As-tu une technique particulière pour apprendre le vocabulaire? - Non.
July 21, 2015 6:45 PM Subscribe
Kiwi Nigel Richards wins French Scrabble contest, doesn't even speak French. - Finale
You can review some of his games at Nigel Richards Scrabble Game Archive [Wow].
You can review some of his games at Nigel Richards Scrabble Game Archive [Wow].
I'm not allowed to play Scrabble with my family anymore, because it leads to fights.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:54 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:54 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
That is quite remarkable. And linking because it made me curious, here is the value distribution of letters across languages. K is worth 10 in French! Kiwi is 22 without a bonus tile.
posted by Metro Gnome at 6:55 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Metro Gnome at 6:55 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not allowed to play Scrabble with my family anymore, because it leads to fights.
I watched a couple break up their relationship over a game of Monopoly 5 years ago. It was the most horrible and wonderful thing I've ever seen in my life.
Board games are not to be fucked with.
posted by Fizz at 6:59 PM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
I watched a couple break up their relationship over a game of Monopoly 5 years ago. It was the most horrible and wonderful thing I've ever seen in my life.
Board games are not to be fucked with.
posted by Fizz at 6:59 PM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
Blame that one on Monopoly. If they had been playing Settlers of Catan, everything would be fine.
posted by demiurge at 7:04 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by demiurge at 7:04 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I have seen Risk devolve (evolve?) into nudity and fist fights more than once, occasionally both during the same game.
posted by Maugrim at 7:12 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Maugrim at 7:12 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Blame that one on Monopoly. If they had been playing Settlers of Catan, everything would be fine.
Ha! Not hardly. I have some very dear friends, a couple, where he is a cutthroat, play-to-win boardgame player and she just likes to have something to do while everyone is chatting. Inevitably every game of Settlers involves tense, raised voices as he starts to consolidate his empire and ends in icy stares as he mercilessly blocks her road and refuses to trade with her.
This is why I think it's good to work a game into your rotation that's really heavily oriented towards random chance: it gives the casual players a chance to win sometimes. I know hardcore gamers turn their noses up at these and love to focus on skill games, but you have to know your audience. Chances are good your more casual friends find the whole experience insufferable if you insist on only playing games where you crush them every time.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:24 PM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Ha! Not hardly. I have some very dear friends, a couple, where he is a cutthroat, play-to-win boardgame player and she just likes to have something to do while everyone is chatting. Inevitably every game of Settlers involves tense, raised voices as he starts to consolidate his empire and ends in icy stares as he mercilessly blocks her road and refuses to trade with her.
This is why I think it's good to work a game into your rotation that's really heavily oriented towards random chance: it gives the casual players a chance to win sometimes. I know hardcore gamers turn their noses up at these and love to focus on skill games, but you have to know your audience. Chances are good your more casual friends find the whole experience insufferable if you insist on only playing games where you crush them every time.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:24 PM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Blame that one on Monopoly. If they had been playing Settlers of Catan, everything would be fine.
I've managed to completely piss off two people on two separate occasions with one card from Settlers of Catan: Monopoly. I'm not even joking.
posted by Edgewise at 7:34 PM on July 21, 2015
I've managed to completely piss off two people on two separate occasions with one card from Settlers of Catan: Monopoly. I'm not even joking.
posted by Edgewise at 7:34 PM on July 21, 2015
I have seen Risk devolve (evolve?) into nudity and fist fights more than once, occasionally both during the same game.
I need cooler friends.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:36 PM on July 21, 2015 [9 favorites]
I need cooler friends.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:36 PM on July 21, 2015 [9 favorites]
This man is amazing. I absolutely love that he had only recently begun reading the French dictionary and STILL won.
If anything leads to a fight (that gets referenced forever after) during game night with my friends, it's either Scrabble or Uno.* Depending on who you play with, Scrabble can be a nice, pleasant family game, or it can be an absolute war-zone where the temptation to flip the board hovers like a Valkyrie.
