The Inevitability Of Bushveld
March 23, 2022 6:22 PM Subscribe
I was going to quit playing Scrabble competitively. Then something utterly nuts happened. [It was bushveld. Bushveld happened. -ed]
Posting here while playing Scrabble in another tab (thanks ISC.ro!)
posted by jessamyn at 7:08 PM on March 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 7:08 PM on March 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
I had to read the article to understand the editorial note... XD.
I still remember when I won my college Scrabble tournament, it was with "expat" and the x was on a double letter score and the t was on a triple word score. It was a pretty good play, but not 100+ points like you can get playing all 7 letters from the rack. I won because the other player challenged it and lost.
posted by subdee at 7:13 PM on March 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
I still remember when I won my college Scrabble tournament, it was with "expat" and the x was on a double letter score and the t was on a triple word score. It was a pretty good play, but not 100+ points like you can get playing all 7 letters from the rack. I won because the other player challenged it and lost.
posted by subdee at 7:13 PM on March 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
“I’m not even gonna challenge that,” Miransky deadpanned, “because it’s so weird that it has to be real.” LOL
posted by subdee at 7:14 PM on March 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by subdee at 7:14 PM on March 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
I like that the article is in the Sports section.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:17 PM on March 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:17 PM on March 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
God, that's such an improbably perfect story. I love it.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:26 PM on March 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:26 PM on March 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Huh, I always thought it was spelled "bushveldt".
posted by biogeo at 7:54 PM on March 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 7:54 PM on March 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
Ha, I know a lot of these -veld words, not because I play much scrabble, but because I did some of my graduate work studying the plant communities of South Africa. Oh and the MTG card Veldt, which caught my eye when I briefly played.
There's also some handful of -bos words (meaning bush/plant), which are maybe in this Collins list too, things like fynbos and rooibos and then a bunch of "English" words coming from other languages for vaguely similar shrubby plant communities elsewhere, like matorral, chaparral, kwongan, savannah.
Anyway, nice to see a good veld in the wild, apparently very exciting for those involved as well!
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:54 PM on March 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
There's also some handful of -bos words (meaning bush/plant), which are maybe in this Collins list too, things like fynbos and rooibos and then a bunch of "English" words coming from other languages for vaguely similar shrubby plant communities elsewhere, like matorral, chaparral, kwongan, savannah.
Anyway, nice to see a good veld in the wild, apparently very exciting for those involved as well!
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:54 PM on March 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
nice to see a good veld in the wild
My initial guess was that those two words sprang from the same Proto-Indo-European root, but checking a few etymological dictionaries it seems my instinct was wrong. The things you learn.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:01 PM on March 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
My initial guess was that those two words sprang from the same Proto-Indo-European root, but checking a few etymological dictionaries it seems my instinct was wrong. The things you learn.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:01 PM on March 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
As an Afrikaans person, so odd to see what words others would consider odd! Of course the *proper* form is bosveld. To me, bushveld is what English people say ;)
posted by Zumbador at 8:11 PM on March 23, 2022 [35 favorites]
posted by Zumbador at 8:11 PM on March 23, 2022 [35 favorites]
For a comment in MetaTalk I never got around to making, I found out that 'puissant' is (also) actually a word in English, with a history of usage including at least Shakespeare in 1599 and Heinlein in 1961.
posted by jamjam at 8:34 PM on March 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 8:34 PM on March 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
nice to see a good veld in the wild
Well, that is the most likely place to find them...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:42 PM on March 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
Well, that is the most likely place to find them...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:42 PM on March 23, 2022 [5 favorites]
Once when I was playing Words with Friends with someone I was telling them about how my family's Scrabble games always go off the rails and recounted this one specific dubious word my sister clearly made up and played, hoping it was real, and we challenged it but it turned out it was in fact real, and as a direct consequence she won the game.
Not five minutes later my friend played that dubious word. Six letter word, none of the letters super rare, but still, come on. My friend hadn't heard the word before and I just handed off the exact word they needed to use most of their tiles a couple rounds later.
This has to have been ten years ago now and I still get all these feelings every time I think about it. Scrabble is fkn wild.
posted by potrzebie at 9:25 PM on March 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
Not five minutes later my friend played that dubious word. Six letter word, none of the letters super rare, but still, come on. My friend hadn't heard the word before and I just handed off the exact word they needed to use most of their tiles a couple rounds later.
