Comments on: Games and Their Overvalued Points

By: anomdebus

anomdebus — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Ok, mea culpa, I hadn’t looked deep enough. I first saw a bunch of theoretical records, but apparently some people do keep sanction play records. Still, the effect can be minimized by keeping the aggregate score total of the tiles the same.

By: anomdebus

anomdebus — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Qizical,
A big difference between sports scores and scrabble scores is the scrabble scores are only relevant to match current players. To the best of my knowledge there is not a record book with top scrabble scores.
With sports, all of the current teams/players generally have access to the same technology, so it is still roughly equal for current play, if not historical comparison.

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:02:00 +0000

I’m in agreement with those who say that it changes the balance. The truth is it’s noticeable before you reach the professional/advanced level.
I say this because Scrabble has been a staple in my family’s home, my extended family’s homes, and even in my apartment in college, after I introduced my friends to it.
What I’ve seen is that while it’s much more advantageous to do longer words, new players tend to memorize the two letter words much more than they expand their vocabulary in the three-letters-or-more words, as a safety net. Two letter words give players the option of playing out some of their vowels (which you draw in spades, sometimes) rather than having to reshuffle their tiles. Unfortunately, as I’ve seen my brother and some of my college friends do, they start to play ONLY 2 letter words. As any experienced Scrabble player knows, this turns the game into a 2 letter word battle, because square blocks of tiles tend to prevent longer words from being played. I think this is about the least amount of fun you can have playing Scrabble. By comparison, the most amount of fun you can have playing Scrabble is thumping your opponents head with a seven-letter word like “quitter.”
So while I am opposed to unbalancing Scrabble tile points, I’m more opposed to introducing more two letter words. Most of these words aren’t really words in the sense that they are practical vocabulary, anyways (who the @#$% normally uses “qi” in a sentence?). Two-letter words like “qi” and “za” will also make it harder to make longer words given their letters, so that’s another good counterpoint.

By: Qizical

Qizical — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:39:00 +0000

I also liken it to other alterations in sports that don’t factor into record keeping. Consider the huge evolution in track shoes, running shoes, baseball/football cleats or basketball shoes over what they were 50 years ago. Or even uniforms! I imagine it’s much easier to move, run and play in today’s baseball uniform vs. the thick, starchy clothes of yesteryear. Even field maintenance has improved, which certainly makes it easier for teams to play effectively. Yet none of these factors, perhaps of small impact each but of grand influence when summed, has changed how records are kept.

Should such changes influence a progression in scoring and how records are measured? Perhaps…but what’s the tipping point when it’s decided that the influences are enough to make such a change? It’s impossible, impractical and inefficient to make such accommodations every time an incremental innovation/change presents itself.

So a sports comparison may be a stretch, but I agree that updates in the rules of strategy/board games should not be a reaction to each incremental change that affects the “field of play”, but instead should come at a point where the rule updates are manageable, easily communicated, and when the number of changes are significant enough to require it.

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:57:00 +0000

“Ok” is a perfectly legal word. There are a few dictionaries that have it. The Scrabble dictionary is only required for sanctioned tournaments, so there is nothing wrong with the board pictured.

The argument could be pretty much laid to rest by using a standard abridged dictionary. I love the look you get when you play a Scrabble “expert” and ZA gets thrown out, leaving them stuck with the Z when the game is over.

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:25:00 +0000

There is an illegal move on the Scrabble board you have pictured. In the top left corner, “OK” has been played, which is not a word according to the Scrabble dictionary.

And I love the look you get when you play a Scrabble “novice” and you play QI, KI or ZA…priceless!

By: anomdebus

anomdebus — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:24:00 +0000

Bryan,
If the Tour de France offered bonuses for unusual events like running over space aliens*, then lots of space aliens start showing up and skewing the game, then yeah its like that.

*I didn’t want to pick on anyone by picking a known group

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:54:00 +0000

Isn’t this like saying that, since bicycles have improved, the Tour de France should be longer?

By: anomdebus

anomdebus — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:14:00 +0000

OTOH, the fact that it may not have been “perfectly” balanced before is not an argument for allowing any sort of imbalance.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:27:00 +0000

It’s worth noting about the field goals that 1974 was the year of an important change about field goals: the NFL moved the goalposts from the front of the end zone to the back.

This is the second day in a row that ReCaptcha has put 7 1/4 in my text field.