Scrabble by candlelight

What to do when the power goes out in a tiny town? Play Scrabble, of course!

A long, long time ago, in a place far, far away…

Many eons ago (25 July), the Jazzy Scrabble Club of yonder week gathered at the sacred Scrabble site of Klein Libertas to test their wits, wordiness and wacky jazz moves. As was the tradition of the time, the wise and ancient Regulars opened proceedings with a three-way game. Ilse the Illustrious powered on with her impressive individual 200+ scoring streak, obliterating the brave attempts of Tania the Tenacious and Lidia the Loquacious. 

Tania channelling her inner Reggae.

The final battle tally was 225 for Ilse, 162 for Lidia, and 161 for Tania. The only chink in Ilse’s near-impenetrable battle armour was her interpretation of YEW as a “carnivorous” tree… 

The carnivorous coniferous yew. Nom nom nom.

Not to be excluded from the excitement of the main battle, the young squires in attendance busied themselves with their own skirmish.

A bird’s eye view of the skirmish.

With the opening rites concluded, the Knights of the Rectangular Table gathered for trench warfare. Tania stuck with her trusty comrades, Mia the Meticulous and Lize the Lively, forming Team PHAB (Pharmacist, Actuary and Bedryfsingenieur). Ilse and Lidia combined with Bruce the Brave(ly representing the Male Species) as Team Game Face (Gregarious Anagramming Might Enable Feasible Acronym Creation Eventually).

Tania showed her keen eye for team selection again, leading Team Phab to another team victory, albeit fiercely contested by Team Game Face. The battle was nearly abandoned, as an overly energetic Scrabble manoeuvre saw the field of play upended. 

Resetting the battlefield.

Luckily, Lidia in her geeky way was recording all words played for the purpose of statistically analysing the word preferences of the Jazzy Scrabble Club. With the word chronology in hand, the game was soon reset and play resumed. The final scores were 271 for Team Phab, and 260 for Team Game Face. “Tight like a tiger!” as the wise men of old would say.

The victors: Lize the Lively, Tania the Tenacious and Mia the Meticulous.

The vanquished: Bruce the Brave, Ilse the Illustrious and Lidia the Loquacious.

Wise words:

      - On the symbiotic relationship between Scrabble and jazz:
Ilse: “I think the jazz really upgrades our Scrabble!”
Tania: “I think we upgrade the jazz!”

Lies, damn lies and statistics:

 

Scrabble Statistics (or: How Much is J Really Worth?)

After a rip-roaring knock out tournament on Monday (15 August, dedicated post to follow soon), many an experienced Scrabbler in attendance were lamenting the fickle allocations of Lady Luck. "It's just not fair! One game of never-ending vowel sets cannot give a true reflection of my innate awesomeness!" A simple solution is to play multiple games, but this places serious strain on both pizza supplies and reserves of patience before the coveted Scrabble (Not At All Dominoes) Champion Trophy* can be crowned.

Just how much Scrabble is a game of luck versus a game of skill has been investigated by some seriously statsy folk. A statistics professor, Andrew C Thomas from Carnegie Mellon University, looked at defining a Scrabble simulation to see how luck (i.e. tile allocations) affect Scrabble games. (Go check out some results at http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/07/scrabble-luck-and-skill.html). He then quantifies the luck factor by looking at the effective point effect of different letters. (What a clever guy!) Yip, that Q might be assigned 10 points by the Scrabble Deities, but it's actually (on average, after a gazillion games) a 5 point dastardly disadvantage!

[[WARNING! Geek speak coming up; skip to the friendly bullet list below for the juicy results]].

Prof Thomas fixed the Lady Luck mojo handout by considering a fixed sequence of tile draws. He fixed the skill effect (inherent player awesomeness) by repeating oodles of Scrabble simulations on a specific fixed tile sequence. Of course different game situations will lead to different length words, which will lead to different batches of tile draws. But Talented Prof Thomas sneaked past this chaos trap by having his Sim players drawing from either ends of a long row of tiles. The effect of the fuzzy tile allocation in the middle (due to different word lengths) gets cancelled out by repeated simulations. By tracking Scrabble scores across lots of random tile sequences, he could estimate per-letter (dis)advantages.

