Dame Eadie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 12:13 am
While i'm here taking a kicking, let's talk about Scrabble.
A game probably intended to kill those intermediate hours at Xmas between the main meal and evening piss-up.
These days, they have a world championship, they take themselves seriously, but the larger world has thankfully seen through it.
Chess, you get the same pieces.
Scrabble - you get what you get, and tough shit if it ain't good enough.
Pretty sure that most players who get both blanks will win.
And you get those absurdly over-rated plays of ZO, QI, XU etc.
For me - Scrabble needs to evolve into 2023.
How can X be worth 8pts when it goes with all the vowels as a 2-letter word?
It's the easiest tile to play in the whole game.
Get out.
I think this is a poor take on Scrabble.
Scrabble has evolved and is still evolving because of additions of new words to represent evolving language, and technology such as cardboxing and analytical engines have greatly improved standard since the turn of the century. We’ve had debates before on whether the scoring system/letters distribution should change because of the introduction of words such as QI and more recently ZE. Still no change. The letter value and tile distribution is based on frequency in English. The 2s are indeed liberally common and advantageous in the Scrabble game maths-wise, but the letters themselves such as J, Q, X and Z are still rarely used in English, hence they appear once only. There are 4 Ss and are worth 1 point but they too are also an easy tile, like the two blanks. So that’s 10 powerful tiles in total. The distribution and scoring system remains as balanced as it can be. Reducing the points values of the letters would be killing the game in my view. The game should respect how Alfred Butts created it (he determined distribution by counting letter frequency in New York Times newspapers).
I partook in the National Championships in 2022: the pendulum swing is massive, the games are on a knife’s edge. You can get very lucky at the start. But the tables can turn very quickly: your rack can degenerate and your opponent can win from 100 or even 200 behind. There’s always that danger of things going wrong due to carelessness. You have to be careful where you play your letters; if you’re ahead, avoid putting an I next to premium squares so you don’t get bombed with QI. You also have to be good with 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s and 8s equally (9s or more is a bonus too). You also have to look out for hooks, extensions and infill players, analyse risk/reward in each turn, and check you’ve tracked unseen tiles corretly. Mistracking can be costly.
Tournaments also match up players as fairly as possible. I think begins with mismatches at first (I played Brett Smitheram in my first game, I didn’t win but it was a good contest, all swings and roundabouts with me leading early on), according to ratings, and then it leads to closer matchups at the tournament nears its end, so 1st plays 2nd, 3rd plays 4th etc. It does get better as the tournament goes along and in the end 90% of the time the results reflect their ratings. It’s all bored out. Tournaments are great, the way they’re set up produces accurate and fair results. Plus you can win more games and tournaments if you improve and persevere. Your time will come.
For sure, luck is inescapable, as in some games. But the top poker players know when to fold. Chess is purely logical which is why it’s so popular (and more watchable than Scrabble, by far, I will admit), but I don’t play it because I am rubbish at it (hundreds of attempts to beat Magnus at 8 years old on the app). Word and number games are my forte, even if some of them have luck involved. We all have very different tastes, strengths/weaknesses. Games have different strengths/weaknesses too. I love the strategy element behind Scrabble and that’s why I play it. I don’t care if I’m down on my luck. Countdown is a great game and great to watch. But it’s repetitive and has little tactics involved compared to other games.
Evolution into current times does not warrant complete rule changes. On TV, formats have been axed because they’ve deviated the format way too much from the original. In 2010, Millionaire did away with Fastest Finger (were they mad?) and enforced a time limit which if the contestants went over, they’d lose their money. It was disastrous, it made the game forced. Chris Tarrant didn’t like the changes and walked away 4 years later. In the current version, you get more responsibilities with the extra lifeline and the setting of the second safety net; an example of how to improvise a format. Countdown has kept the goals the same; find the longest word, hit the target, unravel the conundrum before your opponent. The evolution bit is in the use of an online living dictionary, the adjudication dictionary being bigger than ever before: and of course online play and apps which helps players up their game. Pre-tech, players had to anagram completely manually. They have also changed the letter distribution a few times over the years (I think 1980s Countdown had a lot of ‘hard’ consonants like F, H, V etc). Still the game we all know and love.
You have to be so careful with change. Changes should improvise formats, not compromise them. Making the X 2 points just because of AX, EX, OX, XI and XU, I think on balance would do the latter.
I do agree on your take about the dictionary. I think only minor changes are needed rather than an overhaul, such as more accurate clarity on inflections. The regional spellings on ODP are way, way too rare as well, and IMO is not great for home players, the main point as highlighted by Mark Deeks earlier in this thread.
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