This has to have been ten years ago now and I still get all these feelings every time I think about it. Scrabble is fkn wild.
posted by potrzebie at 9:25 PM on March 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
And the word was..?
posted by biogeo at 11:01 PM on March 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 11:01 PM on March 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
SYNCHRONICITY
Since discovering Wordle in the middle of December I have missed but one puzzle: LAPSE from a week or two ago. Given my starting word I would have had it in at most 3 too dammit.
posted by St. Oops at 12:23 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Since discovering Wordle in the middle of December I have missed but one puzzle: LAPSE from a week or two ago. Given my starting word I would have had it in at most 3 too dammit.
posted by St. Oops at 12:23 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
To discuss and learn one of them, and the very next morning have it appear like a signal from a distant galaxy? And then to receive and process the signal? Utterly, mathematically, existentially nuts.
I know this.
Early 1998, Pelling, Sikkim. Then-husband and I are lounging under some trees below the Sanghak Choeling Monastery. We'd been exploring for a few months through Bangladesh, Meghalaya, West Bengal and now Sikkim, carefully guarding our compact scrabble set. We were considering our next travel moves.
Our homestay host exchanged bhang for buck and we'd imbibed before leaving for the monastery. On the way back, in our in-sync-relaxed way, we stopped and played a game of scrabble in the shade.
The game spoke to us. None of our many hundreds of games had done that before. Words that described our journey experiences almost lay themselves down. It wasn't till we were nearly done with the game did we see the relationship between the words played and our experiences recently past and planned. We were lounging under some small conifers, our blanket spread over a bed of soft needles, and the board told us our own story.
posted by Thella at 1:40 AM on March 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
I know this.
Early 1998, Pelling, Sikkim. Then-husband and I are lounging under some trees below the Sanghak Choeling Monastery. We'd been exploring for a few months through Bangladesh, Meghalaya, West Bengal and now Sikkim, carefully guarding our compact scrabble set. We were considering our next travel moves.
Our homestay host exchanged bhang for buck and we'd imbibed before leaving for the monastery. On the way back, in our in-sync-relaxed way, we stopped and played a game of scrabble in the shade.
The game spoke to us. None of our many hundreds of games had done that before. Words that described our journey experiences almost lay themselves down. It wasn't till we were nearly done with the game did we see the relationship between the words played and our experiences recently past and planned. We were lounging under some small conifers, our blanket spread over a bed of soft needles, and the board told us our own story.
posted by Thella at 1:40 AM on March 24, 2022 [19 favorites]
But what I really think is happening is that we lodge certain words in a more accessible place when there might be an advantage in having them close at hand. Relevant new words go to this place first. Words recently recalled or regularly required might also lodge there. Yes it's a signal from a distant galaxy... in our own brain. Or something like that, my consciousness is only reflection-deep so I doubt I'll ever know for sure.
posted by Thella at 1:47 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Thella at 1:47 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
A fun story: The 2015 French Scrabble champion was a New Zealand man who spoke no French. Instead, he won by "simply" memorising the French dictionary in the 9 weeks prior to the competition.
posted by McNulty at 1:58 AM on March 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by McNulty at 1:58 AM on March 24, 2022 [14 favorites]
I didn't know Lazlo Hollyfeld was a Kiwi.
posted by Ickster at 4:17 AM on March 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Ickster at 4:17 AM on March 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
I’ve been playing Word With Friends for about a year and it’s become addictive. My crowning achievement came about four months ago when I used the word ‘poxiest’ for 174 points. I absolutely know the feeling the writer was talking about. I doubt that I’ll ever beat that word score, no matter how long I play, it was just sheer random luck.
posted by Jubey at 4:52 AM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Jubey at 4:52 AM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
If anyone is wondering what word Will Anderson played instead of "highveld", it was "glaive". I watched the video to find out.
posted by zebogen at 6:38 AM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by zebogen at 6:38 AM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
And this "glaive", it's a real world? Did anyone check?
posted by jacquilynne at 7:53 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:53 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
It is a perfectly cromulent word.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:57 AM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:57 AM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
But Matthews noted that the blank on Anderson’s rack might be a liability.