*ESPECIALLY UNO. Oh my GOD. It was great in grade school, but it gets real when you've got seven cynical twenty-somethings and no-one knows who'll get the "draw two/draw four/reverse/skip" cards. You can tell a lot about a person based on how they use those damned cards.
posted by Ashen at 7:46 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
If anything leads to a fight (that gets referenced forever after) during game night with my friends, it's either Scrabble or Uno.* Depending on who you play with, Scrabble can be a nice, pleasant family game, or it can be an absolute war-zone where the temptation to flip the board hovers like a Valkyrie.
*ESPECIALLY UNO. Oh my GOD. It was great in grade school, but it gets real when you've got seven cynical twenty-somethings and no-one knows who'll get the "draw two/draw four/reverse/skip" cards. You can tell a lot about a person based on how they use those damned cards.
posted by Ashen at 7:46 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
As-tu une technique particulière pour apprendre le vocabulaire?
"NON."
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:06 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
"NON."
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:06 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is why I think it's good to work a game into your rotation that's really heavily oriented towards random chance: it gives the casual players a chance to win sometimes. I know hardcore gamers turn their noses up at these and love to focus on skill games, but you have to know your audience. Chances are good your more casual friends find the whole experience insufferable if you insist on only playing games where you crush them every time.
Sooooooo Illuminati isn't on their Christmas list?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:28 PM on July 21, 2015
Sooooooo Illuminati isn't on their Christmas list?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:28 PM on July 21, 2015
If you're looking for a goofy, non-relationship-destroying, Calvinball-esque board game, may I recommend what my friends and I have been calling Phonetic Scrabble? It's just like regular Scrabble, except you're allowed to misspell words, preferably as ridiculously as possible.
posted by a car full of lions at 8:53 PM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by a car full of lions at 8:53 PM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
I need cooler friends.
There's something about a tall, naked man yelling, "Kamchatka? You asshole" right before he leaps the table and starts throwing punches that'll stick with you for life.
Before anyone asks, I don't remember the specific circumstances but the next day we all agreed that it was probably appropriate at the time.
posted by Maugrim at 8:57 PM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
There's something about a tall, naked man yelling, "Kamchatka? You asshole" right before he leaps the table and starts throwing punches that'll stick with you for life.
Before anyone asks, I don't remember the specific circumstances but the next day we all agreed that it was probably appropriate at the time.
posted by Maugrim at 8:57 PM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]
My sister fell in with a crowd that plays scrabble in the competitive style--words that you don't know the meaning of and/or would question the legality of if you were a casual player ("do" and "re" still surprise me, for example). Nothing wrong with it but it's knocked Scrabble out of our family rotation at holidays; I have zero desire to improve my own game along those lines.
Fortunately we're all pretty geeky and there's plenty of other options. When the nephews are a few years older we can probably get multiple tables going.
posted by mark k at 8:58 PM on July 21, 2015
Fortunately we're all pretty geeky and there's plenty of other options. When the nephews are a few years older we can probably get multiple tables going.
posted by mark k at 8:58 PM on July 21, 2015
"do" and "re" still surprise me, for example
They both do?
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:13 PM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
They both do?
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:13 PM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Played competitive Scrabble at university for university. Had a pretty decent rank in the local hustlings. Was able to recite all two-letter and three-letter words from SOWPODS on demand. In my defence, I can (could) tell the meanings of all the "funny" words; I learn by association, so knowing the meaning of a word is important for me to remember it.
