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Author Topic: Death of a philomathic  (Read 8410 times)

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Kuildeous

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Death of a philomathic
« on: April 04, 2013, 10:14:23 am »
+4

According to my calendar, today marks the death of Alfred Mosher Butts, the inventor of Scrabble. While unemployed during the Depression, he read the front pages of the New York Times and figured out the distribution of letters, on which he based the scoring criteria.

His wife surprised him by spelling quixotic and racking up 214 points.

He first dubbed it "Lexiko" and then "Criss Cross Words," but no one was interested in mass producing it. He later sold it to James Brunor, who renamed it "Scrabble" from the Dutch word, "schrabben" (to scrape or scratch). Only 532 sets were sold in the first year, but we now can see just how successful the game has been.

It would be interesting if they decided to release a new version of Scrabble with brand new scoring. Might be interesting to see just how the English language has changed since the 1930s. Although, Butts's method probably wasn't as rigorous as it could be.
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2013, 10:18:53 am »
0

It would be interesting if they decided to release a new version of Scrabble with brand new scoring. Might be interesting to see just how the English language has changed since the 1930s. Although, Butts's method probably wasn't as rigorous as it could be.

You mean Words With Friends?

Also, this guy has the greatest name in the history of the world, ever.
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Morgrim7

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2013, 10:19:48 am »
+1

Butts? -giggle- heehee thats funny…butts
/4th grader
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Kirian

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2013, 10:23:38 am »
+1

It would be interesting if they decided to release a new version of Scrabble with brand new scoring. Might be interesting to see just how the English language has changed since the 1930s. Although, Butts's method probably wasn't as rigorous as it could be.

You mean Words With Friends?

Also, this guy has the greatest name in the history of the world, ever.

Don't forget the board game based on the social app, which itself was based on Scrabble, and which is published by Hasbro, which also opens the license to Scrabble.  It's like word-game-ception.
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soulnet

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2013, 03:53:25 pm »
0

Nice post.

About the scoring system: Basing the scoring AND the number of pieces with each letter directly on the frequency of each letter on language words is clearly not what is intended as "optimal", because letters in words are not independent. Assigning both frequencies and scores simultaneously such that the score of a word is proportional to the likelihood of having all of the letters in hand simultaneously is NP-hard, but with the alphabet being limited to 26 letters, it should be solvable within hours, or maybe less.

If you want to make it more complicated, thrown in the distribution of letters within the word against the probability of placing high valued words on 2x or 3x squares in the board (although this is probably going to be neglible on expectation, it is a fact that first and last letters are more likely to be placed into 2x or 3x squares than letters in the middle of a 5+ letter word, so letters which have higher frequency being first or last than in the middle should have slightly lesser score).
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Davio

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2013, 04:14:39 pm »
0

Some rules changes are also in order, like: you can keep swapping until you have at least two vowels or something (unless there are no more in the bag) and in Dutch just remove the Q, we don't have enough u's and small words to make it viable.

It's either qat or -10 points most of the time, in a 2p game it means you can't finish the game and thus the other person gets your 10 points for a swing of 20 points!
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Axxle

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2013, 04:35:39 pm »
0

Some rules changes are also in order, like: you can keep swapping until you have at least two vowels or something (unless there are no more in the bag) and in Dutch just remove the Q, we don't have enough u's and small words to make it viable.

It's either qat or -10 points most of the time, in a 2p game it means you can't finish the game and thus the other person gets your 10 points for a swing of 20 points!
It's all about qi.

Also: I'd kind of like to see a councilroom for scrabble, see the winrate of certain letters, two letter words, positions, first player advantage, etc.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2013, 04:36:57 pm by Axxle »
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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #7 on: April 04, 2013, 05:06:49 pm »
0

It's all about qi.

I don't think this is a legal Dutch word.
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Kirian

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2013, 08:25:22 pm »
0

It's all about qi.

I don't think this is a legal Dutch word.

