By coincidence, my in-laws were going to New Orleans to attend the Louisiana Farm Bureau Convention. They offered to put me up in the Canal Street Marriott for the weekend. I accepted, but I let them know that instead of attending the wonderful seminars on sweet potatoes and beekeeping, that I would be playing in the Metairie Scrabble Tournament.
Despite the wonderful amenities, I slept poorly the night before, having drank a large Coca-cola right before bed. And then I wanted to get some use out of the Marriot's uber-chic gym and weight room. My arms were so tired that I could barely lift the tile bag for the first few games. And with my yawns punctuating my bungled attempts at conversation, I could sense I was on the edge of delirium. I had a long seven hours of Scrabble ahead of me.
Game 1 vs Richard: I thought I had him on the ropes early. He tried to hook a -Y on my PUTZ, which I challenged off. Then I got down STARING for 70. But he came back with NAIADES and NEOLITH to beat me easily 316-439.
Game 2 vs Bryan: I talked myself out of a 3x3. I could have played ENDITING through the T, but I thought I was confusing it with INDITING. (Both are good). I did get INSTEAD instead. But Bryan got the J, Q, X, and Z and bingoed with LADRONE and SPOILING to spoil my second game. 388-452.
Game 3 vs Rhonda: Nothing exciting here except I won a challenge when I hooked ESPY to make sweet beautiful MUSICS. I played poorly and lost 317-353.
Game 4 vs Noreen: Losing the first three games had my mood fouled. But I bingoed thrice: OVEREAT, STEALER, and ENAbLES. I took about five minutes to find ENAbLES, using the blank for the B. I got my first win 416-342.
Game 5 vs Brenda: I played terribly and lost the game when I unsuccessfully challenged ENGAGER. My only bingo, ANGRIER, described my mood. 318-462.
Game 6 vs James: I got away with JETTERS* for 74. We both had blanks on our final racks. There was an I hanging for me to bingo out with ACEOPT?. My melted nacho cheese brain couldn't find the three outs (OPErATIC, ECTOPIAs, POETICAl) and James went out with the simple but effective ISATInE. 310-452.
Game 7 vs Wesley: I challenged 2 acceptable bingos by Wesley: GENTIANS and CASERNS. My SALIVATE for 68 helped me get over 350 for only the third time that day. I also found BUNDT with a voweless rack. But I lost again 368-455.
Luckily, day one was over, but my 1-6 start was worse than I thought possible. Worst of all, I had four games where I scored under 320. One can study and prepare as much as one can, but lack of sleep will undermine the best laid plans. It was like trying to watch the news on a scrambled cable channel.
I was much better the second day. I still lost 3 of my five games, but at least I did it with style.
Game 8 vs Juanita: I thought my opening DITTIES for 70 would have me singing all the way to the winner's circle. But Juanita played a triple-triple, STOMPERS for 176, which I challenged unsuccessfully. STUMPERS, okay. STAMPERS, even better. But STOMPERS? I guess wine makers are stompers. She went on to stomp me 500-394.
Game 9 vs Broderick: About time I get to 450! SHORTER for 93 helped as well as a phoney, AURATES*, (AUREATE without the S is good). 453-374. I told Broderick after we had emptied the bag that according to my tracking, he should have over a dozen letters on his rack. That got a little laugh.
Game 10 vs Conrad: My in-laws know Conrad, so I told him that I could face them again if I could tell them that I had beat him. But he drew some pretty good tiles and got down EXAMINES for 85 and NETTLERS for 60. I played some fun funky rack balancing words like YAGI, PIXY, VIRGA, VROUW. I was holding RETAIN+A which is nothing but looks like it could be something. Mike, can you say "THE RED PUPIL PREFERS MUCH WINKING" Is there an A in there? No! So why are you spending 5 minutes looking at it?. Eventually I played off the A. Of course then I would get the blank! I played ANTISERA off an A. I later put the game though Quackle to learn that EXAMINES has a front hook. HEXAMINES. I drew the H later and would have had monster points since the space in front of EXAMINES was a TLS (triple letter score).