That said, I no longer can recite them in quick succession (although I can point them out); been 7 years since I've played competitive Scrabble on a regular board (as opposed to online venues). I love my wife and love being married to her. (Which is also why I stopped at 3-letter words, and hadn't proceeded to memorizing the eight-letters-with-all-vowels list; couldn't be arsed anymore)
As for excellent Scrabble players being unable to speak the language in which they're playing, it's actually more common than most people think. If competitive Scrabblers are looking for the next big challenge, I'd invite them to playing its simulacrum in my mother tongue; like other Indic scripts, you'd have to work with half-letters and conjunct consonants.
posted by the cydonian at 9:15 PM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
That said, I no longer can recite them in quick succession (although I can point them out); been 7 years since I've played competitive Scrabble on a regular board (as opposed to online venues). I love my wife and love being married to her. (Which is also why I stopped at 3-letter words, and hadn't proceeded to memorizing the eight-letters-with-all-vowels list; couldn't be arsed anymore)
As for excellent Scrabble players being unable to speak the language in which they're playing, it's actually more common than most people think. If competitive Scrabblers are looking for the next big challenge, I'd invite them to playing its simulacrum in my mother tongue; like other Indic scripts, you'd have to work with half-letters and conjunct consonants.
posted by the cydonian at 9:15 PM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
We call Risk "Divorce" in our house (and it is not to be played with just 2 people) but our perennial favorite is Sorry, with the "adult" rules, which we also renamed to "Fuck You".
I think that this article just proves to me that skill at Scrabble has nothing to do with language skill. If anything, being fluent is a liability.
posted by fiercekitten at 9:57 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think that this article just proves to me that skill at Scrabble has nothing to do with language skill. If anything, being fluent is a liability.
posted by fiercekitten at 9:57 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: a tall, naked man yelling, "Kamchatka? You asshole"
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:08 PM on July 21, 2015
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:08 PM on July 21, 2015
I think that this article just proves to me that skill at Scrabble has nothing to do with language skill.
From a profile:
From a profile:
"When he was learning to talk, he was not interested in words, just numbers," says his mother. "He used to point to the calendars. He related everything to numbers."posted by unliteral at 10:26 PM on July 21, 2015
Richards didn't play Scrabble until he was 28. His mother introduced him to the game, frustrated that his card-counting had turned their Sunday games of 500 into a no-contest. "I said, 'I know a game you're not going to be very good at, because you can't spell very well and you weren't very good at English at school'." Despite his poor affinity with language, he turned out to be a prodigious talent, and in 1997 won the national champs on his first attempt.
a car full of lions: It's just like regular Scrabble, except you're allowed to misspell words, preferably as ridiculously as possible.
That reminds me of a Scrabble variant I once came up with and called Alternate Reality Scrabble. Basically, you play in pairs with the partners on opposite sides of the board, who cannot see each other's hands. When you lay down a word you have to use all seven letters. It cannot be a real word, in any dictionary. When you lay it down your partner has to pronounce the word immediately, without messing up, and then give a definition of the word, without hesitation.
The scoring is such that the first tile is worth 7 times its value, the second 6 times, third 5 times and so on, encouraging frontloading of Q, Z, J, X and so on. This rewards words that are harder to pronounce. Any pronunciation can be valid, but if challenged the pair must be able give a plausible explanation by analogy of why the pronunciation is correct (e.g. the "g" was silent like in "campaign", the "ti" sounded like "sh" like in "ration" and so on).
posted by Kattullus at 1:36 AM on July 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
That reminds me of a Scrabble variant I once came up with and called Alternate Reality Scrabble. Basically, you play in pairs with the partners on opposite sides of the board, who cannot see each other's hands. When you lay down a word you have to use all seven letters. It cannot be a real word, in any dictionary. When you lay it down your partner has to pronounce the word immediately, without messing up, and then give a definition of the word, without hesitation.
The scoring is such that the first tile is worth 7 times its value, the second 6 times, third 5 times and so on, encouraging frontloading of Q, Z, J, X and so on. This rewards words that are harder to pronounce. Any pronunciation can be valid, but if challenged the pair must be able give a plausible explanation by analogy of why the pronunciation is correct (e.g. the "g" was silent like in "campaign", the "ti" sounded like "sh" like in "ration" and so on).
posted by Kattullus at 1:36 AM on July 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
I once played Star Wars Clone Wars RISK against Mr Bookish. He was crushing me, so started leaving areas undefended as he was two moves away from victory. Then Order 66 was called which meant I basically won in the next round though his troops vastly outnumbered me and I was in a real squeeze. It was a beautiful moment from which our relationship has mostly recovered.
