Scrabble sucks
Richard Cavell
The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are clearly
in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life force'),
and they have been challenged off. I also note that the official dictionary
includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
dictionary (such as aa and ae).
So you might as well be speaking a foreign language. If I can't use a word
that's in every major dictionary, then the game is living in its own
language.
--
Richard Cavell - richar...@mail.com
---
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.303 / Virus Database: 164 - Release Date: 25/Nov/01
Peter Clinch
>
> Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why.
>
> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
This is useful at times, perhaps, but the way to "play effectively" is
to play high scoring words and to deny your opponents access to easy use
of bonus squares, 'cause that way you score the most points! And if all
your words are 2 and 3 letter words, you'll never get those double and
triple words unless someone's careless enough to set you up on them.
> However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are clearly
> in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
> Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life force'),
> and they have been challenged off. I also note that the official dictionary
> includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
> dictionary (such as aa and ae).
Worth a big two points apiece. Wowza. As many as 6 on a triple word
score. Wowza again.
> So you might as well be speaking a foreign language. If I can't use a word
> that's in every major dictionary, then the game is living in its own
> language.
I'd think that very few Scrabble players as a % actually own the
"Official" dictionary, most use words they use normally, and they use a
"major dictionary" if a check is required (I use a Shorter Oxford: I
have no use for the official Scrabble word list, so I'm not going to
spend money on it). So your definition of "100% sucks" is several miles
off beam, IMHO, being limited only to play with zealots where there's a
close endgame (usually the point where 2 and 3 letter words are most
useful, but if someones being laying 7 letter words with big scoring
letters on red squares, it's pretty moot by then).
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.c...@dundee.ac.uk http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
The Maverick
>
> Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why.
>
> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
the Mav
--
"Never give up -- never surrender!" Commander Peter Quincy Taggart
Peter Clinch
> The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
Clearly a man who's never come across Mornington Crescent...
Dan Schmidt
| Richard Cavell wrote:
|
| > The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of
| > ridiculous 2 and 3 letter words. They are listed in the official
| > dictionary.
|
| This is useful at times, perhaps, but the way to "play effectively"
| is to play high scoring words and to deny your opponents access to
| easy use of bonus squares, 'cause that way you score the most
| points! And if all your words are 2 and 3 letter words, you'll
| never get those double and triple words unless someone's careless
| enough to set you up on them.
It's key to be able to be able to play a long word parallel to another
long word, getting lots of points for yours plus points for all the
two-letter words you made.
It's also very important to know all the 2-letter words because it
affects where you can play your long words; often you can hang your
word off the end of another one so that the start of your word makes a
2-letter word with the first or last letter of an existing one.
| > However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that
| > are clearly in general dictionaries of the English language (such
| > as ra, which means Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a
| > Chinese word for 'life force'), and they have been challenged off.
| > I also note that the official dictionary includes all sorts of
| > words that clearly exist only in the scrabble dictionary (such as
| > aa and ae).
I believe QI is allowable in the British word list, for what it's worth.
| Worth a big two points apiece. Wowza. As many as 6 on a triple word
| score. Wowza again.
If knowing that you can play AA means that you can make an 80-point
play by hanging your bingo off an existing A-word, then wowza indeed.
Blackberry
>
>Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why. [...]
Yep, you're right, it's fun!
--------------------
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." -- Willow, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Frank
> > includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
> > dictionary (such as aa and ae).
>
> Worth a big two points apiece. Wowza. As many as 6 on a triple word
> score. Wowza again.
>
Think again. I recently played AA (or AE) parallel to AX on a double
word score. Made over 20 points. Some of those short words are
good for vowel dumps or for hooks.
>
> I'd think that very few Scrabble players as a % actually own the
> "Official" dictionary, most use words they use normally, and they use a
I own two. Find it useful for learning and referencing new words. Scrabble
clubs in the USA use both the official scrabble dictionary (which
unfortunately are minus some "offensive" words) and the scrabble
word list.
Frank
"Richard Cavell" <richar...@mail.com> wrote in message news:3c07...@news.comindico.com.au...
> Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why.
>
> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
>
> However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are clearly
> in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
> Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life force'),
> and they have been challenged off.
Words such as ra or qi are either considered entirely foreign or are
proper nouns.
I also note that the official dictionary
> includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
> dictionary (such as aa and ae).
Not true. Those words were found in at least one major dictionary. You're
most likely looking at one or two. If memory serves me correctly, I believe
as many as 9 dictionaries were used in the original compilation.
>
> So you might as well be speaking a foreign language. If I can't use a word
> that's in every major dictionary, then the game is living in its own
> language.
>
There are some real words that are not in the scrabble dictionary
(e.g. encoated). But, the scrabble dictionary does change with the
addition of new words or the deletion of old words.
Geenius at Wrok
> Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why.
>
> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
>
> However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are clearly
> in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
> Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life force'),
> and they have been challenged off. I also note that the official dictionary
> includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
> dictionary (such as aa and ae).
"Aa" and "ae" are both listed in Webster's New World Collegiate
Dictionary, fourth edition, which isn't an especially rarefied reference
work.
But I agree with your basic sentiment: Words played should be words used.
The fun of Scrabble, to me at least, lies in testing the limits of your
WORKING vocabulary. It's kind of silly that I'm allowed to play obscure
"English" words (e.g., "voe," which ISN'T listed in WNW but which I saw on
a Scrabble reference list once) that neither I nor anyone I know has ever
used or will ever use, but I'm not allowed to play a foreign-language word
(e.g., "hasta," as in "hasta la vista") that I use all the time.
The solution to this problem is to follow Ammann's Rule of Gaming: Only
play a game with people who take it approximately as seriously as you do.
BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard Scrabble
rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more often than
"hasta." :-)
--
Up not down for down is the devil
So roll like a boulder and not like a pebble
Keith Ammann is gee...@cifnet.com
www.cifnet.com/~geenius * Lun Yu 2:24
Nathan Sanders
> But I agree with your basic sentiment: Words played should be words used.
And how is usage defined? I use "bluh" and "enh" all the time (at least
once a day, I'm sure). I could also make up words and lie about my
usage. How can that be prevented?
The obvious solution is, of course, to have a single list of pre-agreed
possible words to play from.
> The fun of Scrabble, to me at least, lies in testing the limits of your
> WORKING vocabulary. It's kind of silly that I'm allowed to play obscure
> "English" words (e.g., "voe," which ISN'T listed in WNW but which I saw on
> a Scrabble reference list once) that neither I nor anyone I know has ever
> used or will ever use,
Scrabble tests your ability to spell words, not use or define them. that
would be a different game. (Balderdash comes to mind.)
> but I'm not allowed to play a foreign-language word
> (e.g., "hasta," as in "hasta la vista") that I use all the time.
Should a bilingual speaker be allowed to use the words in both languages,
as long as they use them all the time? Code switching is very common
with bilinguals, and they'll freely use words from one language in place
of words from the other.
> The solution to this problem is to follow Ammann's Rule of Gaming: Only
> play a game with people who take it approximately as seriously as you do.
Agreed.
> BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard Scrabble
> rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more often than
> "hasta." :-)
I'm pretty sure that obscenities are not in the Scrabble dictionary. I'm
not sure if tournaments make special provisions to allow for them or
not. I agree that they should not be excluded.
Nathan
======================================================================
san...@ling.ucsc.edu ***** Department of Linguistics
san...@alum.mit.edu *** University of California
http://ling.ucsc.edu/~sanders * Santa Cruz, California 95064
======================================================================
to...@panix.com
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Geenius at Wrok wrote:
>> BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard Scrabble
>> rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more often than
>> "hasta.":-)
> I'm pretty sure that obscenities are not in the Scrabble dictionary. I'm
> not sure if tournaments make special provisions to allow for them or
> not. I agree that they should not be excluded.
The latest (3rd) edition of the OSPD doesn't have a lot of "offensive"
words, but it isn't used for serious play - the National Scrabble
Association publishes a word list for club and tournament play that
has obscenities, ethnic slurs, and so forth included. The older
editions of the OSPD didn't exlcude such words, either. I don't
know offhand about the lists used outside the US.
--
_______________________________________________________________________
Dan Blum to...@panix.com
"I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't just made it up."
Blackberry
>
>
>"Richard Cavell" <richar...@mail.com> wrote in message
>news:3c07...@news.comindico.com.au...
>> Scrabble 100% sucks. I'll tell you why.
>>
>> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2 and
>> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
>>
>> However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are clearly
>> in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
>> Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life force'),
>> and they have been challenged off.
>
>Words such as ra or qi are either considered entirely foreign or are
>proper nouns.
Foreign, yes, but "qi" is as much a proper noun as "hammer" is. ("Qi" is more
commonly spelled "ki" or "chi" in the USA.)
>I also note that the official dictionary
>> includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
>> dictionary (such as aa and ae).
>
>Not true. Those words were found in at least one major dictionary. You're
>most likely looking at one or two. If memory serves me correctly, I believe
>as many as 9 dictionaries were used in the original compilation.
What the heck is an "aa"? I find it as an abbreviation, but those aren't
usually allowed, are they?
Christopher Dearlove
<thema...@volcano.net> writes
>The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
Both SFB and ASL have it beaten hands down. But you knew that ;-)
--
Christopher Dearlove
Robert Rossney
>
> The way to play scrabble effectively is to memorise lots of ridiculous 2
and
> 3 letter words. They are listed in the official dictionary.
While this is a useful skill, and something nearly all winning tournament
players get around to doing, it is hardly "the way to play Scrabble
effectively." Being able to find bingoes and finding ways to foil your
opponent are much more important.
> However, while playing the game, I have used a lot of words that are
clearly
> in general dictionaries of the English language (such as ra, which means
> Egyptian sun god or deer, or qi, which is a Chinese word for 'life
force'),
> and they have been challenged off. I also note that the official
dictionary
> includes all sorts of words that clearly exist only in the scrabble
> dictionary (such as aa and ae).
>
> So you might as well be speaking a foreign language. If I can't use a
word
> that's in every major dictionary, then the game is living in its own
> language.
There exists no universally accepted and unambiguous authority as to what
constitutes a legal word in English. To make tournament play of a game
based on forming English words possible, it was necessary to create one.
Hence the OSPD. The OSPD sucks. It includes misspellings. It is missing
words that are obviously real words. Stephan Fatsis devotes a whole chapter
to the OSPD and its failings in his marvelous book _Word Freak_ (which
anyone interested in Scrabble should read).