Oh god this! I play a lot of Words With Friends. Looking for a bingo without a blank, you only have to resolve one set of letters against everything on the board, but with a blank, you have to resolve 26 sets of possibilities. It happens to me often that I know there *should* be a bingo involving a blank tile I'm holding - like I can psychically feel it - but my brain refuses to struggle through trying to realize it.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:00 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Oh god this! I play a lot of Words With Friends. Looking for a bingo without a blank, you only have to resolve one set of letters against everything on the board, but with a blank, you have to resolve 26 sets of possibilities. It happens to me often that I know there *should* be a bingo involving a blank tile I'm holding - like I can psychically feel it - but my brain refuses to struggle through trying to realize it.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:00 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
but with a blank, you have to resolve 26 sets of possibilities.
Anamonics are your friend
posted by lalochezia at 8:35 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Anamonics are your friend
posted by lalochezia at 8:35 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Scrabble tiles are a known connection to the secrets of life.
"What is six times nine? I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
posted by Four Ds at 8:42 AM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
"What is six times nine? I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
posted by Four Ds at 8:42 AM on March 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
Instead, he won by "simply" memorising the French dictionary in the 9 weeks prior to the competition.
The biggest ass-kicking I ever got in Scrabble was the one time I went to a Scrabble club in Rhode Island with a friend and got my ass handed to me by a Nigerian Scrabble player who barely spoke English but did have the dictionary down pat. Super impressive.
We often play with "moral victories" in my house, so you can play a word that is amazing (complex, long, just nifty) but it doesn't score a lot of points. You might lose the game but we'll still crow about that one word.
I've now gotten so used to timed online Scrabble games (with a one-click rack shuffle) that it's become harder for me to play in person now. People are slow! Tiles are fussy to manipulate. During early COVID times I definitely hung out and watched people pay Scrabble over Twitch and I found it a really interesting way to learn how to play at that level.
posted by jessamyn at 9:31 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
The biggest ass-kicking I ever got in Scrabble was the one time I went to a Scrabble club in Rhode Island with a friend and got my ass handed to me by a Nigerian Scrabble player who barely spoke English but did have the dictionary down pat. Super impressive.
We often play with "moral victories" in my house, so you can play a word that is amazing (complex, long, just nifty) but it doesn't score a lot of points. You might lose the game but we'll still crow about that one word.
I've now gotten so used to timed online Scrabble games (with a one-click rack shuffle) that it's become harder for me to play in person now. People are slow! Tiles are fussy to manipulate. During early COVID times I definitely hung out and watched people pay Scrabble over Twitch and I found it a really interesting way to learn how to play at that level.
posted by jessamyn at 9:31 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
At an old flat in NZ many decades ago, we had a scrabble championship, with a championship belt. If you won , you got to wear the belt and play eye of the tiger on the stereo. Good memories
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:14 AM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:14 AM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
This reminds me of my experiences playing LearnedLeague, an online trivia league with very difficult questions. At the beginning of each season, I always feel like such an idiot, and I wonder why I'm playing it. There's always one question sometime in the first week of each five-week season where I get a question that I should not have been able to get, but that I remember reading about in a book somewhere, or that, in one case this season, I randomly heard someone talking about on a podcast just hours before. This is always enough to keep me going in my middling fashion (this season I literally wound up smack in the middle of the 3rd division out of 5, so I am the very definition of middling).
posted by lunasol at 11:02 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by lunasol at 11:02 AM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
One of my favorite movies is Breaker Morant, which is about the trial of several members of the Bushveldt Carbineers, for murdering civilians in the Second Boer War. That extra 't' at the end makes it a different word, I guess.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:27 PM on March 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:27 PM on March 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Deadmau5, The Veldt
And its origin fan contributed vocals to a soundcloud track, based on the Bradbury story.
The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt
appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow sun.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:34 PM on March 24, 2022
And its origin fan contributed vocals to a soundcloud track, based on the Bradbury story.
The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt
appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow sun.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:34 PM on March 24, 2022
Mom once let my brother lay down "LEHOTTUB" for a bingo, after he asked if French words were OK. He was like 7, but man was he ever smug about that.
posted by chavenet at 4:37 PM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 4:37 PM on March 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
Bananagrams > scrabble. I will die on this hill.
posted by Grandysaur at 5:41 PM on March 24, 2022
posted by Grandysaur at 5:41 PM on March 24, 2022
Bananagrams > scrabble. I will die on this hill.
One of my kids just turned 18 on Tuesday. HIs favorite kind of humor is "messing with people," which I fully realized when he was about 11, and we were playing around with bananagram tiles, basically just playing anagrams—one of us would give the other a scrambled word, and the other person would solve it.
