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2013 School Scrabble Championship comment 4: ZA and Hasbro
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Donald Sauter
Jun 4, 2013, 11:41:57 AM6/4/13
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2013 School Scrabble Championship comment 4: ZA and Hasbro
NOTE: this comment is in response to an interesting article in Deadspin on the 2013 School Scrabble Championship. The author would not post my comments, so rec.games.boards gets them. The Deadspin article is at:
http://deadspin.com/searching-for-anything-but-bobby-fischer-at-school-scra-496035498
***
> the game turning on a cheap ZA and a phony bingo (ELOPEEs)
The ZA play in the championship round was worth 65 points. ZA was formed five times in the eight Table 1 games, and no doubt appeared on a great majority of the other boards. Whoopee. If the Scrabble dictionary absolutely has to include every last sound mumbled by a valley girl, I'd say Scrabble is long overdue for a very modest minimum requirement: at least one word formed in a play has to be at least three letters long. That would go a long way in cutting QI, ZA, XU, JO, etc., etc, down to size. In fact, such a three-letter minimum rule was suggested in Scrabble fliers as early as 1950 (three years before Scrabble went viral.)
(In fact, in the ZA play here, a three-letter word, AIN, was formed. Whoopee for Scots slang.)
> She awarded 10- and 20-point bonuses for five- and six-letter words, respectively.
Hey, Grandma was on to something there! But the bonuses should be awarded for tiles played, not length of word: 10, 30, and 50 points for 5, 6, and 7 tiles, respectively. With that pull into the realm of longer words, and the push provided by a three-letter minimum, Scrabble would be fully rehabilitated as a word game, involving all the strategy of the modern game, and more, instead of the "checkers with letters" exercise that it's become.
In fact, these two adjustments form the basis for Scrabble II, which one can find easily with a web search, and which I've tried to give to Hasbro so they can take Scrabble back from Words With Friends. So far, I've only managed to provoke ire within Hasbro, the NSA, and NASPA. That's a total of three ires.
Donald Sauter
NOTE: this comment is in response to an interesting article in Deadspin on the 2013 School Scrabble Championship. The author would not post my comments, so rec.games.boards gets them. The Deadspin article is at:
http://deadspin.com/searching-for-anything-but-bobby-fischer-at-school-scra-496035498
***
> the game turning on a cheap ZA and a phony bingo (ELOPEEs)
The ZA play in the championship round was worth 65 points. ZA was formed five times in the eight Table 1 games, and no doubt appeared on a great majority of the other boards. Whoopee. If the Scrabble dictionary absolutely has to include every last sound mumbled by a valley girl, I'd say Scrabble is long overdue for a very modest minimum requirement: at least one word formed in a play has to be at least three letters long. That would go a long way in cutting QI, ZA, XU, JO, etc., etc, down to size. In fact, such a three-letter minimum rule was suggested in Scrabble fliers as early as 1950 (three years before Scrabble went viral.)
(In fact, in the ZA play here, a three-letter word, AIN, was formed. Whoopee for Scots slang.)
> She awarded 10- and 20-point bonuses for five- and six-letter words, respectively.
Hey, Grandma was on to something there! But the bonuses should be awarded for tiles played, not length of word: 10, 30, and 50 points for 5, 6, and 7 tiles, respectively. With that pull into the realm of longer words, and the push provided by a three-letter minimum, Scrabble would be fully rehabilitated as a word game, involving all the strategy of the modern game, and more, instead of the "checkers with letters" exercise that it's become.
In fact, these two adjustments form the basis for Scrabble II, which one can find easily with a web search, and which I've tried to give to Hasbro so they can take Scrabble back from Words With Friends. So far, I've only managed to provoke ire within Hasbro, the NSA, and NASPA. That's a total of three ires.
Donald Sauter
Gene Wirchenko
Jun 5, 2013, 12:48:30 AM6/5/13
to
On Tue, 4 Jun 2013 08:41:57 -0700 (PDT), Donald Sauter
<donald...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
>(In fact, in the ZA play here, a three-letter word, AIN, was formed. Whoopee for Scots slang.)
"ain" is not slang but dialectal.
[snip]
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
<donald...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
>(In fact, in the ZA play here, a three-letter word, AIN, was formed. Whoopee for Scots slang.)
[snip]
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
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