On the other hand, everyone playing tournament Scrabble knows that it's the
word list that gets checked when a word gets challenged.
There's no reason that you need to use the OSPD when you're playing Scrabble
with friends. Pick another dictionary.
But be careful. My late grandmother would respond, when a word was
challenged successfully, "Well, it's in my dictionary back in Northampton."
There was no appeal to this response. But I don't blame Scrabble for this.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Robert Rossney
news:3C07AD24...@dundee.ac.uk...
> The Maverick wrote:
>
> > The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
>
> Clearly a man who's never come across Mornington Crescent...
Mornington Crescent can hardly qualify as a board game, as it has no
board -- unless you're playing the Elephant & Castle variant, which has
three. But I don't think that variant has been playable since the Jubilee
line opened.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Robert Rossney
news:20011130132322...@shell.cifnet.com...
> BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard Scrabble
> rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more often than
> "hasta." :-)
The standard Scrabble rules make no mention of which English words may or
may not be used. The OSPD omits obscenities and offensive words (e.g.
racial epithets), which has been the source of no small amount of
controversy.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Nathan Sanders
> What the heck is an "aa"? I find it as an abbreviation, but those aren't
> usually allowed, are they?
A type of lava with blocks of stone on the surface:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
Spelled aa, a'a, or 'a'a depending on the source (listed here in
increasing order of closeness to true pronunciation in Hawai'ian, the
source language). Pronounced "ah-ah", with a slight catch in the throat
(a glottal stop) before each of the vowels (the middle one comes naturally
to English speakers; the intial one is natural in German), which is often
represented by an apostrophe.
Michael P. Casey
"Robert Rossney" <r...@well.com> wrote in message
news:9u8pug$f...@dispatch.concentric.net...
Just a curious person asking: What is this game you speak of?
Dan Schmidt
| But I agree with your basic sentiment: Words played should be words
| used. The fun of Scrabble, to me at least, lies in testing the
| limits of your WORKING vocabulary. It's kind of silly that I'm
| allowed to play obscure "English" words (e.g., "voe," which ISN'T
| listed in WNW but which I saw on a Scrabble reference list once)
| that neither I nor anyone I know has ever used or will ever use, but
| I'm not allowed to play a foreign-language word (e.g., "hasta," as
| in "hasta la vista") that I use all the time.
Yeah, it is silly. But if you're going to play Scrabble seriously
(that is, with people who go by the official word lists), you pretty
much have to start thinking of the word list as sort of an arbitrary
list, rather than a compendium of English words, or else you get
annoyed every other turn.
| The solution to this problem is to follow Ammann's Rule of Gaming:
| Only play a game with people who take it approximately as seriously
| as you do.
This rule is truer of some games than others, but it's certainly 100%
true of Scrabble. If I play with someone who doesn't know the
two-letter words, either I'm a jerk and play them, or I have to check
every play I want to make and evaluate whether it's 'normal' enough.
It's very frustrating to see a great legal play and feel that you
shouldn't really make it because of your opponents.
I don't have that problem playing Settlers or something.
| BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard
| Scrabble rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more
| often than "hasta." :-)
There was a huge stink raised by various offended people a few years
ago and a lot of nasty words got taken out of the official Scrabble
dictionary for the 3rd edition (which is still current). Actual
Scrabble players got just as offended that the words were removed, and
they've been put back into the official word list used at tournaments
and stuff.
Here they are: http://home.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/expurg.html
Robert Rossney
news:xdSN7.1$ua5...@typhoon.nyu.edu...
It is a form of snipe-hunting played in the London Underground.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Blackberry
>
>On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
>
>> What the heck is an "aa"? I find it as an abbreviation, but those aren't
>> usually allowed, are they?
>
>A type of lava with blocks of stone on the surface:
>
>http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
>
>Spelled aa, a'a, or 'a'a depending on the source (listed here in
>increasing order of closeness to true pronunciation in Hawai'ian, the
>source language). Pronounced "ah-ah", with a slight catch in the throat
>(a glottal stop) before each of the vowels (the middle one comes naturally
>to English speakers; the intial one is natural in German), which is often
>represented by an apostrophe.
Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English? This is kind of like saying that
all Swahili words are valid, when only one player knows Swahili.
Miss Kimberly
: On Fri, 30 Nov 2001 12:29:48 -0800, Nathan wrote:
: >
: >On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
: >
: >> What the heck is an "aa"? I find it as an abbreviation, but those aren't
: >> usually allowed, are they?
: >
: >A type of lava with blocks of stone on the surface:
: >
: >http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
: >
: >Spelled aa, a'a, or 'a'a depending on the source (listed here in
: >increasing order of closeness to true pronunciation in Hawai'ian, the
: >source language). Pronounced "ah-ah", with a slight catch in the throat
: >(a glottal stop) before each of the vowels (the middle one comes naturally
: >to English speakers; the intial one is natural in German), which is often
: >represented by an apostrophe.
: Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English? This is kind of like saying that
: all Swahili words are valid, when only one player knows Swahili.
It is not a Hawaiian word. It is an English word with Hawaiian origins.
Kimberly
Nathan Sanders
> Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English?
Some are. Aloha, lei, luau, aa. Just like we have other words we've
borrowed from other languages. If we're to rule out aa, we might as
well rule out sauna, fiancee, sushi, spaghetti, all our Latinate
vocabulary, etc.
Aa isn't as familiar to a lot of Americans because they don't deal with
lava on a day to day basis. But it's a perfectly valid word, especially
among geologists.
> This is kind of like saying that
> all Swahili words are valid, when only one player knows Swahili.
Where do you propose to draw the line between which words count if only
one player knows them? How about drawing up a list of acceptable words
and calling it the Official Scrabble Dictionary? =)
I sympathize that it's difficult to determine when any word, foreign or
otherwise, counts as a word of language. What percentage of the
population must know the definition of a word for it to count? or is even
just knowing the definition enough? Must it be actively used as well?
(Most English speakers know "thou", "thee", and "thy", but few people use
them.)
Robert Rossney
news:Pine.SUN.3.91.101113...@ling.ucsc.edu...
> On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
>
> > Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English?
> Aa isn't as familiar to a lot of Americans because they don't deal with
> lava on a day to day basis. But it's a perfectly valid word, especially
> among geologists.
Who use lots of other words - schist, moraine, till, glacier, jokulhlaup
(now THAT would be a Scrabble coup) - whose origins are in non-English
languages.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Graeme Thomas
Wrok <gee...@cifnet.com> writes
>But I agree with your basic sentiment: Words played should be words used.
>The fun of Scrabble, to me at least, lies in testing the limits of your
>WORKING vocabulary. It's kind of silly that I'm allowed to play obscure
>"English" words (e.g., "voe," which ISN'T listed in WNW but which I saw on
>a Scrabble reference list once) that neither I nor anyone I know has ever
>used or will ever use, but I'm not allowed to play a foreign-language word
>(e.g., "hasta," as in "hasta la vista") that I use all the time.
Much of the steelwork needed to form the oil platforms used in the North
Sea was erected at Sullom Voe, and it is still the place used for
refurbishment work. I think it is also used for getting the oil ashore,
too. So how can you say that it isn't used?
This is the real problem with trying to define a commonly used set of
words. Each time you try it someone comes up with a word that is, to
him, common, and is offended when he find the word is missing.
Scrabble clubs around the world have major problems attracting and
keeping new players. many of them come in expecting to do well, and
find that they get beaten by the weakest player in the club. Most walk
out, never to be seen again.
Someone else in this thread mentioned _Word Freak_, by Stephan Fatsis.
One of the benefits of that book is that more people have come to clubs
with a realistic idea of what to expect. OTOH, Fatsis picks on a bunch
of the oddest folk that one is likely to meet. They are real people,
but they aren't typical.
>BTW, anyone know off the top of his head whether the standard Scrabble
>rules allow obscenities? Those probably get used more often than
>"hasta." :-)
The American OSPD3 doesn't have many obscenities in it. (The
expurgation was a little erratic; compared to OSPD2 it is missing FATSO,
but it gained SCUMBAG. It doesn't have the verb to JEW, meaning to
bargain keenly, but it does have to WELSH, meaning to cheat on a bet.)
However, as others have noted, OSPD3 is not used in Scrabble clubs or
tournaments. In the USA, Canada, and Israel they use the Official
Tournament and Club Word List; everywhere else in the world clubs and
tournaments use a list formed by combining OTaCWL with Official Scrabble
Words, 4th edition. OSW4 is based on The Chambers Dictionary, 1998
edition.
See the Scrabble FAQ:
<http://home.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/faq.html>
for details.
--
Graeme Thomas
Richard Cavell
See, well, this is what I mean. I used the word 'arse' and it got
challenged off. I also used the words 'fart' and 'shag' in the same 2
games.
---
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.303 / Virus Database: 164 - Release Date: 24/Nov/01
Geenius at Wrok
> Geenius at Wrok <gee...@cifnet.com> writes:
>
> | But I agree with your basic sentiment: Words played should be words
> | used. The fun of Scrabble, to me at least, lies in testing the
> | limits of your WORKING vocabulary. It's kind of silly that I'm
> | allowed to play obscure "English" words (e.g., "voe," which ISN'T
> | listed in WNW but which I saw on a Scrabble reference list once)
> | that neither I nor anyone I know has ever used or will ever use, but
> | I'm not allowed to play a foreign-language word (e.g., "hasta," as
> | in "hasta la vista") that I use all the time.
>
> Yeah, it is silly. But if you're going to play Scrabble seriously
> (that is, with people who go by the official word lists), you pretty
> much have to start thinking of the word list as sort of an arbitrary
> list, rather than a compendium of English words, or else you get
> annoyed every other turn.
Well, that's why, after playing with them once, I won't do it again.
(Especially after one of the club members, who was already beating me by
40 points or so, tried to slip a phony word past me and got all pissy when
I challenged it. She spends all her free time memorizing REAL words that
I've never heard of -- why does she need to make up fake ones just to
increase her lead?)
Geenius at Wrok
> Scrabble clubs around the world have major problems attracting and
> keeping new players. many of them come in expecting to do well, and
> find that they get beaten by the weakest player in the club. Most walk
> out, never to be seen again.
