The Unbelievable ZLOTYS

I apologize for once again blogging about Scrabble. However, if I am to blog about what I've doing lately, then I must blog about Scrabble.

The strangest coincidence happened yesterday. I was watching a game being played by two of the top rated players. One of the words played was ZLOTES. I figured LOTES are common letters that may appear with Z once in a while, so it would probably be a good word to know. So I looked it up in the OSPD, and voila: ZLOTY a monetary unit of Poland. ZLOTYS, ZLOTE, ZLOTIES, or ZLOTYCH are also playable. But ZLOTES is not. I can understand a top player not knowing this little exception, since it defies common sense that ZLOTYS and ZLOTIES are playable, as well as ZLOTE, but not ZLOTES. So with my lesson learned, I decided to play a game. Here is the first rack. The other player with the blue tiles went first and put down DINER.

I felt like I had been struck by lightning. To get this rack after just learning the word five minutes before...the odds are astronomical. I took a minute to look for other plays before I put it down.

In fact, it's probably unbelievable. I had told the other player something like "You don't know how long I've waited to play that word." I was going to tell him/her that it had been five minutes, but I was afraid of being accused of cheating.

I've had much higher scoring plays, but the satisfaction level on this play is pretty high. (Upon analysis, GLITZY and ZYGOTE are pretty good plays also. ZLOTYS ends up being the highest scoring play for the rack, at least according to the ISC computer examiner. But GLITZY might be a better play because it would have scored 38, just one point less than ZLOTYS, and I would have kept the S). I ended up winning the game by a scant 11 points.

My Internet Scrabble Club rating is up to 1124 now.

Posted by Mike Waugh at September 6, 2004 10:35 AM | TrackBack