I gave him BEDROOM. But he couldn't make heads or tales of it. He frowned at the tiles confusedly. He made a word or two out of a few tiles: BRED, MORE, ROME. But mostly he was just drawing a blank.
I started giving hints. "It's in a house," I might say. Inwardly, I'm thinking, "This poor kid has some kind of learning disability we missed all this time...."
Eventually, he solves the puzzle to ROOMBED.
I'm like, "You're so close, honey...just think a bit longer..." and then the penny drops.
He's been playing me the whole time.
His whole character opened up to me.
He now has a tight group of friends for whom "messing with each other" is one of their main love languages. For instance, one of them recently bought a new water bottle. The rest of them conspired behind his back to all buy identical water bottles, which they will bring out casually, next time they're together, and then they will quizzically ask him why he copied them.
They went in together and got him a case of Top Ramen for his birthday.
posted by Well I never at 6:11 PM on March 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
One of my kids just turned 18 on Tuesday. HIs favorite kind of humor is "messing with people," which I fully realized when he was about 11, and we were playing around with bananagram tiles, basically just playing anagrams—one of us would give the other a scrambled word, and the other person would solve it.
I gave him BEDROOM. But he couldn't make heads or tales of it. He frowned at the tiles confusedly. He made a word or two out of a few tiles: BRED, MORE, ROME. But mostly he was just drawing a blank.
I started giving hints. "It's in a house," I might say. Inwardly, I'm thinking, "This poor kid has some kind of learning disability we missed all this time...."
Eventually, he solves the puzzle to ROOMBED.
I'm like, "You're so close, honey...just think a bit longer..." and then the penny drops.
He's been playing me the whole time.
His whole character opened up to me.
He now has a tight group of friends for whom "messing with each other" is one of their main love languages. For instance, one of them recently bought a new water bottle. The rest of them conspired behind his back to all buy identical water bottles, which they will bring out casually, next time they're together, and then they will quizzically ask him why he copied them.
They went in together and got him a case of Top Ramen for his birthday.
posted by Well I never at 6:11 PM on March 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
jacquilynne: "And this "glaive", it's a real world? Did anyone check?"
You need to brush up on your polearms.
posted by team lowkey at 8:25 PM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
You need to brush up on your polearms.
posted by team lowkey at 8:25 PM on March 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
I learned all I needed to know in the first sentence. "...[T]he board game invented during the Depression by a guy named Alfred Butts."
What I learned is that you can leave a perfectly reasonable buttslol joke in front of cortex, and he now refuses to acknowledge it.
[taking out clipboard and ballpoint pen. writing.] no. butts. lol
Very good, cortex! Your treatment has been a success!
also buttslol is not an accepted CSW dictionary word
posted by not_on_display at 8:36 PM on March 24, 2022
What I learned is that you can leave a perfectly reasonable buttslol joke in front of cortex, and he now refuses to acknowledge it.
[taking out clipboard and ballpoint pen. writing.] no. butts. lol
Very good, cortex! Your treatment has been a success!
also buttslol is not an accepted CSW dictionary word
posted by not_on_display at 8:36 PM on March 24, 2022
You need to brush up on your polearms.
Just don't brush up against them.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:05 PM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just don't brush up against them.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:05 PM on March 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
He now has a tight group of friends for whom "messing with each other" is one of their main love languages.
Ah, I see you've met my son. I don't really "get it" myself but I recognize that it is a thing and it is real and I adore your framing of it as a love language thing.
posted by majick at 5:38 AM on March 25, 2022
Ah, I see you've met my son. I don't really "get it" myself but I recognize that it is a thing and it is real and I adore your framing of it as a love language thing.
posted by majick at 5:38 AM on March 25, 2022
And this "glaive", it's a real world? Did anyone check?
It is in Krull.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:16 AM on March 25, 2022
It is in Krull.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:16 AM on March 25, 2022
Also some tomes. And a few volumes. And the occasional compendium.
posted by cortex at 9:29 AM on March 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by cortex at 9:29 AM on March 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
synchronicity is probably diy. This is as inspiring as it is needy. Saved.
posted by firstdaffodils at 8:41 AM on March 27, 2022
posted by firstdaffodils at 8:41 AM on March 27, 2022
*nerdy.
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:24 AM on March 27, 2022
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:24 AM on March 27, 2022
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posted by lalochezia at 6:43 PM on March 23, 2022 [1 favorite]