Maybe because the clubs treat the game as a field of study -- complete
with homework assignments (memorizing word lists). I wouldn't expect to
have fun at a chess club if I didn't put some time into memorizing opening
patterns. I wouldn't expect to have fun at a go club if I didn't put some
effort into memorizing joseki. So it's not surprising that I didn't enjoy
the Scrabble club experience.
I average about 300 points a game. The Scrabble club members I played
against averaged about 340 points a game. But that's not why I didn't
have fun -- I didn't have fun because I didn't recognize their word-set
and my word-set as the same language. And when, in a moment of
desperation, I used a word I'd never seen except on the club's word list
(I think it was QUEANS), it simply felt crummy to me -- like cheating and
getting away with it.
Geenius at Wrok
> On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
>
> > Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English?
>
> Some are. Aloha, lei, luau, aa. Just like we have other words we've
> borrowed from other languages. If we're to rule out aa, we might as
> well rule out sauna, fiancee, sushi, spaghetti, all our Latinate
> vocabulary, etc.
But if we're going to rule it in, we might as well also rule in "adios,"
"perestroika" and "mujahid" (the singular of "mujahideen," which is heard
often in news reports and is listed in my dictionary). English speakers
are kleptomaniacs -- we steal words from everywhere. What doesn't make
sense to me is that commonly used words of foreign origin are barred while
freakishly uncommon words, often also of foreign origin, are allowed. Why
is "suq" allowed, but not "zocalo," which means the exact same thing?
Graeme Thomas
Wrok <gee...@cifnet.com> writes
>Maybe because the clubs treat the game as a field of study -- complete
>with homework assignments (memorizing word lists). I wouldn't expect to
>have fun at a chess club if I didn't put some time into memorizing opening
>patterns. I wouldn't expect to have fun at a go club if I didn't put some
>effort into memorizing joseki. So it's not surprising that I didn't enjoy
>the Scrabble club experience.
From what I have gathered, novices at chess, go, bridge, etc., don't
expect to do well when they go to a club for the first time, and they
know that they'll have to work at the game in order to win. New
Scrabble players, in contrast, expect to do well with whatever knowledge
of English they have gained through normal usage. As this thread has
shown, that simply doesn't work. I have no idea why new Scrabble
players have these unreasonable expectations, but it appears to be true.
(That was, of course, a generalization, and there are many exceptions,
but it is true in general.)
But that's really all about winning, rather than having fun. It is
possible to enjoy a game while learning it, and I expect that's why
novice chess players, etc., go to their clubs. But for some reason the
great gap between expectation and reality drives away novice Scrabblers,
who go away complaining about the words used.
>I average about 300 points a game. The Scrabble club members I played
>against averaged about 340 points a game. But that's not why I didn't
>have fun -- I didn't have fun because I didn't recognize their word-set
>and my word-set as the same language.
That seems to be the crux of the problem. English, as defined in any
reasonable dictionary, is a much larger language than most people
realize. I have seen various figures quoted for the number of words
known by well-read people, and they are numbers between 10,000 and
40,000. Decent Scrabble players will know many more than that, and they
will know *all* words in certain useful categories (such as all 2 letter
words).
Let's suppose that I wanted to play Scrabble in French. I can speak
conversational French already, but my vocabulary is poor. I would need
to learn thousands of French words, but I suspect that the learning
exercise would not help me speak to a French person.
>And when, in a moment of
>desperation, I used a word I'd never seen except on the club's word list
>(I think it was QUEANS), it simply felt crummy to me -- like cheating and
>getting away with it.
Yesterday I read a book (_The Man from the Sea_, by Michael Innes) in
which queans occur several times. You're just not reading enough.
--
Graeme Thomas
Glenn Kuntz
Graeme Thomas <gra...@graemet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:XIpOFMAV...@graemet.demon.co.uk...
> From what I have gathered, novices at chess, go, bridge, etc., don't
> expect to do well when they go to a club for the first time, and they
> know that they'll have to work at the game in order to win. New
> Scrabble players, in contrast, expect to do well with whatever knowledge
> of English they have gained through normal usage. As this thread has
> shown, that simply doesn't work. I have no idea why new Scrabble
> players have these unreasonable expectations, but it appears to be true.
> (That was, of course, a generalization, and there are many exceptions,
> but it is true in general.)
My best guess is that they associate Scrabble (and winning it) with
knowledge/experience with crossword puzzles, anagrams (Jumbles) and their
general vocabulary. While these things certainly help, there's a bit more
(as this thread has shown) to the strategy of winning this particular game.
OTOH, chess novices really don't have the same kind of associative
experience. We don't chess mechanics and thinking in our everyday lives (as
we may vocabulary, solving crosswords, etc.)
David J Bush
|not sure if tournaments make special provisions to allow for them or
|not. I agree that they should not be excluded.
Reminds me of the time our high school French teacher allowed us to
play Scrabble in class- in French of course. He was amused that our
board contained zut and merde. :-)
David Bush http://www.geocities.com/twixtplayer/
Remove nospamtoday from my email
Don't Tread On Me
lives (as
> we may vocabulary, solving crosswords, etc.)
So I take it you aren't a business man or a politician? I am guessing a
teach of some sort, but I could be way off.
David J Bush
|> usually allowed, are they?
|
|A type of lava with blocks of stone on the surface:
Very SHARP POINTY rocks
|http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/aa.html
|
|Spelled aa, a'a, or 'a'a depending on the source (listed here in
|increasing order of closeness to true pronunciation in Hawai'ian, the
|source language). Pronounced "ah-ah", with a slight catch in the throat
|(a glottal stop) before each of the vowels (the middle one comes naturally
|to English speakers; the intial one is natural in German), which is often
|represented by an apostrophe.
Addendum: aa is what barefoot Hawaiians (or most anyone barefoot) say
if they try walking on it. A!!!! A!!!!
Miss Kimberly
: On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Nathan Sanders wrote:
: > On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
: >
: > > Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English?
: >
: > Some are. Aloha, lei, luau, aa. Just like we have other words we've
: > borrowed from other languages. If we're to rule out aa, we might as
: > well rule out sauna, fiancee, sushi, spaghetti, all our Latinate
: > vocabulary, etc.
: But if we're going to rule it in, we might as well also rule in "adios,"
: "perestroika" and "mujahid" (the singular of "mujahideen," which is heard
: often in news reports and is listed in my dictionary). English speakers
: are kleptomaniacs -- we steal words from everywhere. What doesn't make
: sense to me is that commonly used words of foreign origin are barred while
: freakishly uncommon words, often also of foreign origin, are allowed. Why
: is "suq" allowed, but not "zocalo," which means the exact same thing?
This is not the same as "aa". Aa is an english word of hawaiian origin. It is
not simply a hawaiian word that english speakers use a lot. I would analogize
"aa" to a word like "rendezvous" which is clearly consdered an enlgish word,
just of french origin. But I see your point - I suppose at one time
rendezvous would have qualified as a stolen foreign word; maybe there's some
rule about the passage of time before a stolen word turns into an english word
of foreign origin.
Kimberly
Geenius at Wrok
> Geenius at Wrok (gee...@cifnet.com) wrote:
>
> : On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Nathan Sanders wrote:
>
> : > On 30 Nov 2001, Blackberry wrote:
> : >
> : > > Okay. Are Hawaiian words in standard English?
> : >
> : > Some are. Aloha, lei, luau, aa. Just like we have other words we've
> : > borrowed from other languages. If we're to rule out aa, we might as
> : > well rule out sauna, fiancee, sushi, spaghetti, all our Latinate
> : > vocabulary, etc.
>
> : But if we're going to rule it in, we might as well also rule in "adios,"
> : "perestroika" and "mujahid" (the singular of "mujahideen," which is heard
> : often in news reports and is listed in my dictionary). English speakers
> : are kleptomaniacs -- we steal words from everywhere. What doesn't make
> : sense to me is that commonly used words of foreign origin are barred while
> : freakishly uncommon words, often also of foreign origin, are allowed. Why
> : is "suq" allowed, but not "zocalo," which means the exact same thing?
>
> This is not the same as "aa". Aa is an english word of hawaiian origin.
OK, but why is "suq" "an English word of Arabic origin" whereas "zocalo"
is not "an English word of Spanish origin"? I've heard English speakers
use "zocalo" in casual speech; I've never heard an English speaker use
"suq" in casual speech.
> I would analogize
> "aa" to a word like "rendezvous" which is clearly consdered an enlgish word,
> just of french origin. But I see your point - I suppose at one time
> rendezvous would have qualified as a stolen foreign word ...
Exactly. Or, to take another example: A Mexican restaurant I used to go
to served an ancho-chipotle chimichanga. According to the Merriam-Webster
10th Collegiate Dictionary I have at hand, "ancho" and "chipotle" are not
English words, but "chimichanga" is. If I want to make it an all-English
dish, all I need to do is make it a cheddar-jalapeño chimichanga.
"Jalapeño" contains a diacritical mark that technically does not exist in
English, and "cheddar" originated as a proper noun. But if I play
"chipotle" in a tournament Scrabble game, I'll get dinged, yet I can play
"jalapeño" or "cheddar" with impunity.
I can go to the grocery store down the street and pick up a dozen
different things with "chipotle" -- and no other foreign text -- printed
on the label. But if I go to a Scrabble club, I can't play it, whereas my
opponent can lay down "voe" (which I haven't found in a dictionary yet)
any time. I would describe this politely as a severe clash of linguistic
values.
Miss Kimberly
: OK, but why is "suq" "an English word of Arabic origin" whereas "zocalo"
: is not "an English word of Spanish origin"? I've heard English speakers
: use "zocalo" in casual speech; I've never heard an English speaker use
: "suq" in casual speech.
How the hell should I know?? ;D
I snipped the rest of your post, but I agree with you. It's all
arbitrary, but I think it only gets to be annoying if you bother playing
silly games like Scrabble or Boggle (okay, I don't really think those
games are silly). Or maybe annoying if you bother playing them with
people who know which foreign words count as english and which don't.
Wow - who woulda thunk chimichanga is an english word now?
:)
Kimberly
Nathan Sanders
> But if we're going to rule it in, we might as well also rule in "adios,"
> "perestroika" and "mujahid" (the singular of "mujahideen," which is heard
> often in news reports and is listed in my dictionary). English speakers
Majuhid is probably capitalized. Perestroika I would agree with, since
it represents a specific political idea (in the same way that partheid
should be considered a word of English). Adios is marginal.
