…with Gary Moss

Archive for April, 2010

Mind enhancing drugs have been in the news a lot lately. On April 25, the News Magazine, 60 MINUTES did a feature about some of the current data. They interviewed students and researchers about the fact that a large and growing percentage of students are using drugs to help them focus, especially when they are cramming for finals and/or when they are spending long hours writing papers. The students claimed that they could tell the difference in their ability to focus when they were on the drugs. Research has yet to determine whether there are any long term ill effects for drug users. The cost of the drugs were reported to be relatively small ($3 a pill), It is believed, however, that some individuals run the risk of establishing a dependency and will become addicted.

About 10 years ago, in an attempt to earn some extra income, I fell in with a bunch of people selling supplements under the Rexall label. There were, and are, many companies that sell these products in stores and through various marketing networks. Each of the companies relies on doctors and researchers to provide statements based upon studies to support their claims for the supplements. I attended meetings where I listened to speakers and watch video of people with PhDs and MDs touting these supplements. (Currently the FDA has no jurisdiction over most of these supplements.)

Were these products the real thing? Were they snake oil? Were they legit?

They made me into a believer. (But, I’m easy.) I used several of the supplements regularly. Did they help me? I honestly don’t know. Did they harm me? I don’t think so. Was I monitored by my doctor during that period? No. I did tell my doctor what I was doing and selling. I even tried to interest him in selling the supplements out of his office, to supplement his income. I do know that many doctors and dentists did, and still do, rep products like the ones to which I refer. My doctor declined my offer, but never encouraged me to stop doing what I was doing.

The people at the top of these organizations make BIG BUCK$. Many of these organizations use some form of multi-level marketing. I never made the big bucks. I’m not a pushy salesman type. When a potential customer said NO THANK YOU, I walked away. Some of these other sales reps never leave your house until you write them a check.

I remember that one of the mind enhancers was called MEM-TABS. I tried them for a month or more. When speaking with a prospective customer I probably credited MEM-TABS for my scrabble rating going up. But then again, during that period I was either creating word lists, studying word lists, or playing scrabble as much as 30 hours a week. DUH! That could have more likely been the cause of my success than the MEM-TABS.

Looking back, from the outside, I can see that the organization was a bit ‘CULTISH’. The leaders and members were very accepting, just like going to church or coming to one of my scrabble clubs. Groups like to have new members, especially if you share their same interest. If you are a joiner, as I was, you want to be liked and accepted, so you do whatever they do, speak as they speak, think as they think, sell what they sell. Before you know it you begin to believe as they believe. You never raise a doubt or question anything; you buy the ‘party line’.

Is that what is happening with drug usage among college students? Yes, for some.

Would you be a better scrabble players if you used MEM-TABS or RITALIN? Possibly.

I may not know the value of how drugs might enhance your game, but I do know which tools are both fun and useful to players who use them in accordance with a study plan. To see exactly what I’m talking about, CLICK HERE. If you need help developing your study regimen, call me: (949) 510-1673. I think it’s time for me to take my pills.

Tributes to Rita have been flooding the scrabble internet circles all day and all night long, ever since the announcement of her passing surfaced Wednesday morning.

To know Rita was to love Rita. I knew of Rita from the time I became a serious scrabble player. Every tournament player knew Rita Norr, the only woman National Scrabble Champion. But, I finally got to know Rita for at least a little while, right after I moved west in 1995. I was living in Hollywood Hills for a year when Rita was living in the LA area. I’d bump into her at Alan Stern’s ‘Killer Club’ and the Saturday morning club in West LA. After club play was over, a group of us would make our way to some all night restaurant near Fairfax, on Wednesday nights. On Saturday afternoons we frequented the Soup Plantation in Brentwood. Anyone could tag along. It was always more fun when Rita was a part of the group. Her smile and cheerful personality lit up the room. I always learned something when I played her. I actually didn’t get to play against Rita too often, because she was so much better than me and played in the highest divisions. My one great scrabble victory over Rita came in 1996. We were both playing in the year-end, club championship tournament at ‘The Killer Club’. It was an 8 game modified swiss-pairing competition. From the start, I was playing in a ‘zone’; I drew all the best tiles; I made all the correct challenges. I managed to win 6 of the first 7 games against the likes of Ira Cohen and other players whom I seldom beat. Meanwhile, Rita was winning too. Our paths finally crossed in the last game, Game #8. I continued to draw well and the game was neck and neck all the way. With the tile bag empty and only a few tiles left on each of our racks, it was Rita’s turn.