Game 11 vs Gigi: Although I lost, my best game was against Gigi. I opened with LAUGH, which has a bunch of dangerous extensions LAUGHING, LAUGHTER, SLAUGHTER, etc. None of which materialized. She played CLAYIEST which again I challenged and was found in the wrong. She followed that up with LOWERING to put me behind 26-139. But JOLTS for 56 and AVENUES for 90 gave me the lead. She played SPOONED for the 4th bingo of the game, but I was able to set myself up and I played HAIRNET for 100. The endgame was close and would have made a chessmaster sweat. I was trying to bingo out, but my win would have been to extend ZOA to make ENTOZOA. I lost 449 to 451. I didn't think to do a recount. When I got home I replayed the game and found that we had indeed miscounted. Except it was 4 more points in her favor. I also found that I had missed a juicy front hook: URIC to AURIC.
Game 12 vs Juanita: Nothing fancy, I got DOGEARS and SITUATED and won 407-318.
Only 3 wins total out of 12 games. But at least I lost better on day 2. Lesson learned. Sleep is paramount!
My rating dropped to 1240. Which means that at my next tournament I could be set up for some earnings. Watch out!
Today is the first day that I got all the fours correct on Jumbletime before the time expired, after coming close several times in the past few weeks. I thought I could hear "We Are The Champions" far away in the distance.
I try to hit Jumbletime once a day just to keep the anagramming chops up. And its nice to know the words are coming from the tournament dictionary.
BTW, the last word was chon (n. a monetary unit of South Korea).
I guess that means I'm getting close to knowing all my fours. I've been focusing on the shorter words lately. I hoping to be done up to the fives with hooks by my next tournament in October.
It's probably intuitive that the two FFs play well with each other. That long F sound seems like a good way to end a short word. In fact, there are 4 three letter words, 35 four letter words, and 81 five letter words that have two Fs.
Warning: Scrabble nerd alert. The following information was derived by using an anagrammer and plugging the information into a spreadsheet.
- For four-letter words with two of the same consonant: FF?? ranks fourth with 35 anagrams. SS?? has 92, (the majority of which you would never use), LL?? has 67 anagrams, and TT?? has 48 anagrams.
- For five letter words: FF??? ranks 7th with 81 anagrams. SS??? wins with 518 anagrams, LL??? has 206, TT??? has 177, RR??? has 163, DD??? has 109, and NN??? has 108.
For Scrabble play, if you had to pick a double consonant combo to have, its probably the best outside of LL, SS, and TT as far how many short words use it. But unlike those other letters, F is worth more points and won't make a lot of bingos. You will want to play both FFs off together to clean up your rack.
If you had to think of any words with double FFs that you use in everyday conversation, you might get a handful off the top of your head: OFF, BUFF, CUFF, IFFY, MUFF, RIFF, PUFF. There at least 30 words four letters and less that you won't know. And for me, that's the crux of the matter. Most of these words are not common and require some Scrabble nerd style memorization. For example, look at the three letter words: AFF, EFF, IFF, and OFF. Of these, only OFF makes sense to the layman. But if you think that ?FF is all the vowels except for U, then they are easy to remember.
I'm trying to get a grasp on the 4 letter words, so this is what I came up with. I broke them into groups.
No vowel: One word. PFFT! That's easy.
Two vowels: FIEF and FIFE.
Then you deal with the front and back hooks of the three letter words:
?AFF: I remember front hooks by thinking BCD (the first 3 consonants in the alphabet) and then the word "GReeNWaY" (ignoring vowels). Remember the BCD, it comes in useful later. There are no back hooks, AFF is an adjective so no plural. The hooks look like this BCDGNRWY:AFF:
?EFF: Easy. T in the front and S on the back (it's a noun, the letter F, so it pluralizes). T:EFF:S
?IFF: My phrase for the front hooks is BaD JiM RoT. BDJMRT:IFF:Y The defintion of IFF is "If and only if" so I remember that the back hook is Y and only Y.
?OFF: Remember BCD from -AFF. It's back again along with the lone T from EFF. BCDT:OFF:S. OFF is a verb so it takes an S along with -ED, -ING. An alternate memory device is to remember that OFF is a brand of bug spray. DDT is a bug spray used a long time ago (BC is a long time ago).