> are kleptomaniacs -- we steal words from everywhere. What doesn't make
> sense to me is that commonly used words of foreign origin are barred while
> freakishly uncommon words, often also of foreign origin, are allowed. Why
> is "suq" allowed, but not "zocalo," which means the exact same thing?
*shrug* I'm not a lexicographer. Presumably they have a well-defined set
of guidelines they follow when determining the status of word (including
definition, slang, vulgar, obselete, nativized vs. foreign, pronunciation,
etc.). Very often, these descisions won't match a particular person's
usage, but the better dictionaries do a good job matching usage across
class, gender, race, and geography.
Robert Rossney
> Exactly. Or, to take another example: A Mexican restaurant I used to go
> to served an ancho-chipotle chimichanga. According to the Merriam-Webster
> 10th Collegiate Dictionary I have at hand, "ancho" and "chipotle" are not
> English words, but "chimichanga" is. If I want to make it an all-English
> dish, all I need to do is make it a cheddar-jalapeño chimichanga.
> "Jalapeño" contains a diacritical mark that technically does not exist in
> English, and "cheddar" originated as a proper noun. But if I play
> "chipotle" in a tournament Scrabble game, I'll get dinged, yet I can play
> "jalapeño" or "cheddar" with impunity.
>
> I can go to the grocery store down the street and pick up a dozen
> different things with "chipotle" -- and no other foreign text -- printed
> on the label. But if I go to a Scrabble club, I can't play it, whereas my
> opponent can lay down "voe" (which I haven't found in a dictionary yet)
> any time. I would describe this politely as a severe clash of linguistic
> values.
No method to determine beyond argument whether a given sequence of letters
forms an English word exists. English is a human language, not a list of
letter sequences. Any dictionary is incomplete, and outdated the moment it
sees print. Any judgement of a word as "English of foreign origin" or
"foreign but used by English speakers" will be arbitrary. There is ample
grounds for argument.
Which is not so good if you're playing a game, and progressing from one turn
to the next hinges on the question "Is this an English word?" How does that
question get resolved? By taking a vote of the players? That seems like it
could get pretty thorny, especially in a two-player game. By consulting an
authority? Well, what authority? Every dictionary is incomplete and
outdated (see above). Also, many dictionaries don't bother to make the kind
of judgement that Scrabble players need (e.g. if "hors d'oeuvre" is English,
and "oeuvre" is English, is "hors"?).
This is a problem inherent to just about any word game; Scrabble is unique
in that it has enough players that organizations exist to compile and
distribute the list of legal words. Saying that there are problems with
these word lists is like observing that snow is cold: how could it be
otherwise?
I dunno, maybe Scrabble *does* suck after all.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Christian Killoran
> is not "an English word of Spanish origin
Because Scrabble suqs?
I don't enjoy Scrabble at all, but it seems very silly to state that a game
that has been played by millions, over several generations, and has enough
presence to warrant official books, organizations, etc. sucks.
Now that I think about it, I know a lot of gamers who play all kinds of
games...but AFAIK not one of them enjoys Scrabble. Over the years I have
"gone back" to old games and rediscovered some charm in many that I had
dismissed earlier...but I really hesitate with this one.
OK, r.g.b. folks...who likes Scrabble, and why?
McklKnight
>From: kimb...@cattell.psych.upenn.edu (Miss Kimberly)
>Date: Sat, Dec 1, 2001 4:22 PM
>Message-id: <9ubhlv$8ml$2...@netnews.upenn.edu>
I got mad in a recent scrabble like game (the one where the tiles were laid out
one by one and people could jump in and form a word) when everyone agreed that
in no way shape or form should Caio be allowed. Aloha would be allowed - just
not Caio.
I think all the discussion about 'aa' is illustrative enough as to why it is
easy to dislike Scrabble.
Mickel
Nathan Sanders
> Aloha would be allowed - just not Caio.
If you meant "ciao", then I would have disagreed with that decision.
It's pretty common for urban/preppy 20/30-somethings.
Then again, it's not that common for other groups...
But if you truly meant "caio", then I don't know what you're talking
about. =)
Nathan Sanders
> OK, r.g.b. folks...who likes Scrabble, and why?
I like it. I like trying to fit two long words next to each other with
lots of two letter words criss-crossing them. I like learning new words
(when I play, I find out the meanings of unfamiliar words).
My regular gamer group does not like Scrabble, especially playing with
me, because they think it's cheating for me to use words like AA and
QAT (i.e. foreign words they've never heard of). I'm not sure how they
feel about QUA (which I do use occassionally in papers and even speech).
They balk at QOPH (a Hebrew letter), though as scientists, they accept
ALEPH (another Hebrew letter) and all the Greek letters.
The games of Scrabble I do enjoy are those played with other people who
are willing to accept some published reference(s), whether it's the
Official Scrabble Dictionary, Aerican Heritage Dictionary, etc. But no
matter what reference you use, someone else had to make it, and you're
likely to disagree with some of their decisions.
Geenius at Wrok
> On Sat, 1 Dec 2001, Geenius at Wrok wrote:
>
> > But if we're going to rule it in, we might as well also rule in "adios,"
> > "perestroika" and "mujahid" (the singular of "mujahideen," which is heard
> > often in news reports and is listed in my dictionary). English speakers
>
> Majuhid is probably capitalized.
Nope. The mu-a-i form in Arabic is for active nouns. Basic example:
kitab means "to write," so mukatib is "a writer." Mujahid is the active
noun form of jihad. So yeah, there's an organized group of people who
call themselves the Mujahideen, but it's the same as if there were a
similarly organized group of English speakers who called themselves the
Warriors -- it wouldn't mean that "warrior" needed to be capitalized.
(Wait, you work in a department of linguistics. Why do I need to tell you
this? :-) )
> Perestroika I would agree with, since
> it represents a specific political idea (in the same way that apartheid
> should be considered a word of English). Adios is marginal.
No more or less so than aloha. Ciao is an even more interesting example.
Nathan Sanders
> noun form of jihad. So yeah, there's an organized group of people who
> call themselves the Mujahideen, but it's the same as if there were a
> similarly organized group of English speakers who called themselves the
> Warriors -- it wouldn't mean that "warrior" needed to be capitalized.
Well, if you're referring to a member of that specific group, then it
should be capitalized if the group name is capitalized. For example, if I
want to talk about a particular Steeler or Raider from the NFL, it should
be capitalized.
My gut instinct is to capitalize Mujahadeen, since it's a particular group
(unlike, say, guerillas, which are more general). I'm not quite sure
about sandanistas --- it looks fine to me capitalized or not. *shrug*
> (Wait, you work in a department of linguistics. Why do I need to tell you
> this? :-) )
Heh. I'm not an Arabacist, or even a Semiticist, so you did teach me
something (though I did know "kitab", since it's the example everyone
uses for Semitic roots).
> > should be considered a word of English). Adios is marginal.
>
> No more or less so than aloha. Ciao is an even more interesting example.
I agree that aloha and adios are about equally marginal (especially for
speakers in areas with small or non-existant Hawai'ian and Hispanic
populations). Ciao, as I said in a different post, seems to firmly set in
urban/preppy 20/30-something's speech, but is as foreign as aloha/adios
for everyone else.
I would put them all in my dictionary, though. =)
Robert Rossney
> My gut instinct is to capitalize Mujahadeen, since it's a particular group
> (unlike, say, guerillas, which are more general). I'm not quite sure
> about sandanistas --- it looks fine to me capitalized or not. *shrug*
Your instinct is exactly backwards. The term "mujahideen" includes anyone
who fights in a holy war, whether it's an Afghan fighting the Russians in
1981 or an Arab fighting Crusaders in 1148. The only Sandinistas are the
Nicaraguan Communists who named their organization after the Nicaraguan
nationalist Augusto Sandino, who was killed by Somoza's National Guard in
1934.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Don Woods
> What the heck is an "aa"? I find it as an abbreviation, but those aren't
> usually allowed, are they?
Aa is a type of lava. It's listed in my Webster's Third International,
though I actually knew what it was before I checked the dictionary.
-- Don.
Graham Wills
>The Maverick wrote:
>
>>The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
>>
>
>Clearly a man who's never come across Mornington Crescent...
>
>Pete.
>
That's not true. You can have plenty of fun playing MC with only a
passing knowledge
of the London underground system, unless you have a very competitive group.
- Graham Wills
Graham Wills
>"Robert Rossney" <r...@well.com> wrote in message
>news:9u8pug$f...@dispatch.concentric.net...
>
>>"Peter Clinch" <p.j.c...@dundee.ac.uk> wrote in message
>>news:3C07AD24...@dundee.ac.uk...
>>
>>>The Maverick wrote:
>>>
>>>>The world of boardgaming's largest rulebook? ;-)
>>>>
>>>Clearly a man who's never come across Mornington Crescent...
>>>
>>Mornington Crescent can hardly qualify as a board game, as it has no
>>board -- unless you're playing the Elephant & Castle variant, which has
>>three. But I don't think that variant has been playable since the Jubilee
>>line opened.
>>
>
>Just a curious person asking: What is this game you speak of?
>
It was a game developed over many years by a radio show in the UK. The
cunning part of the
game is that the rules *are never written down*. It is only by listening
to the play that they can be
deduced. Imagine hearing 'pawn to king four; knight to kings bishop
three' etc. for a few minutes
and then next show hearing a bit more. It was way cool to discover, bit
by bit, exactly what was
going on. There's a core concept that once you discover, the rest is
fairly obvious, so the
comparison to chess is a bit off in that respect.
There's also the complicating fact that some plays, just like in
cricket, are legal but considered
'unsporting'. There is, AFAIK, no rule preventing a one-move win, but it
was booed off the air
when it first occurred and has been deemed unsporting to use it since.
- Graham Wills
Robert Rossney
news:3C0ADC7C...@willsfamily.org...
[re Mornington Crescent:]
> There's a core concept that once you discover, the rest is
> fairly obvious, so the comparison to chess is a bit off in that respect.
This would be the understatement of the month, and possibly the year.
Bob Rossney
r...@well.com
Graham Wills
>Now that I think about it, I know a lot of gamers who play all kinds of
>games...but AFAIK not one of them enjoys Scrabble. Over the years I have
>"gone back" to old games and rediscovered some charm in many that I had
>dismissed earlier...but I really hesitate with this one.
