

Scrabble dictionary

Scrabble games lost

Scrabble

Amusing Scrabble

Frustrating Scrabble part deux

Frustrating Scrabble

Scrabble

Scrabble

Scrabble words

Bloody American dictionary...

Geas

Beat the diagonal!

An unusual Scrabble game

Scrabble

Dictionaries

Scrabble

Scrabble mutterings

Tarpons (a kind of fish - and I knew that without looking it up)

Scrabble words

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