…with Gary Moss

Archive for March, 2010

Proper placement of words onto the board during a game of scrabble accounts for a significant percentage of ultimate wins. Whether placement is offense or defense, the strategic spot where a word is dropped can earn a player a big score and/or prevent an opponent from scoring a bingo.

Even the simplest of words, the 2-Letter-Words, can play a big part in determining the ultimate winner: the big pointers ( J, K, Q, X, and Z ) can all a part of 2-Letter-Words. When place on the board, over ‘hot spots’, and being a part of both a horizontal and a vertical word on the same play, the score of the play can be as much or more than some bingos.

On the board at the left, the sequence of plays occurred like this:
A.1) opening play was ‘outvies’ (see tvi-s) (68pts).
B.2) next played was ‘wed’ (21 pts).
A.3) next played was ‘tad’ (12 pts).
B.4) then player B used the ‘Z’ in two directions, creating ‘za’ horizontally, and ‘zesty’ vertically (76 pts).
Now that’s how to play scrabble. Obviously, player A never saw it coming.

Newbies are generally so happy to find a place where a word fits that they are blind-sided by the placement. This frequently opens triple-lines and bingo-lanes where their opponents feast on easily earned points.

While it is only natural for newbies to go through this stage for a while, it pains me to see some seasoned players, at club, continue this practice for months or years. None of these folks would ever touch a hot stove more than a single time. I guess for them the pain of losing isn’t as hurtful as a hot burner. (I am very hard on myself when I make the same mistake over and over again.) A key to developing any skill is for us to learn by our errors and then move on to the next level.
On the right is another example of fung shway in scrabble. Pamela Stubblefield jumped on the opportunity to hit hard when her opponent placed an ‘E’ over the DLS on the TWS line. Having the right combination of tiles at the right time always helps, but no one can slip an opportunity like this by Pamela without getting stung. In this case it was for a tidy 66 points for ‘execs’.

Tip #311 for scrabble players is: ‘Mind Your Scrabble Shway’.

Learn about proper placement and many other skills of scrabble champions, taught in my online class, Scrabble 101. CLICK HERE!

Last night was the first night of Passover. I’m wishing all my Jewish friends a ‘zissin’ Pesach.

No matter what your family’s religion or heritage, if you had parents who were steeped in their roots, it is more than likely that ‘outwardly’ you are either following in their footsteps or you are doing the opposite and rejecting it. But ‘inwardly’ we all remember their teachings and we express it in our behaviors when triggered by a thought, a song, an idea, a dream, a vision, or an interaction.

In homogenized America, it takes much more commitment to maintain the pure line of blood, ideology, and isms than it must have living in some isolated shtetls outside of Moscow in the 1800s.

My great-grandmother was one of the people who helped promote traditions of old. She was a ‘yenta,’ a match-maker. Any aspiring Jewish groom, with great-baubee’s help was able to find an aspiring Jewish bride. The two married and extended the line: blood and heritage.

An Aside: When my Zaydee was ready to marry (age 24), he payed a visit to the Yenta (my great-grandmother). She had several women in mind for him, from which to choose. But, sitting in the corner, he notice Chaya, the Yenta’s daughter, my grandmother-to-be (then 16), and said he would settle for no one else. And so it was.

In America in 2010, the options for marriage are generally not promoted by ‘yentas’. People are more likely to meet their marriage partner in a classroom, on the job, or living in the same neighborhood. Individuals choose their own partners based on the chemical reactions of their hormones.

The divorce rate for Yentas in 1885 was 3.2%. The divorce rate in the United States in 2010 is 56.5%.

Opposites attract but the glue is much, much, weaker.

Scrabble is a game that uses a given set of words. The ‘Word Committee’ is our yenta. The word committee tells us which words we can choose to have a legal play. Only about 3.2% of all words played in sanctioned games across the NASPA network are phoneys. (Interesting how that corresponds to the divorce rate for arranged marriages.) If we didn’t agree to use just a single dictionary, The OWL2, and played using a variety of word lists, scrabble wouldn’t be much of a game at all; it would be utter confusion.