>
>OK, r.g.b. folks...who likes Scrabble, and why?
>
I play a lot of games, and I play and enjoy scrabble a lot. I usually
play in one of three modes,
which i make sure are OK with opposition:
(1) Friendly: You can check words in a dictionary not on your turn.
Your penalty for being
correctly challenged is looking dumb. Timing is by peer pressure or
yelling "I'll finish watching
the second half of the bears game -- let me know if you put anything down"
(2) Causal: Checking not on your turn; standard penalties; Stronger
peer pressure timing
(3) Serious: Standard rules with timer.
So reason #1: you can play at various levels of friendliness. way more
than modern art, chess,
diplomacy and so on.
reason #2: You can play a timed game. True also with chess, but not many
other games
reason #3: It combines word knowledge, logical skill, memory, deduction
and *serious*
bluffing (in the serious game).
reason #4: Great plays feel great and garner awe from all players. A
great play at many other
games is not so obvious.
reason #5: There is a superb tension between making continual middling
scores and keeping
letters for the big ones.
The reasons I've seen cited here for not liking it are
(1) Mis-understanding the bluff element -- it's not illegal to put down
a word that you don't know
to be right. It's a skill to acquire. Bluffing is a part of competitive
scrabble. Bottom line.
(2) Memorization. Club level players should have all 2 and three letter
words memorized; this is a
far smaller task than learning what you have to learn to play club
bridge, chess or go.
(3) "I don't like the choice of words; it seems arbitrary". Honestly it
seems a bit arrogant to say that
you are a better authority than the scrabble dictionary makers, but the
bottom line is that someone
has to do it. there's a continuous line between banning all non
Anglo-Saxon words and accepting
"whassssup" and someone has to make that call. It's like saying you hate
baseball because the
calling isn't consistent. it's a reason, sure, but is it a good one?
- Graham
Peter Clinch
> Mornington Crescent can hardly qualify as a board game, as it has no
> board -- unless you're playing the Elephant & Castle variant, which has
> three. But I don't think that variant has been playable since the Jubilee
> line opened.
Nonsense. The board is the London Tube map. Most players simply use
the one ingrained in there head, in the same way some chess players can
play without a formal board and pieces, but it is "there".
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.c...@dundee.ac.uk http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
Peter Clinch
> Think again. I recently played AA (or AE) parallel to AX on a double
> word score. Made over 20 points. Some of those short words are
> good for vowel dumps or for hooks.
Wouldn't work here, we'd have thrown out "AX" just as we'd throw out
"COLOR" ;-)
> > I'd think that very few Scrabble players as a % actually own the
> > "Official" dictionary, most use words they use normally, and they use a
>
> I own two. Find it useful for learning and referencing new words. Scrabble
> clubs in the USA use both the official scrabble dictionary (which
> unfortunately are minus some "offensive" words) and the scrabble
> word list.
But are you representative of the majority of people that ever play
Scrabble? Probably not is my guess. You may be representative of the
people that play it a *lot* and work relatively hard at it, but that's
not the same thing.
David Brain
Rossney) wrote:
> > Aa isn't as familiar to a lot of Americans because they don't deal with
> > lava on a day to day basis. But it's a perfectly valid word, especially
> > among geologists.
>
> Who use lots of other words - schist, moraine, till, glacier, jokulhaup
> (now THAT would be a Scrabble coup) - whose origins are in non-English
> languages.
Although (whisper) Magic players would know all of those (maybe not schist,
actually). Magic has been a source of education to a lot of people, who now
know what a caldera is, for instance.
--
David Brain
London, UK
Jordan Wolbrum
Graham Wills wrote:
>
> It was a game developed over many years by a radio show in the UK. The
> cunning part of the
> game is that the rules *are never written down*. It is only by listening
> to the play that they can be
> deduced.
For those of us without access to UK radio stations, would you consider mucking
around on the newsgroup with a few examples and seeing if some of us can deduce
the rules? Or is it the type of game where nobody but the radio folks really
know all the rules?
-JW
Michael P. Casey
"Jordan Wolbrum" <jwol...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:3C0BA2F4...@optonline.net...
>
> For those of us without access to UK radio stations, would you consider
mucking
> around on the newsgroup with a few examples and seeing if some of us can
deduce
> the rules? Or is it the type of game where nobody but the radio folks
really
> know all the rules?
I really don't think that as a respectable denizen of r.g.b you'd find the
game enjoyable. There are a number of problems I have with the game, mostly
poor design choices that--were the game developed today--would be laughed
off as ridiculous.
1. Extraordinarily variable play-time. Depending on which variant or rule
subset you use, the game can be over in as little as two or three minutes
(despite claims of one move wins, the best I've seen was a three move win,
and rather than considered unsportsmanlike, the players simply sat in awe of
the tactical coup that they had the honour of seeing firsthand). On the
other hand, there's a postal game using the (IMHO sadistic) Scholes
Switchback variant that has gone on for over a sixteen years.
2. Inaccessability of ruleset. When a game more or less develops
informally, it takes a long time to get people to agree on exactly what the
rules of the game are. Chess, for instance, a thousands-year-old game, has
only been played with the current rules since the Renaissance from what I
understand. MC, while tracing its lineage back to Roman times, only became
widely played within the last century. There are still warring committees
regarding the rules, and it can often be difficult to find the rules
enumerated anywhere. So, as a newbie player, expect to be looked down upon
for not knowing the more historical moves and openings. (BTW, as a quick
word of advice if you intend to play the game anway--avoid the Fogerty
opening, sometimes known as "Fogerty's Folly." While seemingly attractive
to a newer player, and actually quite a popular move years ago, strategy has
evolved to the point where you WILL lose if you open this way.)
3. Ever-shifting gameplay. As I mentioned above, moves that were
commonplace only years ago have become completely untenable. One who hasn't
played since the early 90's, for example, would be completely out of his
league playing against the current group of cut-throats. I suppose some of
this could be blamed on the increasing popularity of the game, and that some
of the Magic crowd, which tends to be unruly (though inventive) has migrated
over. Still, MC can be VERY unrewarding to a player unwilling to do the
research and keep in practice. So, if you want to get involved with MC,
you're going to have to spend a lot of time keeping abreast of what's
happening in both the ruleset AND popular moves AND how to counter them.
Consider me in the minority on this one, but I'd much rather learn a game
quickly, play it, and not have to worry that I'll be blindsided by the
Caliente Attack on move three.
My advice to you, then, is to stick with the more modern German-style
boardgames. A good metaphor for playing Mornington Crescent would be taking
Advanced Squad Leader, adding a healthy dose of Junta, a dollop of Acquire,
a slice of Diplomacy, and a pinch of Taboo. Does this sound like fun to
you? Especially given that you will have to spend hours reading rules that
a year from now will probably have changed anyway.
I'll stick with Settlers, thank you very much.
MPC
Alan Kwan
<gee...@cifnet.com> wrote:
>The solution to this problem is to follow Ammann's Rule of Gaming: Only
>play a game with people who take it approximately as seriously as you do.
In other words, Scrabble is as playable as "Once Upon A Time": it's
fun and serves its intent when played casually, but when played
seriously the game is broken.
"Live life with Heart." - Alan Kwan / ta...@notmenetvigator.com
http://home.netvigator.com/~tarot (hard-core video game reviews)
Tarot Games Hong Kong: http://home.netvigator.com/~tarot/com
(please remove anti-spam section "notme" from mailing address)
Nathan Sanders
> In other words, Scrabble is as playable as "Once Upon A Time": it's
> fun and serves its intent when played casually, but when played
> seriously the game is broken.
I don't think that's what he said at all. He said (paraphrasing) that
casual players should play with each other, and that serious players
should play with each other, and the two shouldn't mix (usually because
the serious player will invariably defeat the casual player). This is
true for a lot of games (most wargames, chess, go, bridge, Risk,
Monopoly, etc.).
I've always understood "broken" to mean that a game has an inconsistent
rule set, the possibility of an undefined endpoint, or a significant
advantage for a particular player based on turn order (or some other
consistent game-specific element that cannot be controlled by the
players).
Scrabble has consistent rules, has a well-defined endpoint, and no
significant game-defined advantage for any player.
That more skilled players will regularly beat less skilled players, or
that casual players don't "have fun" playing against serious players,
does not, in my opinion, make a game broken.
Geenius at Wrok
> "Jordan Wolbrum" <jwol...@optonline.net> wrote in message
> news:3C0BA2F4...@optonline.net...
>
> > For those of us without access to UK radio stations, would you consider mucking
> > around on the newsgroup with a few examples and seeing if some of us can deduce
> > the rules? Or is it the type of game where nobody but the radio folks really
> > know all the rules?
>
> I really don't think that as a respectable denizen of r.g.b you'd find the
> game enjoyable. There are a number of problems I have with the game, mostly
> poor design choices that--were the game developed today--would be laughed
> off as ridiculous. . . .
The No. 1 problem with it is that it's a big freakin' hoax, nothing more
than a running joke. Sorta like those "games" you play in diners in which
you move around the bottles and salt shakers with a look of serious
concentration, and your "opponent" periodically shakes his head and says,
"Ooh, good one."
Someone is bound to say I'm wrong; I invite that person to prove it.
Geenius at Wrok
> On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Alan Kwan wrote:
>
> > In other words, Scrabble is as playable as "Once Upon A Time": it's
> > fun and serves its intent when played casually, but when played
> > seriously the game is broken.
>
> I don't think that's what he said at all. He said (paraphrasing) that
> casual players should play with each other, and that serious players
> should play with each other, and the two shouldn't mix (usually because
> the serious player will invariably defeat the casual player).
Victory or defeat isn't the issue at all. Quite simply, having someone
present who's playing on a totally different level -- whether he's intense
and competitive while the rest of you are friendly and casual, or whether
you all try to make the best decisions while his play is half-assed and
nearly random -- ruins the fun for everyone else.
The most obvious example of this principle in action is Magic: The
Gathering, or maybe some less cohesive role-playing gaming groups, but it
was my visit to the Scrabble club that led me to formulate it.
Blackberry
>
>[...]
>Scrabble has consistent rules, has a well-defined endpoint, and no
>significant game-defined advantage for any player.
Well, it does not have consistent rules. Basically, the game says "Any move
that any player makes is acceptable as long as the other players all say that
it's acceptable." One word may be fine in one playing and/or with one group of
players but not in another session, with another group, in a different country,
etc. The rules are entirely subject to environment.