[[OK, safe to read again, here's the good stuff!]]

(Verbatim from the Revolutions blog):

• The blank is worth about 30 points to a good player, mainly by making 50-point "bingo" plays possible.
• Each S is worth about 10 points to the player who draws it.
• The Q is a burden to whichever player receives it, effectively serving as a 5 point penalty for having to deal with it due to its effect in reducing bingo opportunities, needing either a U or a blank for a chance at a bingo and a 50-point bonus.
• The J is essentially neutral pointwise.
• The X and the Z are each worth about 3-5 extra points to the player who receives them. Their difficulty in playing in bingoes is mitigated by their usefulness in other short words.
• Thomas also finds that the player who goes first generally has an advantage, to the tune of about 14 points.

And that's why statistics is awesome!

* From the two large shiny plastic gold dominoes on the trophy, confusion might arise as to the exact nature of the recipient's skill. 

Highest Scoring Scrabble Words

2 Letter Words

AX 9 EX 9 JO 9 OX 9 XI 9 XU 9
BY 7 HM 7 MY 7

3 Letter Words

JIZ 19 ZAX 19
ZEK 16
FEZ 15 FIZ 15 PYX 15 WIZ 15
BEZ 14 BIZ 14 COZ 14 CUZ 14 KEX 14 ZAP 14 ZIP 14

4 Letter Words

QUIZ 22
JEEZ 20
FOZY 19 HAZY 19 JAZz 19 WHIZ 19
CHEZ 18 COZY 18 JEUX 18 JINX 18 JOKY 18 MAZY 18 QOPH 18 ZYME 18

5 Letter Words

JAZzY 23
JACKY 21 JIFFY 21 JUNKY 21 QUAKY 21 ZAPPY 21 ZAXES 21 ZINKY 21 ZIPPY 21
FURZY 20 HAFIZ 20 QUACK 20 QUAFF 20 QUICK 20 QUIFF 20 WOOZY 20
BOOZY 19 COZEY 19 CRAZY 19 ENZYM 19 FUZzY 19 HAMZA 19 JAMMY 19 JEMMY 19 JERKY 19 JIMMY 19 JIMPY 19 JOKEY 19 JUMPY 19 KUDZU 19 KYLIX 19 QOPHS 19 WHIZz 19 ZILCH 19 ZINCY 19 ZYMES 19

6 Letter Words

MUZJIK 28
QUEAZY 27
EXEQUY 25
FROWZY 24 MUZHIK 24 QUARTZ 24 QUEZAL 24 WHEEZY 24 ZINCKY 24
BLOWZY 23 HAMZAH 23 SCHIZY 23 ZEBECK 23 ZEPHYR 23

7 Letter Words

MUZJIKS 79
BEZIQUE 77 CAZIQUE 77 JUKEBOX 77 MEZQUIT 77
KOLHOZY 76 SOVKHOZ 76 ZINKIFY 76 ZOMBIFY 76
ASPHYXY 75 JAZzILY 75 JEZEBEL 75 MUZHIKS 75 PACKWAX 75 QUETZAL 75 QUEZALS 75 QUICKLY 75 QUIZzED 75 SQUEEZE 75 SQUIFFY 75 ZYMURGY 75