The make up of OWL2 takes into account the different ethnic groups who have come into our circle, to play our game. The word committee uses 7 different world dictionaries as references to compile the list or words in the OWL2. When an newbie points to an entry in the OWL2 and says, “That is not a word,” he/she is obviously wrong. The word committee has the final word and has the final say.

Along the way during its development, the word committee must have had a number of Jewish members who placed more than 900 Yiddish words into the mix of 155,000+ words in the OWL2. But, there are also many words from other ethnic groups.

You say that you’d like that list of Yiddish Words that are included in the OWL2? Do I have a deal for you! CLICK HERE.

It was 1947. I was about 5 years old. My family lived in a one bedroom, second floor apartment, in a four-story building on Gladstone. My best friend was Ernie Hart. Ernie and I were allowed to play by ourselves, outside, as long as we stayed around the building; we never got into any real trouble. On this particular afternoon Ernie and I wandered around the building to the paved alley in the back, with no particular place to go, with no particular thing to do. No one was in the alley when we got there. All that was behind our building was a dirty parked car, caked with mud. About five feet away from the car was a clothes pole. (People didn’t have clothes driers in 1947; after doing the wash, people would hang their clothes out to dry on ropes strung between clothes-poles, attached to the ropes with clothespins.) Near the closest clothes-pole was a bucket filled with water. In the bucket of water was what appeared to be rags, in the eye of a typical 5-year-old. Ernie and I were up for doing a ‘mitzvah,’ a good deed. We decided to wash the dirty car, right there and then, as a surprise for its owner. We ripped the rags in the bucket into pieces and began to wash the vehicle. We had been scrubbing the car for at least 15 minutes and we were making great progress when Mrs. Sonny came running outside, screaming at us. The ‘rags’ in the bucket were her living room curtains.
I told my mom that it was Ernie’s idea; Ernie told his mom that it was my idea.

It was 1976. I was 34 and carrying a few extra pounds. I had agreed to join my then wife by going on a diet, I have no idea why there was a plate of chocolate-chip cookies in the house. It was a Saturday afternoon and she was going out for a few hours to run some errands and go shopping. Our three kids had all gone down for a nap and I was the designated baby-sitter for the afternoon. I was going to watch a football game in the family room. I said good-bye and watched her pull out of the driveway and head down the street. Closing the front door, I headed toward the family room. To get there I had to walk through the kitchen. As I walked through the kitchen a familiar voice called to me. It was the voice of home-baked, tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. I had never cheated on my wife with another woman. I imagine that the guilt I was feeling when I put my hand under the napkin, covering the cookies, on the plate, was no different from adultery. I grabbed four cookies and immediately shoved the first one into my mouth. I just stood in the kitchen devouring it. I took a bite of the second cookie and I heard a car pull up in the driveway. I anticipated that my wife must have forgotten something and had returned for whatever. I dashed down the basement stairs and stood in the laundry room, gobbling down the evidence of betrayal. I heard her come into the house; she called to me, “Where are you?” I responded, “In the laundry room,” trying to complete swallowing the evidence. Her steps got closer and she was standing beside me. “What are you doing?”, she asked? In an angry voice, with cookie crumbs around my mouth, I choked out, “Doing some laundry.”
BUSTED! I told her, “The devil made me do it.”

Competitive scrabble players, more often than not, play words that are acceptable. But according to the rules, there is nothing wrong with bluffing, much like in the game of Poker. There is a remedy for a knowledgable opponent. ( First say, “HOLD”. Say it quickly; before your opponent draws any tiles from the tile bag. Then when you are sure that you want to challenge, say “CHALLENGE”. A third party will look up the word and adjudicate it for you.) A player who makes up words can be caught in this manner and have to pay the penalty, by having to remove that phoney word and lose a turn. That’ll teach ‘em.

Have a look at all the ‘real bingos’ and ‘phoney bingos’ played to date, in 2010, at Club #350. CLICK HERE.