--------------------
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." -- Willow, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Nathan Sanders
> Victory or defeat isn't the issue at all. Quite simply, having someone
> present who's playing on a totally different level -- whether he's intense
> and competitive while the rest of you are friendly and casual, or whether
> you all try to make the best decisions while his play is half-assed and
> nearly random -- ruins the fun for everyone else.
But that ruins the fun for pretty much any game, correct? It would seem
then that Scrabble itself isn't broken, but maybe the organized play that
has grown up around the game is.
Nathan Sanders
> Well, it does not have consistent rules. Basically, the game says "Any move
> that any player makes is acceptable as long as the other players all say that
> it's acceptable."
By consistent, I mean non-contradictory. There isn't another rule
somewhere else in the rule set which says "acceptable words are those
which are accepted by the player to your right."
Every game is different depending on who you play with. I don't think
Scrabble is special in that way, just perhaps that the effect is more
noticeable because the fine points of the rules (which words are
acceptable) are more tangible and contradictory to our everyday life (the
average person doesn't use AA in casual speech).
In comparison, there are rules in other games which contradict everyday
life, but they just aren't as prominent. For example, only being able to
buy propery you land on in Monopoly. Everyone knows you can buy whatever
real estate you want without actually being on site when you pay for it.
But few people would say Monopoly is "broken" because of this
inconsistency with their knowledge of the real world.
If you treat the "accepted" Scrabble word list as just another arbitrary
set of idiosyncratic rules, then there's nothing broken about Scrabble at
all. Just make sure the word list is defined before the game starts.
> One word may be fine in one playing and/or with one group of
> players but not in another session, with another group, in a different
> country, etc. The rules are entirely subject to environment.
As are the rules to most games. What's the category to pick for the final
trip to center in Trivial Pursuit? Completely dependent on who the
players are. What's the best starting location in Settlers? Completely
dependent on how the board has been layed out this time (it's not
consistent from game to game) and what other players have already picked.
But within a single game of Scrabble, the rules set seems to be completely
uniform and non-contradictory as far as I can tell.
David desJardins
> Well, it does not have consistent rules. Basically, the game says
> "Any move that any player makes is acceptable as long as the other
> players all say that it's acceptable." One word may be fine in one
> playing and/or with one group of players but not in another session,
> with another group, in a different country, etc.
"National Scrabble Association tournament Scrabble" has consistent
rules. The fact that Scrabble has different official rules in the US
than the UK, or some other country, makes it no different from most
other games (e.g., Go also has different official rules in the US, in
Japan, in China, etc.).
David desJardins
Geenius at Wrok
> On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Geenius at Wrok wrote:
>
> > Victory or defeat isn't the issue at all. Quite simply, having someone
> > present who's playing on a totally different level -- whether he's intense
> > and competitive while the rest of you are friendly and casual, or whether
> > you all try to make the best decisions while his play is half-assed and
> > nearly random -- ruins the fun for everyone else.
>
> But that ruins the fun for pretty much any game, correct? It would seem
> then that Scrabble itself isn't broken, but maybe the organized play that
> has grown up around the game is.
Well, I never said that Scrabble WAS broken. I wouldn't even say the
organized play is broken. I WOULD say that, for me at least, it's not
fun. (The organized play, that is, not Scrabble itself.)
Peter Clinch
> But that ruins the fun for pretty much any game, correct?
Yes, I think so.
> It would seem
> then that Scrabble itself isn't broken, but maybe the organized play that
> has grown up around the game is.
I don't think that's the case, or there wouldn't *be* organised play.
For organised players playing together, one must assume it isn't broken,
or they wouldn't be doing it. I think what Geenius is saying (and I
agree) is that mixing and matching wildly different abilities won't
work. Put me up against Kasparov in a chess game and I'm toast, and he
won't get much out of it either. Doesn't make chess a bad game...
The OP seemed to think Scrabble "100% sucked" because AFAICT he was
playing with people who took it more seriously and worked at it harder
than he did. That suggests the wrong opposition, not necessarily the
wrong game.
Richard Hutnik
So, is "Scotland Yard" a boardgame version of this?
- Richard Hutnik :-P
Richard Hutnik
> On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Michael P. Casey wrote:
>
> > "Jordan Wolbrum" <jwol...@optonline.net> wrote in message
> > news:3C0BA2F4...@optonline.net...
> >
> > > For those of us without access to UK radio stations, would you consider mucking
> > > around on the newsgroup with a few examples and seeing if some of us can deduce
> > > the rules? Or is it the type of game where nobody but the radio folks really
> > > know all the rules?
> >
> > I really don't think that as a respectable denizen of r.g.b you'd find the
> > game enjoyable. There are a number of problems I have with the game, mostly
> > poor design choices that--were the game developed today--would be laughed
> > off as ridiculous. . . .
>
> The No. 1 problem with it is that it's a big freakin' hoax, nothing more
> than a running joke. Sorta like those "games" you play in diners in which
> you move around the bottles and salt shakers with a look of serious
> concentration, and your "opponent" periodically shakes his head and says,
> "Ooh, good one."
>
> Someone is bound to say I'm wrong; I invite that person to prove it.
Horsefeathers to this entire thread. MC IS NOT a hoax or a running
joke. In fact I was going to write down the rules in a margin of some
notes in a book I had, but I ran out of space. I will need to get to
it later.
- Decartes
Peter Clinch
> The No. 1 problem with it is that it's a big freakin' hoax, nothing more
> than a running joke. Sorta like those "games" you play in diners in which
> you move around the bottles and salt shakers with a look of serious
> concentration, and your "opponent" periodically shakes his head and says,
> "Ooh, good one."
>
> Someone is bound to say I'm wrong; I invite that person to prove it.
There are active Mornington Nomic games on the web which you can dig up
with a search engine if you want. Had you had access to BBC Radio 4
just last night you'd have heard the teams testing a PS2 version of MC
designed to make the whole thing a bit more user friendly. Sounded like
it needed some work though, since it "rewarded" Barry Cryer with an
advance move that allowed Phil Jupitus to take an immediate aside to MC
itself, thus winning the game. Some reward... (you can probably get R4
on the Internet, in which case Mondays at 18:30 GMT is the time to tune
to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where the masters of MC play. Usually a
game every recording, and they do 2 recordings per venue. So in the
current series there'll be one more game, either next week or the week
after).
Greg Aleknevicus
Hutnik) wrote:
>Horsefeathers to this entire thread. MC IS NOT a hoax or a running
>joke. In fact I was going to write down the rules in a margin of some
>notes in a book I had, but I ran out of space. I will need to get to
>it later.
>
>- Decartes
I think you mean "Fermat".
Greg Aleknevicus
Editor, The Games Journal
http://www.thegamesjournal.com
Blackberry
>
>[...]
>> One word may be fine in one playing and/or with one group of
>> players but not in another session, with another group, in a different
>> country, etc. The rules are entirely subject to environment.
>
>As are the rules to most games. What's the category to pick for the final
>trip to center in Trivial Pursuit? Completely dependent on who the
>players are.
No, it's documented in the game rules. If one group plays with a *house rule*,
that contradicts the printed rules, that's different from them being vaguely
written in the first place.
>What's the best starting location in Settlers? Completely
>dependent on how the board has been layed out this time (it's not
>consistent from game to game) and what other players have already picked.
But that's just part of the game. It's not because the *rules* to the game
change just because you play with a different group. The equivalent would be
allowing a settlement to be placed only one hex-node away from another one, or
allowing your road to be placed detached somewhere else, *and* having the
printed rules totally vague on the subject. The printed rules are perfectly
clear on legal and illegal moves in Settlers, but they're up to your playing
group in Scrabble.
>But within a single game of Scrabble, the rules set seems to be completely
>uniform and non-contradictory as far as I can tell.
I kind of doubt that too. I can definitely see, within one playing, some
foreign words being allowed and some not being allowed.
Blackberry
>
>"National Scrabble Association tournament Scrabble" has consistent
>rules. The fact that Scrabble has different official rules in the US
>than the UK, or some other country, makes it no different from most
>other games (e.g., Go also has different official rules in the US, in
>Japan, in China, etc.).
No, I don't mean different rules in different countries. I mean that the rules
when I play at Bob's house with Bob, Jim, and Bill will be different from when I
play at Sally's house with Bob, Sally, and Steve, and that's following the
printed rules as written, not counting any house rules.
For instance, with group A, "aloha" may be an acceptable word, but it may be
unacceptable with group B.
Frank
> Frank wrote:
>
> > Think again. I recently played AA (or AE) parallel to AX on a double
> > word score. Made over 20 points. Some of those short words are
> > good for vowel dumps or for hooks.
>
> Wouldn't work here, we'd have thrown out "AX" just as we'd throw out
> "COLOR" ;-)
>
Why not? I believe AX is a valid word in the United Kingdom. And so
are ZO and QI, which we Americans do not have.
> >
> > I own two. Find it useful for learning and referencing new words. Scrabble
> > clubs in the USA use both the official scrabble dictionary (which
> > unfortunately are minus some "offensive" words) and the scrabble
> > word list.
>
> But are you representative of the majority of people that ever play
> Scrabble? Probably not is my guess. You may be representative of the
> people that play it a *lot* and work relatively hard at it, but that's
> not the same thing.
>
> Pete.
Yes, I do work hard at learning new scrabble words. Still, many scrabble
players I know use the scrabble dictionary/word list to settle disputes.
David desJardins
> No, I don't mean different rules in different countries. I mean that
> the rules when I play at Bob's house with Bob, Jim, and Bill will be
> different from when I play at Sally's house with Bob, Sally, and
> Steve, and that's following the printed rules as written, not counting
> any house rules.
If "the printed rules as written" means "the official US rules of
competitive Scrabble, as promulgated by the National Scrabble
Association", then your statement simply isn't true.
If your complaint is that the rules that are printed inside the box lid
are only a subset of the official rules of the game as played in
competition, then this is also true of most every game that I can think
of. If you buy a Go set in a game store, it won't have the entire
official North American (or Japanese) rules printed inside the box lid,
either. It doesn't follow that Go doesn't have any consistent rules.
It just means that those rules aren't printed inside the box.
David desJardins
David D. Hooton
<gee...@cifnet.com> writes:
|> The No. 1 problem with it is that it's a big freakin' hoax, [...]
|> Someone is bound to say I'm wrong; I invite that person to prove it.