It shouldn't be a legal English word either, but hey, Scrabble accepts pretty much any loanword you have lying around, even if only a few dozen people commonly use said loanword.
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DStu

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #9 on: April 05, 2013, 04:02:15 am »
0

Schwanzhund

/probablynotfunnyifnotgerman
« Last Edit: April 05, 2013, 04:05:59 am by DStu »
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Ozle

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2013, 06:22:38 am »
+1

Schwanzhund

/probablynotfunnyifnotgerman

Trust me, german words are funny!
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DStu

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2013, 07:31:48 am »
0

Schwanzhund

/probablynotfunnyifnotgerman

Trust me, german words are funny!
The thing with the whole 'Schwanzhund' is that it is not really a German word...
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Ozle

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #12 on: April 05, 2013, 07:33:54 am »
+1

Schwanzhund

/probablynotfunnyifnotgerman

Trust me, german words are funny!
The thing with the whole 'Schwanzhund' is that it is not really a German word...

I think a more accurate way to say what I meant was: Things said in German are funny
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chwhite

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #13 on: April 18, 2013, 11:28:02 pm »
+4

It's all about qi.

I don't think this is a legal Dutch word.

It shouldn't be a legal English word either, but hey, Scrabble accepts pretty much any loanword you have lying around, even if only a few dozen people commonly use said loanword.

The idea that we wouldn't be able to use perfectly good loanwords in Scrabble really messes with my qi.  Maybe I should go chew some qat to calm down.  Or maybe order a za for delivery.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #14 on: April 19, 2013, 11:12:09 am »
0

Playing Words with Friends really showed me the cheesy two-letter words. But that game did not penalize you for having a bad word, so you had no reason to not put that Z, X, or Q in any ole place and hope it's a legitimate two- or three-letter word.
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theory

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #15 on: April 19, 2013, 11:19:14 am »
0

The two letter words are not too hard to memorize.  After playing for a while you just start instinctively knowing that C/V aren't part of any two-letter words (except CH if you're using SOWPODS), and that Z/X/Q/J/etc. are ZA XI XU QI JO.
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #16 on: April 19, 2013, 11:22:06 am »
+1

X is my favourite tile in Scrabble or WWF as it can make a 2 letter word with any vowel. AX EX XI OX XU are all legal.
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Davio

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #17 on: April 19, 2013, 11:49:33 am »
0

In Dutch there is no Qi nor any other 2-letter Q word.
We have Ex and Yo as the only words with X and Y and Va for V.
Z on the other hand had two options with Ze and Zo.

The Q thing really hurts as it can basically lock down an entire section of the board.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #18 on: April 19, 2013, 07:08:57 pm »
0

My favourite Scrabble word is "cwm".
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chwhite

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #19 on: April 20, 2013, 11:07:01 pm »
+3

X is my favourite tile in Scrabble or WWF as it can make a 2 letter word with any vowel. AX EX XI OX XU are all legal.

X is by far and away the best high-value letter to have.

I remember reading at some point that someone had done a computer analysis to see which were the best letters to have in a game of Scrabble, and the top letters were, in order, [Blank], S, E, and X.

Really.
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #20 on: April 21, 2013, 05:41:50 am »
0

X is my favourite tile in Scrabble or WWF as it can make a 2 letter word with any vowel. AX EX XI OX XU are all legal.

X is by far and away the best high-value letter to have.

I remember reading at some point that someone had done a computer analysis to see which were the best letters to have in a game of Scrabble, and the top letters were, in order, [Blank], S, E, and X.

Really.

And I don't find that hard to believe at all. Blank is obviously the most valuable tile. S can pluralise almost anything. E is the most common letter in the alphabet and X has already been discussed.
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Kirian

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #21 on: April 21, 2013, 06:50:17 pm »
+1

Everyone likes blank sex, right?
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Kuildeous

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #22 on: April 22, 2013, 08:03:09 am »
0

Everyone likes blank sex, right?

You just replace your current partner with whoever you want? Who doesn't like blank sex?
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soulnet

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #23 on: April 22, 2013, 12:37:50 pm »
0

You just replace your current partner with whoever you want? Who doesn't like blank sex?

If you are just going to use the blank as Q, is better to have the Q, more points. I guess I'm just a romantic.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Death of a philomathic
« Reply #24 on: April 22, 2013, 01:29:34 pm »
+1

Well, sometimes you find someone for which there is no substitute.

Or you use blank to fantasize about a threesome. Sure, QUIZ is great, but QUIZZICAL is better.
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