Mr Bookish also gets annoyed when his Turkish brother-in-law makes up words in Scrabble that turn out to be in the dictionary. It's beautiful.
posted by kariebookish at 2:27 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Mr Bookish also gets annoyed when his Turkish brother-in-law makes up words in Scrabble that turn out to be in the dictionary. It's beautiful.
posted by kariebookish at 2:27 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Do and re still surprise mi, so fa example.
FTFY
posted by asok at 2:31 AM on July 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
FTFY
posted by asok at 2:31 AM on July 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
Indeed, it has been argued that speaking English is a disadvantage in top-flight Scrabble, where the true champion relies on a battery of memorised pseudo-words.
posted by asok at 2:38 AM on July 22, 2015
posted by asok at 2:38 AM on July 22, 2015
("do" and "re" still surprise me, for example)
...."do" as a word of English surprises you?
In any case, when both of your parents' have a some what deadly mix of math and language in their background and Mom has a chip on her shoulder about the fact that Dad can do the NYTimes crossword puzzle faster than her, and everyone groks that it's a numbers game, and not really a word game, it leads to, e.g., cackling when somebody foolishly leaves a triple word score empty for you.
The first time my poor husband played Scrabble with my family he lost. Badly. "I thought the point of the game was to make interesting words!" He's learned since then.
And, some quick and dirty tricks if your friends are playing "competitively": if you know a couple of the "q without a u" words (qi and qat are two of my fallbacks) as well as solfage (y'know, like the Sound of Music song) and how to spell the letters of a few alphabets (especially Hebrew), it can go a long way towards boosting your score in casual games.
posted by damayanti at 5:11 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
...."do" as a word of English surprises you?
In any case, when both of your parents' have a some what deadly mix of math and language in their background and Mom has a chip on her shoulder about the fact that Dad can do the NYTimes crossword puzzle faster than her, and everyone groks that it's a numbers game, and not really a word game, it leads to, e.g., cackling when somebody foolishly leaves a triple word score empty for you.
The first time my poor husband played Scrabble with my family he lost. Badly. "I thought the point of the game was to make interesting words!" He's learned since then.
And, some quick and dirty tricks if your friends are playing "competitively": if you know a couple of the "q without a u" words (qi and qat are two of my fallbacks) as well as solfage (y'know, like the Sound of Music song) and how to spell the letters of a few alphabets (especially Hebrew), it can go a long way towards boosting your score in casual games.
posted by damayanti at 5:11 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
So I play Words With Friends a lot. A lot (281,486 feet worth of tiles laid end to end ... not sure how big a tile is, since it's all digital). The one thing that annoys me is that the app's statistics show that I have played 99% of the two-letter words possible and 97% of the three-letter words, but won't tell me the ones I haven't played. I mean, come on. It's very aggravating. WWF, you suck at big data.
posted by chavenet at 6:47 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 6:47 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
More violent/nakedness causing/all around inappropriate boardgames stories please. Keep em coming.
I have already mentioned a Diplomacy opponent in a PBEM game doing minor violence to himself in his dismay at the Turkish armies landing in Marseilles; in another game of Diplomacy (a face-to-face one), one player betrayed another so shockingly that the betrayed player -- an easygoing fellow named Larry, normally the gentlest of men -- leaped up and grabbed his betrayer by the throat and was banging his head on the floor when we pulled them apart.
Amusingly, this outbreak of violence did not end the game. Still, that was thirty years ago and Larry can still be driven into agitation by a mention of that incident.
Nakedness? I don't have much except to tell you about the time I finally realized I was old. A decade or so back I was in my mid-thirties and sharing a house with some other folk. My roommates were all in their twenties and even then I could feel the gap between our life experiences slowly widening. One afternoon I was heading off to work (working from four til midnight) and as I was leaving the roomies mentioned they were having some people over for a cocktail party that evening, so there might well be people here when I got home. The phrase "cocktail party" made me think it would be a bunch of Gen Y types drinking ironic martinis while a Frank Sinatra CD played.