Well, it has a commercially-available body of literature. For example,
see:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0752818643/morningtoncre-21
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0752847295/morningtoncre-21
Also see the various web sites devoted to the game. Two of them are:
http://madeira.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/delphi/interactive/mcg/mcgames.pl
http://www.playmorningtoncrescent.co.uk/
The former has on-line games and the latter has a link to the rules.
- DDH
Rich Shipley
news:6t9P7.119$BK1....@news.cpqcorp.net...
>
> http://www.playmorningtoncrescent.co.uk/
>
> The former has on-line games and the latter has a link to the rules.
The link is unfortunately non-functional at the moment. :-]
Rich
Blackberry
>
>"Blackberry" (invalid address) writes:
>> No, I don't mean different rules in different countries. I mean that
>> the rules when I play at Bob's house with Bob, Jim, and Bill will be
>> different from when I play at Sally's house with Bob, Sally, and
>> Steve, and that's following the printed rules as written, not counting
>> any house rules.
>
>If "the printed rules as written" means "the official US rules of
>competitive Scrabble, as promulgated by the National Scrabble
>Association", then your statement simply isn't true.
>
>If your complaint is that the rules that are printed inside the box lid
>are only a subset of the official rules of the game as played in
>competition, then this is also true of most every game that I can think
>of.
Actually, of the 80+ games in my collection, not counting standard playing card
decks, all of them have consistent printed rules (I don't actually own a copy of
Scrabble or a chess set).
And yes, that is the complaint. Scrabble comes with what are supposed to be the
rules of play, but essentially they say that any move is okay if you can
convince/coerce/bribe/blackmail the other players that it was okay. I can't
think of any other game that has that as a rule -- though some, like Illuminati,
have clear rules on how to cheat.
>If you buy a Go set in a game store, it won't have the entire
>official North American (or Japanese) rules printed inside the box lid,
>either. It doesn't follow that Go doesn't have any consistent rules.
>It just means that those rules aren't printed inside the box.
Most chess sets don't come with printed rules either; however, those of
Scrabble's generation -- Monopoly and Pit, for example -- do.
It used to be that we'd play Scrabble with a rule that any word was valid as
long as it was in whatever dictionary (of American English) we had handy, the
dictionary having been selected and moved near the table before starting play.
Why wouldn't that be an acceptable official rule?
Blackberry
>
>If your complaint is that the rules that are printed inside the box lid
>are only a subset of the official rules of the game as played in
>competition, then this is also true of most every game that I can think
>of. If you buy a Go set in a game store, it won't have the entire
>official North American (or Japanese) rules printed inside the box lid,
>either. It doesn't follow that Go doesn't have any consistent rules.
>It just means that those rules aren't printed inside the box.
Addendum:
Chess and Go are two examples of public domain games. You buy a "set" and are
already expected to have the rules handy or memorized. Scrabble isn't public
domain. When I buy a boxed game (new), I expect it to be complete enough to
play.
Jordan Wolbrum
Alan Kwan wrote:
> In other words, Scrabble is as playable as "Once Upon A Time": it's
> fun and serves its intent when played casually, but when played
> seriously the game is broken.
I don't agree. I play Scrabble semi-regularly with my mother, and we play a
competitive game. We make "screw plays" and use some of the two-letter words.
As long as neither of us has a spectacular advantage over the other (my
vocabulary is slightly better than hers, but she knows more "Scrabble words")
it's really a lot of fun, and it's a 45 minute game.
-JW
David desJardins
> It used to be that we'd play Scrabble with a rule that any word was
> valid as long as it was in whatever dictionary (of American English)
> we had handy, the dictionary having been selected and moved near the
> table before starting play. Why wouldn't that be an acceptable
> official rule?
I don't think that would be a very good rule for tournament play,
because people could gain an advantage in tournaments by controlling
which dictionaries are "handy".
But, it *could* be the official rule. It just happens that it's *not*
the official rule.
"Blackberry" (invalid address) writes:
> Chess and Go are two examples of public domain games.
Actually, I doubt that the American Go Association rules are in the
public domain. I suspect that the copyright is held by the American Go
Association.
> When I buy a boxed game (new), I expect it to be complete enough to
> play.
Well, that's a different complaint than the complaint that Scrabble
doesn't come with the complete tournament rules. Scrabble does come
with rules that are "complete enough to play", as evidenced by the fact
that people buy it and play it. I'd go so far as to say that they
prefer playing it that way than to play with the tournament rules---
which is why the same isn't sold with the tournament rules.
David desJardins
Geenius at Wrok
> I think what Geenius is saying (and I
> agree) is that mixing and matching wildly different abilities won't
> work. Put me up against Kasparov in a chess game and I'm toast, and he
> won't get much out of it either.
More like, put a player -- however smart -- who knows nothing of en
passant or castling in a tournament chess game and watch the expressions
that cross his face.
Geenius at Wrok
> Actually, I doubt that the American Go Association rules are in the
> public domain. I suspect that the copyright is held by the American Go
> Association.
The AGA uses Ing rules (public domain, having been authored in Taiwan)
with an additional rule defining how the game ends (the "pass stones"
rule). I don't know whether it can copyright something like that.
The AGA is an intriguing case study in that its own rules are routinely
flouted in sanctioned official tournaments. I've played in half a dozen
AGA tournaments, four to six games per tournament, and every time but once
my opponent and I used Japanese rather than Ing scoring, and we NEVER used
pass stones. I don't know what it's like at the Go Congress or on the
national level, but I get the impression that this looseness is pretty
widespread at the local level.
Geenius at Wrok
> In article <20011203155413...@shell.cifnet.com>, Geenius at Wrok
> <gee...@cifnet.com> writes:
>
> |> The No. 1 problem with it is that it's a big freakin' hoax, [...]
> |> Someone is bound to say I'm wrong; I invite that person to prove it.
<snip>
> Also see the various web sites devoted to the game. Two of them are:
>
> http://madeira.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/delphi/interactive/mcg/mcgames.pl
> http://www.playmorningtoncrescent.co.uk/
>
> The former has on-line games and the latter has a link to the rules.
Yeah, funny that the former site doesn't tell you the rules, and the
latter site's rules link is the only broken link on the site.
David desJardins
> with an additional rule defining how the game ends (the "pass stones"
> rule).
Certainly the text of the AGA rules (which is what the copyright applies
to) is very different from the versions of the Ing rules that I have
read. As for the content, I'm dubious that they are actually
equivalent. The AGA ko rule is simple and completely unambiguous. The
Ing ko rule involves a distinction between "fighting ko" and "disturbing
ko" that I don't claim to understand, but I don't really believe it's
equivalent to the AGA rule. (My actual impression is that the Ing ko
rules are not even well-defined.)
David desJardins
Graeme Thomas
<le...@NOnwlinkSPAM.com> writes
>And yes, that is the complaint. Scrabble comes with what are supposed to be the
>rules of play, but essentially they say that any move is okay if you can
>convince/coerce/bribe/blackmail the other players that it was okay. I can't
>think of any other game that has that as a rule -- though some, like Illuminati,
>have clear rules on how to cheat.
Scrabble doesn't have that rule either. the "box lid" rules say that
the words should be checked by looking them up in a convenient
dictionary. The tournament and club rules specify the dictionary. None
of the sets of rules specify coercion.
--
Graeme Thomas
Blackberry
>
>Blackberry (invalid address) writes:
Your newsreader tries to validate email addresses before you post? That's
pretty scary.
>> It used to be that we'd play Scrabble with a rule that any word was
>> valid as long as it was in whatever dictionary (of American English)
>> we had handy, the dictionary having been selected and moved near the
>> table before starting play. Why wouldn't that be an acceptable
>> official rule?
>
>I don't think that would be a very good rule for tournament play,
>because people could gain an advantage in tournaments by controlling
>which dictionaries are "handy".
I don't play tournaments at home, and I doubt the majority of people really do.
If you do, good for you.
>But, it *could* be the official rule. It just happens that it's *not*
>the official rule.
And what would be the possible reasoning behind that, in your opinion?
>"Blackberry" (invalid address) writes:
>> Chess and Go are two examples of public domain games.
>
>Actually, I doubt that the American Go Association rules are in the
>public domain. I suspect that the copyright is held by the American Go
>Association.
All right, fine. Obviously, the words that I use are much more important to you
than any point that I might have to make.
>> When I buy a boxed game (new), I expect it to be complete enough to
>> play.
>
>Well, that's a different complaint than the complaint that Scrabble
>doesn't come with the complete tournament rules. Scrabble does come
>with rules that are "complete enough to play", as evidenced by the fact
>that people buy it and play it. I'd go so far as to say that they
>prefer playing it that way than to play with the tournament rules---
>which is why the same isn't sold with the tournament rules.
I have no interest in "tournament rules". When I buy, say, Ursuppe, I want the
"how to play at home rules", not the tournament rules. If it happens to also
*include* tournament rules, fine. I want that for Scrabble too. I don't want
to have to go to a tournament just to play the game.
The Scrabble rules for home play are such that a valid move in the game is
determined solely by the whim of the participants at the time of the performance
of the move, and each move is totally self-contained (in that separate,
arbitrarily different rulings can be made from move to move).
How many people do you think play Scrabble at home versus play it in a
tournament? Do you think it's more important to include the tournament rules or
the home-play rules in the home-play version of a game?
David desJardins
>> But, it *could* be the official rule. It just happens that it's *not*
>> the official rule.
>
> And what would be the possible reasoning behind that, in your opinion?
I think the reasoning is that official rules are primarily intended for
organized or tournament competition, or for people who want to play
under the same conditions that they would play in such competition.
Since any two people playing a game can *always* agree on whatever set
of rules they prefer, there's no point in having official rules that
say, "Play however the two of you prefer."
> How many people do you think play Scrabble at home versus play it in a
> tournament? Do you think it's more important to include the
> tournament rules or the home-play rules in the home-play version of a
> game?
I think more people play it at home, without any consideration of or
concern for the tournament rules. As I wrote, in the very posting that
you are replying to, I think that's the reason that the game is not sold
with the tournament rules: that most people prefer playing it according
to the informal rules that come in the box. Those who want to have
unambiguous rules prescribed by an official authority can easily find
the tournament rules: they are hardly a secret.