What pattern do you see?
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Look at the arrangement of the ‘hot spots’ (the colored spots). See how many of them are set five spaces apart. What, if anything does that suggest to you?
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If you just thought or said, “Aha, there are premium points to be made by knowing and playing five-letter-words,” you get an A+.
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Yes, the optimum scores in scrabble are made by playing bingos (using all 7 tiles off your rack on a single turn), but that is not possible on every play. The better players know that there are other ways of obtaining high scores too.
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A play like the one at the right, with the ‘Q’ on a TLS and the word covering a DWS, would score more than 70 points. That is as many points as many bingos.

When you are ready, I have prepared lists of all the 5 Letter Words containing the high point tiles. Words like ‘jowar,’ ‘kevil,’ ‘qanat,’ ‘xeric’. and ‘zaire’. The lists are in PDF format, ready for you to print -or- I can put these words onto WHIZ CARDS for you.

There is so much to learn, but the secret to building memory lies in your approach . . . ‘spaced repetition’ on a set regimen is the answer. Think about all the things that you are good at. You became good at those things by doing them over and over and over again. This is no different.

Knowing the 5s will make a significant difference in your game.

I am one of millions of scrabble enthusiasts who enjoy playing all day, all night. You might think that with directing 3 scrabble clubs each week, directing a monthly scrabble tournament every month, and then attending other scrabble clubs in my area, I would have had my fill. But, not exactly. Late in the evening, after I have written the next day’s scrabble blog and after I have updated scrabble club stats and my web site, I enjoy going online and playing some more scrabble.

It is always fun to go online and find some player I know. I’ve traveled around the USA and been part of the scrabble scene for more than 20 years, so I know a lot of players out there. Meeting new players can be fun too. I enjoy it when some unknown opponent chats and tells me where he/she lives. I’ve played individuals from every continent, except Antarctica.

The part of playing online that I do not enjoy are the JERKS. You never really know who they are; players are concealed behind their ‘screen names’. I assume that most are relative newbies and younger males from the tone of their expletives. They generally own a very limited vocabulary with the most common and trite words in the dictionary. They also are unable to imagine that others have the ability to know and recall a volume of words without the aid of a dictionary at hand.

I remember the day after I had learned at club that the word ‘woven’ takes an ‘s’ and played it online. It sent my online opponent into a rant, accusing me of being an ‘anagrammer’. An ‘anagrammer’ in this sense is someone who uses an electronic dictionary to find their next play. God forbid I should play a bingo against one of these JERKS. Usually they’ll quit. Most know some tricks of how to ruin your evening by jamming the system, preventing you from immediately choosing a next opponent. But, that’s part of the cost of playing unknown quantities. Don’t get me wrong, there are enough positive experiences to override the negatives.

I refuse to ‘dumb down’ my game for the sake of the JERKS. I always play to win. That requires that I continually review the words I know and continue to add to my knowledge. The JERKS are not reading this blog today. I frequently share information to assist scrabble players in building their word knowledge in the most efficient ways. Today’s reminder is that some letters and some words have a higher probability of showing up on your rack; therefore, to play more bingos, those are the words to learn.

No need to reinvent the wheel. Scrabble players in past years discovered the secret and created a system called ‘STEMS’. I have taken this information and put it on BOOKMARKS and WHIZ CARDS. All you have to do is devote a little, regularly scheduled study time.

Scrabble, the game, keeps me plugged in and alive. It is always teaching me new skills and reinforcing skills that I’ve learned in the past, but were dulling for lack of use.

Not every scrabble player will automatically serve up the experience of learning new skills as it does for me. It all depends on how you use it. Keeping the game in the closet will not help you learn new skills. Playing the game the same way your mom and dad did may help a little, but today’s club and tournament players have unlocked the true secrets of winning the game; these secrets hold the key to building the new skills to which I refer.

An Aside: The population in the USA spends ‘B’illions of dollars each year purchasing diet books and tapes, diet supplements, sessions with hypnotists, health club memberships, and trips to attend fat farms. And in spite of all of this, we are one of the fattest populations on the planet. A lot of people are only giving lip service to weight reduction while an assortment of high calorie treats continue to pass through their lips.

