The Elusive QUETZAL

BINGOES

from the desk of Robert, the Waugh that never was

Mike Waugh ruined Scrabble for me, he with his official dictionary, word-lists and strategy guides. (see The Meaning of Puppets) This was nothing akin to playing chess with my brother -- another game at which he outpaced me. In chess, even a stunning loss improved my game play, simply because one's mistakes and the skillful blows of one's opponent offer a sort of instant feedback. But Scrabble is a game of secrets, statistics, and rote memorization. You improve at Scrabble best not by sitting before the board, but by studying a specialist's lexicon of obscure words.

For years I have validated my distaste for Scrabble by saying that the great Scrabble players are simply great Scrabble players. Their skill at Scrabble does not translate well into any other skill. I mean, after all, how often does one say something like: "Let's see, Mr. Feng.... I believe that Office Depot you're looking for is about three li west of here."

Especially considering that these master Scrabble players don't even attempt to assimilate the meanings of all those words they memorize:

...it was on his third move that he bingoed with DESTRIER. "What the heck is a destrier?" asked his opponent.

"It is an entry on a list of highly probable eight letter words which I have memorized."
(excerpted from The Old New Thing)

But, five weeks ago my buddy Mike here in Ohio beat me handily at Scrabble. I was stunned; Mike hardly ever wins against me: in Monopoly, darts, checkers, or dominoes I am always the alpha-male. But, he and his wife have been playing Scrabble online, worldwide for the past year.

Something had to be done about that. I set aside my childhood Scrabble insecurities and dove straight into the tile bag.

But no, I would stoop to that low level of memorizing meaningless word lists. I would glance over some of the two- and three-letter words if they included definitions, but I promised myself that I would never play a word for which I could not create a demonstration sentence. What I needed was strategy.

After searching the internet and reading about Scrabble for a few hours, I decided that I had learned enough to save face in my next game. Two weeks later, I did win, but primarily due to good letters on my rack, and a plague of difficult letters on my buddy's.

Last Tuesday, we faced off again after finishing off a pot of coffee. This time I focused on a single stratagem gleaned from BigDoggy's Scrabble Strategy Hints -- play for bingoes. This was an entirely new strategy for me; having never bingoed in a game (to my recollection), I imagined that the chance to use all seven letters on my rack was essentially a matter of luck, and those damnable 7- and 8-letter word lists.

But, to my surprise, I bingoed not once, but twice -- in the beginning and middle of the game:

RIGGINGS

I held on to an ING combo for about two turns, picked up an S the next turn and with the addition of a blank tile, finally found a bingo that hit a double-word square. About 70 points.

RETAINED

This one came much easier. Having no place to play TIMIDER, I instead played TIMID off the I in RIGGINGS, with the D landing on a center triple-word square. Knowing that my I, R and E would come in handy, I began looking for a seven-letter bingo that would either begin or end in D, thus hitting one of the corner triple-word squares. On my next next turn all the other pieces fell into place. 80 points.

NOTE: As it turns out, RETAINS is a very good mnemonic to take hold of, since it includes those letters that give you the best chance of forming a bingo. In other words, you should retain any tiles that will spell out the word RETAINS on your rack.

I did notice however, that this bingo strategy did not help as much toward the end with an overcrowded board and few open lines on which to play a bingo. Unable to place SOLVING for my second-to-last turn, I instead played VIOLINS on a triple-word with the N and S forming two new two-letter words, finishing off the game next turn with GO.

In the final analysis, considering that I won the game by 108 points, those two fifty-point bonuses made all the difference.

So, Mike Waugh, I know you're reading this. Next time you fly up to Ohio you'd better pack your Scrabble board. From now on I'm playing to win.

Posted by Robert Waugh at June 10, 2004 08:23 PM