David desJardins
Christopher Dearlove
<le...@NOnwlinkSPAM.com> writes
>The Scrabble rules for home play are such that a valid move in the game is
>determined solely by the whim of the participants at the time of the performance
>of the move, and each move is totally self-contained (in that separate,
>arbitrarily different rulings can be made from move to move).
Well, my Scrabble rules (Spears) refer to "a standard dictionary" with
notes on what types of words aren't allowed. Some dictionaries make it
easier than others to identify what is and isn't disallowed (and what
conjugations and other forms are and aren't allowed) but it's a bit
more than whim. In a sense the Spears rules are the "a handy dictionary"
suggestion someone else made.
Incidentally probably the best dictionary to have to hand around here is
Chambers. Of course you then have to interpret if "U.S. spelling of
colour" or "NAm spelling of colour" (the two editions I have to hand)
is "designated as [a] foreign word". You can also see what passes for
lexicographer humour by looking up eclair.
--
Christopher Dearlove
Peter Clinch
> Why not? I believe AX is a valid word in the United Kingdom.
I only have access to my Oxford compact French/English and Word 97's
thoughts of UK English to hand here, but neither agrees with you. W97
gives it the squiggly red underscore treatment, and suggests "axe" or
"act" to me, Oxford F/E notes "ax" as specifically a US alternative (as
it does for "color").
> Yes, I do work hard at learning new scrabble words. Still, many scrabble
> players I know use the scrabble dictionary/word list to settle disputes.
But perhaps the case that since you work at it you're generally mixing
with others that do? And they're probably not representative of typical
Scrabble players in terms of overall numbers. I'm thinking the "typical
Scrabble player" is much like the typical Monopoly player: someone with
2 or 3 games in a cupboard they know how top play and pull them out once
in a while.
Scrabble, along with Monopoly, is first and foremost a great game
becuase so many people know how to play and it doesn't have to be
explained, so you can just get on with it. In this sort of game I doubt
that the Official word book sees much light.
But I think we're drifting sideways into minutiae here. I think your
comments on my initial comments reveal you'd probably hammer me at
Scrabble because I play it casually and you're at a higher level. So we
wouldn't be very good opponents for one another, but that doesn't make
the game broken, which was the main meat of what I'm trying to get at.
Ian Noble
Aleknevicus) wrote:
>On 4 Dec 2001 07:14:59 -0800, richar...@hotmail.com (Richard
>Hutnik) wrote:
>
>>Horsefeathers to this entire thread. MC IS NOT a hoax or a running
>>joke. In fact I was going to write down the rules in a margin of some
>>notes in a book I had, but I ran out of space. I will need to get to
>>it later.
>>
>>- Decartes
>
>I think you mean "Fermat".
>
In other words, you're saying it's going to take a supercomputer to
fully document the rules of MC, and whilst everyone who understand the
game will accept that the results are almost certainly correct, no-one
will be able to get their head around them? Sounds about right.
Cheers - Ian
Peter Clinch
> In other words, you're saying it's going to take a supercomputer to
> fully document the rules of MC, and whilst everyone who understand the
> game will accept that the results are almost certainly correct, no-one
> will be able to get their head around them? Sounds about right.
Indeed.
Mornington Crescent. A Lifetime to Learn, A Minute to Master!
Hunter Johnson
> Blackberry (invalid address) writes:
>> It used to be that we'd play Scrabble with a rule that any word was
>> valid as long as it was in whatever dictionary (of American
English)
>> we had handy, the dictionary having been selected and moved near
the
>> table before starting play. Why wouldn't that be an acceptable
>> official rule?
> I don't think that would be a very good rule for tournament play,
> because people could gain an advantage in tournaments by controlling
> which dictionaries are "handy".
> But, it *could* be the official rule. It just happens that it's *not*
> the official rule.
Actually, it is the official rule (and should be in Blackberry's set
too, although perhaps not if it's an older set):
"Before the game begins, all players should agree upon the dictionary
that they will use, in case of a challenge."
http://www.hasbroscrabble.com/default.asp?x=rules1
The Tournament Rules change this to a specific word list.
Hunter
Richard Hutnik
> On 4 Dec 2001 07:14:59 -0800, richar...@hotmail.com (Richard
> Hutnik) wrote:
>
> >Horsefeathers to this entire thread. MC IS NOT a hoax or a running
> >joke. In fact I was going to write down the rules in a margin of some
> >notes in a book I had, but I ran out of space. I will need to get to
> >it later.
> >
> >- Decartes
>
> I think you mean "Fermat".
Ok, I could do some mental gymnastics to explain why I meant Decartes,
but I won't. I figured the reference was too obscure for people to
get it.
- Richard Hutnik :-)
Peter Clinch
> Ok, I could do some mental gymnastics to explain why I meant Decartes,
> but I won't. I figured the reference was too obscure for people to
> get it.
The very *essence* of many successful MC strategies, of course
(especially if you allow reverse-huffing of players in nid south of the
river).
Dan Schmidt
| On 4 Dec 2001, David desJardins wrote:
|
| > Actually, I doubt that the American Go Association rules are in the
| > public domain. I suspect that the copyright is held by the American Go
| > Association.
|
| The AGA uses Ing rules (public domain, having been authored in Taiwan)
| with an additional rule defining how the game ends (the "pass stones"
| rule). I don't know whether it can copyright something like that.
I don't believe this is true. The Ing rules have really weird special
cases for certain types of ko, and legal suicide, and large komi, and
special ways to count. The AGA rules are quite close to Chinese
rules; the 'pass stones' rule make the totals come out the same as
Chinese even when scoring is done Japanese-style.
See:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/KSS.html
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/AGA.html
http://www.britgo.org/rules/compare.html
| The AGA is an intriguing case study in that its own rules are routinely
| flouted in sanctioned official tournaments. I've played in half a dozen
| AGA tournaments, four to six games per tournament, and every time but once
| my opponent and I used Japanese rather than Ing scoring, and we NEVER used
| pass stones. I don't know what it's like at the Go Congress or on the
| national level, but I get the impression that this looseness is pretty
| widespread at the local level.
Japanese-style scoring is explicitly allowed by AGA rules (as is
Chinese-style scoring), although you're supposed to add in the pass
stones when you do that. It will generally only make a difference of
0 or 1 points, though. I don't believe there is any provision for
Ing scoring.
I do know what you mean about people not following the rules. The guy
who runs AGA-rated tournaments in my area, who is like AGA 7d, runs
them with Japanese rules.
Ian Noble
wrote:
On the other hand, the site's very efficient automatic MC engine is
fully active. (It's also dishing out an embarassingly good game to
the incautious. I hadn't seen this site before, but Tom is to be
congratulated. The AI - supposedly playing as Barry Cryer; I can't
make my mind up whether the opponent you choose affects play or not -
dealt in short order with my pathetic attempt to trap it with a Dollis
Hill straddle, and trashed me surgically in a couple of straight
moves. Definitely worth bookmarking.)
Obviously terminology is going to leave a newcomer floundering badly
in the absence of documentation, and frankly that's unfortunate (not
least because the engine's interface is about as spartan as it's
possible to get), but I'd have thought that, in principle, an
experienced gamer might be able to pick up enough on the fly after a
few games to at least enjoy the experience. One serious suggestion
would be to avoid either playing or exposing Ealing Broadway like the
plague, at first (and if you *can*, obviously) - the AI seems so good
at navigating the morass of complications that usually open up, that I
almost wonder if Tom hasn't perhaps implemented some sort of moves
book to cover the area (although the mind boggles at the magnitude of
the task, so I guess it's probably "merely" excellent programming).
Whichever it is, I suspect you're crusing for a bruising if you let
the game go that way too soon.
Cheers - Ian
Frank Branham
> than a running joke. Sorta like those "games" you play in diners in which
> you move around the bottles and salt shakers with a look of serious
> concentration, and your "opponent" periodically shakes his head and says,
> "Ooh, good one."
>
Actually. We used to play Icehouse and Wurmeln on restaurant tables.
(Icehouse includes rules for such occurances as wait staff moving
pieces....) Wurmeln is actually rather better with a pair of salt and
pepper shakers that can be moved by a player choosing "X" (in place of
moving the finish line.)
Moo
Frank
Christopher Dearlove
<p.j.c...@dundee.ac.uk> writes
>Frank wrote:
>> Why not? I believe AX is a valid word in the United Kingdom.
>I only have access to my Oxford compact French/English and Word 97's
>thoughts of UK English to hand here, but neither agrees with you.
Both Chambers and the Shorter Oxford have it as a second spelling.
However I've never seen it used except in American English.
--
Christopher Dearlove
Warren J. Dew
More like, put a player -- however smart -- who knows nothing of
en passant or castling in a tournament chess game and watch the
expressions that cross his face.
Actually, I remember a game from high school between the incumbent 'best
player' - a very good nontournament player - and a new student who had a lot of
tournament experience and was expert rated (2000+).
The tournament player, playing black, played the sicilian defense, which at the
time was all the rage (early 70s). White had heard of the sicilian defense,
but never played against it before. He was good enough to find a reasonable
line of play, but black, having much more knowledge of openings, came out of
the opening with a superior position.
In the middle game, though, where book knowledge is not so important, white
managed to regain a superior position. Black later said he thought he had a
lost game at this point, but he did manage to narrowly avoid mate and exchange
enough to get to an end game.
It turned out that at that high school, white (the player, not the color) had
always been able to win in the middle game, and thus had no end game
experience. As a result, black proceeded to demolish white in the end game.
It was one of the most interesting games of chess I have witnessed, and I think
it demonstrates that chess still works as a game between the tournament and
nontournament communities, between players of similar skill.
I do not think that is true of Scrabble. Tournament players are actually
playing by a different set of rules - involving, essentially, an arbitrary list
of letter sequences, rather than words from a common language.
One solution may be to play with an abridged dictionary - perhaps a collegiate
or even 'pocket' edition - that is not particularly familiar to all the
players. It should still contain most of the words that are actually in the
english vocabulary of the players, while omitting the majority of English words
that are not so commonly used.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Geenius at Wrok
> I do not think that is true of Scrabble. Tournament players are actually
> playing by a different set of rules - involving, essentially, an arbitrary list
> of letter sequences, rather than words from a common language.
You've hit the nail on the head. Cool chess story, BTW.
And I agree, a standard collegiate dictionary should suffice for any
non-tournament Scrabble play.