If the party began that way, it had morphed by half past midnight when I returned: it was now Dr. Dre on the sound system and the dozen or so guests just drinking beer. I was invited to join the festivities and stuck around for one drink, as I didn't want to be the weird old guy that no one knows; after a single drink I begged off, declaring (truthfully) that I had to work in the morning. I headed upstairs and hit the sack. This would be around 1:00 AM.
At some point maybe an hour or two later I woke up to noise from the backyard (my room was upstairs and faced the back). The music was off and I surmised most of the guests had gone home, but there was some giggling coming from beneath my window. I peered out to see what was going on and spotted my roommate and several of her guests engaged in a honest-to-Bog game of Naked Twister. And my only reaction was to think, "For fuck's sake, why can't you people be quiet? I have to work in six hours." I am not sure if the Twister engendered the nudity, or the nudity gave rise to the Twister, or they arose as a package deal. Still, my thought process was not prurient delight in my statuesque blonde roommate cavorting in her altogether outside my window, but literally wishing those kids would get off my lawn.
Anyway, I moved into a place on my own a month later and have not lived with strangers from that day to this.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:48 AM on July 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
I have already mentioned a Diplomacy opponent in a PBEM game doing minor violence to himself in his dismay at the Turkish armies landing in Marseilles; in another game of Diplomacy (a face-to-face one), one player betrayed another so shockingly that the betrayed player -- an easygoing fellow named Larry, normally the gentlest of men -- leaped up and grabbed his betrayer by the throat and was banging his head on the floor when we pulled them apart.
Amusingly, this outbreak of violence did not end the game. Still, that was thirty years ago and Larry can still be driven into agitation by a mention of that incident.
Nakedness? I don't have much except to tell you about the time I finally realized I was old. A decade or so back I was in my mid-thirties and sharing a house with some other folk. My roommates were all in their twenties and even then I could feel the gap between our life experiences slowly widening. One afternoon I was heading off to work (working from four til midnight) and as I was leaving the roomies mentioned they were having some people over for a cocktail party that evening, so there might well be people here when I got home. The phrase "cocktail party" made me think it would be a bunch of Gen Y types drinking ironic martinis while a Frank Sinatra CD played.
If the party began that way, it had morphed by half past midnight when I returned: it was now Dr. Dre on the sound system and the dozen or so guests just drinking beer. I was invited to join the festivities and stuck around for one drink, as I didn't want to be the weird old guy that no one knows; after a single drink I begged off, declaring (truthfully) that I had to work in the morning. I headed upstairs and hit the sack. This would be around 1:00 AM.
At some point maybe an hour or two later I woke up to noise from the backyard (my room was upstairs and faced the back). The music was off and I surmised most of the guests had gone home, but there was some giggling coming from beneath my window. I peered out to see what was going on and spotted my roommate and several of her guests engaged in a honest-to-Bog game of Naked Twister. And my only reaction was to think, "For fuck's sake, why can't you people be quiet? I have to work in six hours." I am not sure if the Twister engendered the nudity, or the nudity gave rise to the Twister, or they arose as a package deal. Still, my thought process was not prurient delight in my statuesque blonde roommate cavorting in her altogether outside my window, but literally wishing those kids would get off my lawn.
Anyway, I moved into a place on my own a month later and have not lived with strangers from that day to this.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:48 AM on July 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
"I thought the point of the game was to make interesting words!"
My girlfriend and I were long distance and we played Wordfeud (WWF but it worked better on Android). It quickly became clear that the games weren't going to be competitive, but we kept playing and my goal became making interesting words. We would also make sentences with the words so the goal transitioned into using words that could be used in suggestive sentences. Fortunately if you've got the right partner that is all words.
I think the culmination of this* was being in a hotel room playing Distraction Wordfeud, where when it wasn't your turn it was your job to make it difficult for the other person to think of words to play.