Then there is ?UFF. BCD is there again. Or try this phrase (ignoring vowels): "BiG CaT DouGH LuMP RaT" As in the "a big cat saw a lump in the dough and it was a rat." That would make you say UFF*!
Also remember that every single one of the four letter words ending in -FF takes an S. From BAFF to TUFF. All of them.
These memory devices are useful when you are first learning words. Hopefully, over time, you will start to recognize the words in their own light.
The details for the 7th Annual Cajun Scrabble Fest came to me today.
The tournament will be held on June 28 and 29th, 2008 in Metairie, LA. The entry deadline is June 26 with no walk-ins. There will be three divisions with an option to expand it to four if necessary. I'm sitting in the middle of the second division. More details are at Cross-Tables.
I'll have to reschedule my work schedule, but I will be there, along with my secret weapon.
Here's a map to the venue:
The results are in from the 2008 Dallas Open. Since I was unable to go myself, I decided to cyberstalk the Louisiana contingent. The live coverage of the event is surprisingly extensive--with game commentary complete with Quackle analysis, round commentary, photos with captions, as well as results and statistics.
Lila, Lindsay, James, and Peggy represented our state well. Lila had the best record thanks to a five game win streak at the end.
Poor Peggy is mentioned in the Round 1 commentary:
...A similar mismatch was going on two tables over between Jason Katz-Brown (Cambridge, MA) and Peggy Altazan (Zachary, LA). I see dIAZINS, BESTRODE, and HAYRIDE. This was Jason's win, 456-251. [sic: it was actually 556-251] Even as kind and gentle as Jason is, as the game ended, Peggy had the look of a deer in the headlights. She shook her head and handed me the result slip and said, "I lost by 300 points!" I assured her that just about anyone here would fare about as well against our MIT phenom. I hope she has some better balanced games today!
Lindsay is mentioned in the Round 6 commentary and photo captions:
...I mention Lindsay because of her traveling mascot, Dwight Schrute, the bobblehead doll. He sits beside her quietly, bobbing along as she writes on the table or when she hits her clock.
Aside from stalking the Louisianians, the game commentary from board one are fun to look at. There was one game where there was new record for the highest loss in a tournament: Stefan Rau lost with 552 points to 582. Some say the record is tainted due to the 3 phony bingoes in the game. But it's still a fun game to watch.
In the game of Peter Armstrong vs. Geoff Thevenot, someone on the CGP mailing list praised the play of UNVEIL as a bit of inspired tactical play, setting up a Q play on a TLS with the threat of a TLS-DWS combo at the same time. I don't think I would have done that with the X still unplayed, but maybe I lack cajones.
The penultimate game features a five bingoes, two of which use the blank for a K: MOONWALk and GIVEBACk. Wow!
I highly recommend going through the game commentary, testing yourself by asking "what would I play here?" and then slapping your own face each time you get it wrong. "Oh yeah! mARTAGON! How could I have missed that?"
I was going back over some games to reconstruct my Bird Bingo Life List, when I noticed a tournament game where Ben played bIRDIES against me. The OSPD4 defines it in golf terms, but I think I can claim it as a bird word.
It's too far back for me to remember much about it, but here's what I said about the game at the time:
...So I went into the first game with a "damn the torpedoes" type of attitude. If I was going to do well playing against players who I thought had better word knowledge than me, I would have to play aggressively. Thus I played a big fat phoney for my first bingo, AUXINES* (UNISEX and AUXINS are good). It stayed on the board. Ben played bIRDIES to take the lead late in the game. But I luckily drew a Z late in the game and played ZOOEY, a new word, for 34 points and went out on the next turn. Ben's unplayed tiles gave me 12 points to win by 9. I had just defeated the top-rated player in the division.
If this isn't something I should blog about then I don't know what is:
From Our Roving Reporter in the Field: Scrabble Cheating for 826NYC (Or How to Beat John Hodgman and John Oliver in an Unfair Fight): A librarian blogs about a benefit Scrabble game with Jon "700 Hoboes" Hodgman and John Oliver (from the Daily Show) and Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot) as judge.