An aside: Rita was planning a trip to play in the upcoming World Tournament. She had been spending countless hours studying the thousands of words in SOWPODS, that were not in the OWL.

Back to my story: Rita made a play over the TWS, in the lower right-hand corner of the board. It scored enough points to insure her WIN. I quickly called ‘HOLD.’ I immediately noticed a 2-Letter-Hook that looked unfamiliar to me. ‘OI’ was not a legal two letter word in the OWL at that time. I challenged, went out, and enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame as the Champion of ‘The Killer Club’.

Rita remained my friend. Years later when she lived in Queens and I needed a place to stay for a week in New York, she and her dog Max, graciously put me up. We played scrabble in Washington Square Park and enjoyed the Bill Charlip Jazz Trio in the Village. Rita was a pleasure. I feel a profound sadness.

The following is a post from her family:
To Rita’s Dear Friends and Family,
As many of you already know, Rita passed away Wednesday morning in the
company of her family. She fought an impressive battle but the time
had come to leave the suffering behind.

We would like to invite you to join us in celebrating her life
while saying goodbye.

This Saturday, May 1st, we will be holding a simple funeral ceremony
in Brooklyn to be followed by a casual wake at her son Chris’ home
just up the block (details below).

At the funeral, we welcome you to share personal stories, poems,
and/or thoughts about Rita.

At the wake, we would like to post pictures of Rita for all to enjoy
and reminisce about her sparkling life. Please bring any you would
like to include.

Thank you for caring for her. We know she will miss you all.

Sincerely,
Chris, Kirsten, Ethan & Rick
P.S. Please pass this on.

DETAILS:

Saturday, May 1st

10 am – 12 pm Viewing
12 pm – 1 pm Brief Ceremony and Public Sharing

At: De Riso Funeral Home

5012 Fourth Avenue (between 50th and 51st Streets)

Brooklyn, NY

1 pm – 4 pm Wake

At: Home of Chris Norr
438 50th Street (between 4th & 5th Avenues)
Brooklyn, NY

When we finally decide to sign up and compete at a scrabble club or tournament, we begin to anticipate the thrill of victory. However, when we compete in a competition, whether there are 10 opponents or 1,000 opponents, there is only one ultimate winner. Even the #1 Seed has no guarantee that he/she will end up in the winners circle.

It is my observation that there are many excellent players who come to the scrabble scene, but leave soon thereafter because of the way that they deal with losing. The truth is that we all cannot finish in 1st Place all of the time. BUT, we can learn volumes of information and further develop our skills, simply as a result of our participation.

When you consider how life seems to work, we all have our 15 minutes of fame in the spotlight, and then we have the rest of our lives. It seems critical to me that in order to be happy campers, during the better part of our lives, it behooves us to learn how to cope with being ranked below 1st Place.

TIP #12 – Accentuate The Positive
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Stay focused on the fun of learning, smell the roses along the way, set many short-term, achievable goals for yourself. Physically check off your accomplishments when they are completed. You will gain steam and enthusiasm from every goal your meet. Use that energy as a catapult toward attacking your next challenge. Stay true to yourself and your regimen.

So, what do you do when you suffer a major defeat? What do you do if you didn’t win a single game in the 7 game tournament? DON’T throw your score sheets into the trash, in disgust. USE your experience as a tool for building toward you success. ANALYZE your games, your plays, your challenges, and more. PLAN a list of things that you need to improve up with TIME FRAMES for your proposed actions.

THEN DO IT!

For the best learning tools, choose WHIZ CARDS or BOOKMARKS from JFTSOI. CLICK HERE

Two people sit down to play a game of scrabble. Player ‘A’ has never played the game before, but has spent the previous year memorizing the OWL2. Player ‘B’ has an IQ of 110 and has been playing a minimum of twice a week at scrabble clubs during the past year.

Who is most likely to win the first game?

In my opinion, Player ‘B’ has the upper hand. Words alone, without the ‘DOING,’ will not win the game.