Two-letter Scrabble Words

AA: n pl. –S rough, cindery lava
AB: n pl. –S an abdominal muscle
AD: n pl. –S an advertisement
AE: adj one
AG: adj pertaining to agriculture
AH: interj – used to express delight, relief, or contempt
AI: n pl. –S a three-toed sloth
AL: n pl. –S an East Indian tree
AM: present 1st person sing. of BE
AN: indefinite article – used before words beginning with a vowel
AR: n pl. –S the letter R
AS: adv to the same degree
AT: prep in the position of
AW: interj – used to express protest, disgust, or disbelief
AX: v –ED, -ING, -ES to work on with an ax (a type of cutting tool)
AY: n pl. –S aye
BA: n pl. –S the eternal soul in Egyptian mythology
BE: v AM, ARE, ART, WAS, WERE, WAST, WERT, BEEN, BEING to have actuality
BI: n pl. –S bisexual
BO: n pl. –S a pal
BY: n pl. –S a pass in certain card games
DE: prep of; from – used in names
DO: n pl. –S the first tone of the diatonic scale
ED: n pl. –S education
EF: n pl. –S the letter F
EH: interj – used to express doubt
EL: n pl. –S an elevated railroad or train
EM: n pl. –S the letter M
EN: n pl. –S the letter M
ER: interj – used to express hesitation
ES: n pl. ESES the letter S (also spelled ESS)
ET: a past tense of EAT
EX: n pl. EXES the letter X
FA: n pl. –S the fourth tone of the diatonic musical scale
FE: n –FES a Hebrew letter
GO: v WENT, GONE, GOING, GOES to move along
HA: n pl. –S a sound of surprise
HE: n pl. –S a male person
HI: interj – used as a greeting
HM: interj – used to express thoughtful consideration
HO: interj – used to express surprise
ID: n pl. –S a part of the psyche
IF: n pl. –S a possibility
IN: v INNED, INNING, INS to harvest
IS: v present 3d person sing. of BE
IT: pron the 3rd person sing. of BE
JO: n pl. -ES a sweetheart
KA: n pl. –S the spiritual self of a human being in Egyptian religion
KI: n pl. -S the vital force in Chinese thought
LA: n pl. –S the sixth tone of the diatonic musical scale
LI: n pl. a Chinese unit of distance
LO: interj – used to attract attention or to express surprise
MA: n pl. –S mother
ME: pron the objective case of the pronoun I
MM: interj – Used to express assent or satisfaction
MO: n pl. –S a moment
MU: n pl. –S a Greek letter
MI: n pl. –MIS the third tone of the diatonic musical scale
MY: pron the possessive form of the pronoun I
NA: adv no; not
NE: adj born with the name of (also NEE)
NO: n pl. NOS or NOES a negative reply
NU: n pl. –S a Greek letter
OD: n pl. –S a hypothetical force of natural power
OE: n pl. –S a whirlwind off the Faeroe Islands
OF: prep coming from
OH: v –ED, -ING, -S to exclaim in surprise, pain, or desire
OI: v – oy--used to express dismay or pain
OM: n pl. –S a mantra used in contemplation of ultimate reality
ON: n pl. –S the side of the wicket where a batsman stands in cricket
OP: n pl. –S a style of abstract art
OR: n pl. –S the heraldic color gold
OS: n pl. –S ORA, OSSA, or OSAR either an orifice, a bone, or an esker
OW: interj – used to express sudden pain
OX: n pl. OXEN or OXES a hoofed mammal or clumsy person
OY: interj – used to express dismay or pain
PA: n pl. –S a father
PE: n pl. –S a Hebrew letter
PI: v PIED, PIEING, PIING, or PIES to jumble or disorder
QI: n pl. -S the vital force that in Chinese thought is inherent in all things
RE: n pl. –S the second tone of diatonic musical scale
SH: interj – used to urge silence
SI: n pl. –S ti
SO: n pl. –S the fifth tone of the diatonic musical scale
TA: n pl. –S an expression of gratitude
TO: prep in the direction of
TI: n TIS the seventh tone of the diatonic musical scale
UH: interj – used to express hesitation
UM: interj – used to express hesitation
UN: pron pl. –S one
UP: v UPPED, UPPING, UPS to raise
US: pron the objective case of the pronoun we
UT: n pl. –S the musical tone C in the French solmization system, now replaced by do
WE: pron the 1st person pl. pronoun in the nominative case
WO: n pl. –S woe
XI: n pl. –S a Greek letter
XU: n pl. XU a monetary unit of Vietnam
YA: pron you
YE: pron you
YO: interj – used to call attention or express affirmation
ZA: n pl. -S a pizza