Braille Scrabble Set

See the pictures below of a Braille scrabble set belonging to +Dalene De Beer 's parents

Thanks Steve :-)

People & Place Names

Most of the names listed below are probably familiar to you - but did you know they are all allowable in Scrabble?

FAMOUS NAMES

Actors
ANN BAXTER, JACK BENNY, CAROL BURNET, FONDA (HENRY, PETER and JANE),
MEL GIBSON, PAUL HOGAN, JOHN GOODMAN, GENE HACKMAN, GENE KELLY,
JAMES MASON , GINGER ROGERS

Writers and artists
ALBEE, BROWNING, CAPOTE, CHRISTIE, COLLINS, DICKENS, JOHN DONNE, JEAN GENET, HOMER, HENRY JAMES, JUVENAL, SCHILLER, JOSEPH TURNER

Politics
AMIN, JIMMY CARTER, OLIVER NORTH , QUISLING, THATCHER

Historical figures
BECKET, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, RALPH IZARD , JESUS, JOHN PAUL JONES, JUDAS,
NED KELLY, ZAPATA

Science
BUZZ ALDRIN, RUTH BENEDICT, MARIE CURIE, ALBERT EINSTEIN, FARADAY, FERMI,
GILBERT, GRAHAM, JOSEPH HENRY, HERTZ, LORD KELVIN, NEWTON, ROENTGEN, MAX WEBER

Sport
BEN HOGAN, MIKE JORDAN, CARL LEWIS, COREY PAVIN, SAM SNEAD, MARK SPITZ

Christian names
ABIGAIL ALBERT AMELIA ANN ANNA AVA BARBIE BASIL BEN BENJAMIN BENNY BERTHA
BERYL BETH BETTY BILLIE CARL CELESTE CICELY CLARENCE CLINT COL COLIN CRAIG
DAGWOOD DEB DEBBY DEXTER DITA DREW EBENEZER ERIC ERICA FRITZ GEMMA GLORIA ISABEL ISABELLA ITA
JAMES JANE JEAN JEFF JENNY JESSIE JILL JOE JOHNNIE JOHNNY JOSEPH JUDY KELVIN
LEX LIONEL MADGE MARCEL MARG MARGE MARIA MARTIN MAVIS MAX MOLLY MORRIS MURRAY
NEDDY NELLY NELSON NOEL NORMA NORMAN OLIVER OTTO PAM PATRICK PAUL PEGGY PERRY POLLY PORGY
REX ROMA RUTH SAM SEAN SOPHIA STEVEN SYLVIA TAMMY TED TERRY TIMOTHY TOBY TOMMY
VANESSA VERONICA VICTORIA WALLY WILLY

PLACE NAMES

Countries
ANGOLA BOLIVIA BRAZIL CANADA CHAD CHILE CHINA CONGO CYPRUS GAMBIA GREECE GUINEA
JAPAN JORDAN MALI MOROCCO NIGER PANAMA RUSSIA SPAIN TONGA TURKEY WALES ZAIRE

Cities and towns
BERLIN BRISTOL FLORENCE GENOA GENEVA HAMBURG MADRAS OXFORD TRIPOLI WATERLOO

Regions
ALASKA CAYMAN ISLANDS GALILEE HOLLAND KASHMIR KLONDIKE RIALTO RIVIERA SAXONY SILESIA TEXAS

Rivers
COLORADO RHINE RHONE SEINE

Nationality
AFGHANI ARABIC CHINESE DANISH DUTCH ENGLISH FLEMISH FRENCH GERMAN GREEK MONGOL SCOT SIAMESE WELSH

My Scrabble Weekend - Day 1

4 November 2011

I feel so lucky and blessed to have friends (and family) that share my love for scrabble. It took 34 years, but finally I have scrabble-peeps. Yes a 'nerd-herd' but seriously social. And also thank you to the Vos-Family for your little paradise in Pearly Beach.



We kicked off the scrabbling with two games:

Mia vs Lidia and

Ilse vs Willy-John vs Tania (the Mathys rivalry)

Our mascot: Sir Spongebob Scrabble Pants officiating the tournament.



Lidia has to get the award for most improved in terms of time taken to play. The girl was a "Speedy Gonzalez" compared to her usual pace. Awesome stuff Lids.

Well her new found speed also translated into a win.

Game Scores:

Lidia - 393

Mia - 226

On the other side of the table, the Mathyse were intensely taking each other on. The fierce competition obvious in their defensive playing style. The name of the game was: ‘Boycott!!!!’



Well the victor of the epic battle was the young warrior – Sir Willy-John. (his skill still amazes me – raw talent)

Game Scores

            Willy-John – 223

            Tania – 206

            Ilse – 144 (la loser)



Ilse was an early fader or maybe just a bad loser and went to bed early. Mia felt her young brain had had enough for the day and just watch the Masters of the game play two more games for the evening.



Games Scores

	Tania	Lidia	Willy-John
Games 1	194	149	177
Game 2	149	245	182

Clearly I shouldn’t play after 1am. But totally enjoyed. As long as I can play scrabble, I am a happy chappy.



Can’t wait for today’s games. I am going to channel my scrabble awesomeness.

Anagram Solver and Scrabble Solver

http://www.solverscrabble.com/

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.