Who is most likely to have the best winning record after ‘A’ and ‘B’ play weekly over the coming two months? In my opinion, player ‘A’ will enjoy the edge.

I see it all the time. Some newbie, with degrees, MAs & PhDs, up the kazoo, comes to club for the first time, bragging about how they can do the Sunday New York Times Crossword Puzzle, in pen, in about 30 minutes. Then, in their first game, they proceed to score less than 300 points, go over on their clock on time, and never record their opponent’s scores. DUH.

We all learn and improve by DOING. There is no better substitute than experience.

Wait a minute! I hope I am not giving you the impression that player ‘A’ who memorized the OWL2 was just spinning his wheels and wasting his time.

There are some people who have been ‘doing,’ coming to clubs for more than 10 years, who never study word lists. They believe that they can move up in the ranks by playing frequently. Let’s assume that they play in 2 clubs each week, playing 4 games in each session; now lets assume that they play another 6 games each week online. That is a total of 14 games each week. Now lets take the average number of turns per game (17) and multiply times the number of games played (14 x 17 = 238). 238 represents the number of words played each week. (At least 10% of the words played are ‘repeats’ .) So, 238 – 23 = 215, the number of different words played in a week. 215 x 52 weeks = 11,180, the number of words played in a year, if they were all different. But if you ever tracked your words from week to week to week, you’d be amazed that a minimum of 40% of the words are words that you have played in previous weeks (40% is very generous). Subtract 4,472 from 11,180 and we have 6,708.

There are more than 155,000 words in the OWL2. In one year, this average player has played 6,708 words, or only 4.3% of the words therein. Do you call that doing? I don’t.

Most players do actually have lives that transcend the scrabble board. That’s the way it should be. But self deception has never helped anyone improve their lot, be it scrabble or studying for the bar exam.

Spend just the time that one uses to play a single game on line each day (25 minutes) to study 10 new words, and that will add up to familiarizing yourself with 10 x 7 x 52 = 3,640 words in a year. That’s equal to more than half of the words that you might normally play in a year. If you choose those words carefully, beginning with ones that have a high-probability of appearing on your rack, your game results will experience a quantum leap.

•Learn By Doing
•Do More To Learn More

Start with something spicy. Learn all the ‘naughty words’ on the POO LIST; they are in the OWL2, but not in the OSPD4; they are legal to play in club and tournament games. CLICK HERE.

VERBS RULE
26 Way To Squash Your Opponents

anagramming many words have letters that
can be rearranged to create other legal words
(retains=nastier; read=dare). Always use the
word with the highest score and the best defense.
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bingoing using all 7 of the tiles on your rack on
a single turn is referred to as a ‘bingo’ or a ‘bonus’.
This action earns you an additional ’50′ points.
Study bingo lists and be prepared to take advantage.
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conjugating verbs have many forms. Don’t fall in
love with any word. Consider all the possibilities.
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extending most words can be extended on one end
or both ends. (‘acid’ can be extended to ‘nonacid’ or
to ‘acidity’) Keep an open mind.
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faking Even though we try to play words that are in
the OWL2, it is not illegal to ‘bluff’. If you get caught
by your opponent’s challenge you will lose your turn.
Which word is legal? witchers? unununium?
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gammoning Coffee-Housing is not acceptable
on your opponent’s time. Some will talk during their
opponent’s turn in order to distract their thinking.
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haggling counting and recounting the score. Making
certain that your opponent is adding correctly and always
call them on their errors.
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ideating Having an idea. Using the information
that you already possess to make the most
informed decision related to the word which
you’ll use and its placement onto the board.
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joking Have fun with the game, especially at
clubs when things may be less formal. Look
for the fun in words. Be playful.
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kashering making certain that everything is on the
up and up, legal in terms of the OWL2 and the rules.
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learning There is no substitute for continually building
your word power with words that may be unfamiliar to
your opponents.
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memorizing We all learn differently. Your job is to
first identify your style of learning and then to use
that technique to efficiently memorize chunks of the
OWL2.
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nailing When you finally memorize a tough stem like
SATINE+E (etesian) and you play it against your
opponent for 76 points. (Then celebrate it.)
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ousting Identifying your opponent’s phoney and
challenging it right off the board. (Get that out of here!)
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pluralizing We all know most of the words that are
made plural by adding an ‘s’. Now learn the words that
end differently (inertia and inertiae). Also learn the words
that do not take an ‘s’ (deluxe, sporting)
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quashing Learn how to use the ‘hot spots’
effectively by putting the high point tiles on
the TLS and the word on the DWS. Crush
your opponet with 50+ point plays.
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racking Develop a system of placing the tiles on
your rack in a way that you can see the words easily.
Many experts use ‘alphagrams’.
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spelling Some words have been identified as the
most troublesome for people to spell. Learn those
words and play them against your opponents.
Always create difficulty and uncertainty for others.
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translating There are many words in the OWL2 from
other cultures. Learn them and their forms. Many
words from Hebrew and Yiddish are made plural by
adding ‘im’ (yomim, goyim).
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uglifying Find and learn the ugly words (fremd, xylol,
and crwth). Words with doubles like genii, senarii, and
filariid will throw your opponent for a loop too.
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viewing Look twice before you challenge. Always
turn the board around and look at it carefully before
you hit the clock, ending your turn. Little errors
can loose games.
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waffling At times waffling can be a ploy to distract an
opponent. Put a word down, pick it up, put it down
pick it up, etc. Don’t allow someone else’s waffling to
get to you.
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xeroxing Put the words in your head. Close your eyes
and see the word clearly. DO NOT invert letters as you
place them onto the board.
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yielding Always slow down at an intersection and yield to
oncoming traffic. Always say, “HOLD”, when you are
considering a challenge. If you wait too long, and your
opponent draws even a single tile out of the bag, it is
too late to challenge.
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zapping Always try to develop a big lead early in the game.
The psychological effect of being behind will cause
many players to simply give up. If you are behind,
NEVER GIVE UP. Frequently, the tiles will turn and
you can make a miraculous recovery.