More than 30 scrabble players come out every Monday afternoon to play 3 games at Laguna Woods Village, in Laguna Woods, California. The group is divided into 3 divisions: A; B; and C. Group C are the newbies including the raw beginners; most find it challenging to find ‘cat’ when it is on their rack. Group B has some pretty good players who can identify words and hook them onto the board; they play the same words that their moms and dads played; they’re afraid of anything ‘new’ and believe that they can’t play at a higher level. Group A consists of players who are always interested in competing to win; they understand that each rack of letters contains many possible plays.

Group B & C players come each week to get out of the house, to interact with others, and to eat the cookies. Group A players are always working at building new skills, they get to enjoy all the other benefits too.

‘Skill Building’ is not limited to Scrabble. ‘Skill Building’ is a function of how one participates in activities.

Only about 6% of the population are ‘A’ Players, regardless the activity.

Another Aside: At some point in my 30s I developed a love for playing racquetball. I joined a club with state-or-the-art courts, I invited friends to play, I met new opponents at the club, and over a period of time I became a fairly good player. (I have the scars to prove it.) Wanting to share my racquetball passion with my then wife, I invited her to play. In my mind, I was planning to teach her how to play the game in the same manner that I liked to play. WRONG! What she had in mind was to volley the ball, tamely against the front wall, counting the number of hits until someone missed. I quickly became bored. At one point, trying to stuff my boredom, I snapped and hit a ‘kill shot’. She ran off the court pouting and never returned.

In the same regard, If an ‘A’ Player plays some exotic word like ‘unununium’ against a ‘B’ or ‘C’ player, we’ll rare see that person again.

Build your skills. Be a 6 percenter.

For a quick start to building your skills, check out my online class, SCRABBLE 101.

Do you know that there is a ‘right word’ on most of your racks of tiles during a scrabble game? Do you always play the ‘right word’?

You play first. The rack on the right is your first rack. How many different words do you see? What would you play?

Would you believe me if I told you that there are 144 words from which to choose?

Here on the left, you see 141 of the 144 possible words. But actually, none of these words is the correct opening play. Any of the remaining 3 words would be a great beginning. They are all bingos. Do you know what they are?
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Okay so you have no idea what those three words mean. No matter. But they are part of the ‘SATIRE’ Stem, one of the most powerful sets of words to learn. It is a high probability stem, meaning that it is very likely to show up on your rack over and over again.

Check out ‘SATIRE’ and all the other stems that are available on Whiz Cards and/or Bookmarks.
CLICK HERE!

Club #350 was playing scrabble at ARBYs the other day when I noticed a patron entry the eatery and head directly for the MENS ROOM. A little while later he came out of the restroom, wiping his hands with some paper toweling; he headed toward the trash container, but instead of throwing the toweling into the trash, he left it on top of a food tray. How disgusting was that? Then he walked out of ARBYs having never ordered a thing.

This kind of behavior is way too common. I am frequently disgusted when I entry public restrooms. They often appear as if they were just sabotaged by a group of middle school hooligans. Paper is strewn everywhere and no one ever learned about the concept of ‘flush’.

A lot of studies have taken place recently related the dangers of talking on cell phones and texting on cell phones while driving. I have taken the matter to heart, as I hope you have. The graphic pictures of accidents with twisted dead bodies attributed to these stupid and thoughtless phone users proves the point. And yet, there is not a recent time when I’ve been driving when I haven’t been witness to one of these infractions. A young woman driving ahead of me was weaving from lane to lane and speeding while texting. There was a toddler in a car seat behind her. When she stopped at a traffic light I pulled up beside her and motioned for her to roll down her window. She complied. I asked her why she would endanger the life of her child by her actions. She rolled up her window, flipped me the bird, and sped away.