* Well that, or it was when, reader, we had our N1U2P4T1I1A1L1S1.
posted by mountmccabe at 8:30 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
My girlfriend and I were long distance and we played Wordfeud (WWF but it worked better on Android). It quickly became clear that the games weren't going to be competitive, but we kept playing and my goal became making interesting words. We would also make sentences with the words so the goal transitioned into using words that could be used in suggestive sentences. Fortunately if you've got the right partner that is all words.
I think the culmination of this* was being in a hotel room playing Distraction Wordfeud, where when it wasn't your turn it was your job to make it difficult for the other person to think of words to play.
* Well that, or it was when, reader, we had our N1U2P4T1I1A1L1S1.
posted by mountmccabe at 8:30 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
I saw Nigel when he played at and won the US Nationals a couple of years ago (my wife and I both play tourneys). He's really a Scrabble machine, but completely unassuming otherwise. Compared to other top players he doesn't really seem to have a noticeable ego, or even be that focused on winning. He just likes to play and is really good. When they gave him the big cardboard check at the prize ceremony he was pretty much like "thanks, see ya next year" ...
As far as the math-y memorizers versus the "I love language and etymology" people, the math folks definitely have the edge. But at least in the U.S. the Scrabble community is very social and focused around enjoyment of the game versus vicious competition, so lots of people swap weird word meanings, puzzles, and so on. I'm somewhere in between - I love words, but you can't memorize the meaning of every single one, so I do play a lot I can't define.
The top players also have various cool games with the board and/or tiles, if anyone is interested in the descriptions.
Anyone who's been to a CHIPOTLE restaurant lately know the anagram (U.S. dictionary)?
posted by freecellwizard at 8:34 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
As far as the math-y memorizers versus the "I love language and etymology" people, the math folks definitely have the edge. But at least in the U.S. the Scrabble community is very social and focused around enjoyment of the game versus vicious competition, so lots of people swap weird word meanings, puzzles, and so on. I'm somewhere in between - I love words, but you can't memorize the meaning of every single one, so I do play a lot I can't define.
The top players also have various cool games with the board and/or tiles, if anyone is interested in the descriptions.
Anyone who's been to a CHIPOTLE restaurant lately know the anagram (U.S. dictionary)?
posted by freecellwizard at 8:34 AM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
The one thing that annoys me is that the app's statistics show that I have played 99% of the two-letter words possible and 97% of the three-letter words, but won't tell me the ones I haven't played.
I feel your pain. I have 100% of two letter and 97% of three letter words. The real frustration is with the Achievements though. I have 22 of the 23 and the last one just says Hidden. How the hell am I supposed to get that? I'll list those that I have on the off-chance that someone reading this that has got it and can tell me what I need to do.
I feel your pain. I have 100% of two letter and 97% of three letter words. The real frustration is with the Achievements though. I have 22 of the 23 and the last one just says Hidden. How the hell am I supposed to get that? I'll list those that I have on the off-chance that someone reading this that has got it and can tell me what I need to do.
- Inaugural
- Creator
- Double Down
- Feelin' Lucky
- Bookworm I
- Maximizer I
- Game Changer I
- Bookworm II
- Centennial
- Meet a Wordie
- Thank Q
- Maximizer II
- Plus-35
- Game Changer II
- Millenial
- Maxed Out Hidden
- Trip Aces
- Timely
- J-Master
- Q-Master
- X-Master
- Z-Master
I played competitive Scrabble for a brief time in New Zealand (incidentally, based at Nigel Richards' old club). Once you get into the higher ranks, the game becomes about recalling and recognising patterns, while constantly assessing the next possible moves and outcomes. So yeah, mathy engineering type thinking. The best players tend to also be eccentric, which makes sense given the dedication needed to succeed as Scrabble elite, and the little fame and glory that comes with it.
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 2:46 PM on July 23, 2015
posted by exquisite_deluxe at 2:46 PM on July 23, 2015
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posted by googly at 6:49 PM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]