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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday August 19 2014, @06:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the word-play dept.

Oliver Roeder writes at 538 that for living-room players, Scrabble is a test of vocabularies but for world-class players, it’s about cold memorization and mathematical probabilities which is why top player are often computer programmers or mathematicians, not poets or novelists. Think of the dictionary as a giant rulebook of valid text strings not as a compendium of the beauty and complexity of the English language. A good competitive player will have memorized a sizeable chunk of the 83,667 words that are two letters to eight letters long. Great players will know a lot of the 29,150 nine-letter words as well.

To the uninitiated, a scrabble game played by top players looks like they had played in Martian. Here’s a taste: In a single game in last year’s Nationals, Nigel Richards, the champion of the 2010 National Scrabble Championship, played the following words: zarf (a metal holder for a coffee cup), waddy (to strike with a thick club), hulloed (to hallo, to shout), sajous (a capuchin, a monkey), qi (the vital force in Chinese thought), flyboats (a small, fast boat), trigo (wheat) and threaper (one that threaps, disputes). Richards has a photographic memory and is known for his uncanny gift for constructing impossible words by stringing his letters through tiles already on the board. "He is probably the best Scrabble player in the world at this point," says John D. Williams, Jr.. "He's got the entire dictionary memorized. He's pretty much a Scrabble machine, if such a thing exists." So, really, how does he do it? As Richards said in an interview posted on YouTube, “I’m not sure there is a secret. It’s just a matter of learning the words.” All 178,691 of them.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Boxzy on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:08AM

    by Boxzy (742) on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:08AM (#82946) Journal

    should be able to play it better than humans (like chess) is inevitably poisoned at the highest levels once business gets involved. I enjoy scrabble, mainly because of the social aspect of discussing the words. I wouldn't play chess anymore.

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  • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:25AM

    by davester666 (155) on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:25AM (#82952)

    Liar! Go back to elementary school and learn how to spell!

  • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:24AM

    by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:24AM (#82964) Homepage Journal

    be able to play it better than humans (like chess) is inevitably poisoned at the highest levels once business gets involved.

    What does business have to do with anything in this article, or chess?

    I enjoy scrabble, mainly because of the social aspect of discussing the words. I wouldn't play chess anymore.

    Computers play better than any human I've played. They don't mind if you take back a move (or many moves), which opens a whole other door in your chess world.

    I haven't lost a game against a human since playing the computer.

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    • (Score: 2) by Boxzy on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:53AM

      by Boxzy (742) on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:53AM (#82966) Journal

      I was mainly talking about Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue. Business involved itself in professional chess and devalued the game for me as a whole. Scrabble however is about humanity, language, interaction and what that means to civilisation. I frequently discuss the root meaning of words, their social implications and modern interpretations with my opponents. Can you do that with chess?

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @09:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @09:50AM (#82984)

        Scrabble however is about humanity, language, interaction and what that means to civilisation.

        No, it's about placing letters to form words and getting points.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Boxzy on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:24PM

          by Boxzy (742) on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:24PM (#83025) Journal

          You are an anonymous coward, so OBVIOUSLY the higher considerations of a game which involves language will be lost on you.

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