There are standards and protocols for playing scrabble that can be interpreted as good manners or poor manners.
Cell Phones: Most if not all cell phones have a silencer. Why are some people so rude that they leave the ringers on during club play? And then when their phone rings inside their purse across the room those people pretend they don’t hear it or that it is someone else’s phone.
Talking Loud or Next To A Game In Progress: Scrabble is a thinking game. Extraneous talking can be disturbing and cause some players to loose their train of thought. When one set of players finish their game early and wish to chat, why can’t they simply walk to the side of the room or out into the hallway? (I’ve also noticed the biggest complainers are the biggest abusers.)
Coughing & Sneezing Into A Hanky:Not only do some players cough and sneeze straight ahead, but others sneeze into their hand and then put the same hand into the tile bag to replenish their tiles.
Counting The Tiles Before The Game Begins: It is very annoying to have played an entire game and then find out at the very end that one or more tiles was missing from the bag. At tournaments players are prompted to count their tiles before each game. The same simple task should occur whenever you play.
Being Considerate / Annoying Behaviors: Competition can bring out the animal side of us. Some players do some behaviors on purpose, to annoy and distract their opponents. Some players do not realize that they are irking their competition. When something is annoying you at club or tournament, DO NOT accuse or confront your opponent; call for the director and say something like, “Would you please explain the policy for talking aloud when your opponent’s clock is running?”
Let the director set the tone.

In a world that tries so hard to be so politically correct, let’s all do a little better, when possible, to consider others.

As far as the definition of a ‘real word’ goes, it is any word selected by the NSA/NASPA word committee, and then added into the OWL2 (Official Word List), now published in its 2nd Edition.

A lot of people just don’t understand that there are many more words in the dictionary than they actually know. It has been reported that the average person on the street knows about 5% percent of the words in the Websters. When you consider that the OWL2 has other words, from as many as 7 other world dictionaries, the average person may know even less.

Take a look at the following words and decide which words are ‘real’ and which are ‘phoney’.
_____predried
_____furball
_____antlike
_____eldress
_____celloist
_____stenoky
_____qindars
_____bornitic
_____witchers
_____weepily

These word lists are available to you
so you can build your word arsenal:
CLICK HERE

Living in the paradise of southern California, it’s not as big of a deal when Spring comes around, as compared to my old haunts in Michigan where we were always weary from shoveling the Winter snow and surviving the freezing cold nights. And still I think that everyone in every place welcomes the Spring season and the promise it brings.

Scrabble players have begun preparation in earnest to compete at the annual Orange County Tournament in Laguna Woods, California, a 20 year tradition open to the public. (April 17-18)

It’s the winding down of spring training for major league baseball players, anticipating the start of yet another competitive season.

I’ve received countless requests from word list studiers for the ‘SPRING STEM’ on Whiz Cards. ‘Spring’ is not a high probability stem because of the ‘P’ and ‘G,’ but I have created it anyway, due to popular demand and I have offered a special so you can get one too.

Fashion displays a rebirth with the reappearance of frills and colors and all those amazing Easter Bonnets.

Amnon Meyers obviously felt the effects of Spring yesterday at the Blankheads event and ‘sprung’ to victory, undefeated, in fine fashion.

I need only take a 20 minute ride south on the 5 Freeway to experience the return of the swallows to Capistrano.

Hummingbirds have returned to the bird feeder on my lanai on Punta Alta. It is a joy to have them visit me, outside my window, as I type away on my blogs.

The coming of Spring means that Club #350 will return to The Neighborhood Cup for its Sunday sessions, after April 1. We play there, outdoors, in the atrium, between the cafe and the Aliso Viejo Public Library. A most ideal setting for a scrabble club.

The cherry blossoms are coming alive in our nation’s capitol.

Club #350 players are blossoming too. We all make each other better players by continually providing earnest challenges for one another.

Daylight Savings Time has provided most of the US with an additional hour of daylight during waking hours. Little old ladies who are afraid to drive after dark during the Winter months, can now get to CLub #350 during daylight. At least the traffic is not bad by the time the club is over and they have to drive back home.

Spring Into Scrabble. Experience a rebirth in your game.