In the Springtime there is growth. Springtime doesn’t have to be March 21 – June 21. It can be taken figuratively, like when you discover Scrabble as your calling and begin cutting your teeth on the 2-Letter-Words. Springtime for a scrabble player can last years (there is always so much more to learn).

If there is any major mistake that budding scrabble players make, it is related to their impatience with Springtime.

The lure of lazy Summertime and the necessary hard work in Springtime, related to all the planting, weeding, watering, fertilizing and more, prompts many players to move on, away from scrabble, far too soon.

The early spring harvest is satisfying to the first time farmer, enjoying the fruit of his labor. But he doesn’t know yet what he doesn’t know. The later harvests of summer and autumn is where the sweetness and abundance lies. Some scrabble players, once leaving Springtime, never go back again, remaining content with only the amount of knowledge that can be cultivated during the Springtime harvest. I often see these players year after year in the Novice Division, complaining about their low ratings. DUH.

Have you ever been on a farm during the Fall Harvest? It can be overwhelming. The variety and the quantity can leave you breathless. You are able to enjoy a clear understanding of the often used phrase, ‘You Reap That Which You Have Sown’.

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And who is doing the reaping at a scrabble tournament? You betcha. It is those players who planted and watered and fertilized and weeded. They studied stems and hooks and anagrams and 5-vowel-8′s. They practiced tracking. They thought about hot spots and double-doubles. And now they are finishing quite regularly in the winner’s circle.

Some of the Springtime farmers are eating their unripened, sour grapes, and pointing fingers saying that those guys in the winner’s circle possess special talents and better genes. Well, some of that may be true . . . but the main difference was their patience, their sticktuitiveness, and their study regimens. You betcha.

Writing about the garden makes me recall one of my all time favorite movies about a simple man who influenced powerful governments. The movie is ‘Being There‘ with Peter Sellers. And yes, YOU can too.
The most powerful fertilizer for your scrabble garden is SCRABBLE 101.

Some of us are branded. Some of us have actually brand ourselves. Being branded is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. Being branded has the characteristic of keeping us loyal and true to our particular brand.

We all know the brands that are visible: the ones burnt into the flesh of cattle to identify their owner; the ones that take the shape of logos to promote everything from Tomato Soup to Cigarets to Hybrid Automobiles.

And then there are the brands that are burned into our minds by parents and teachers and other people with positions of influence.

It was 1950. I was an 8 year old Jewish boy growing up in Detroit, Michigan. My traditional, Jewish, parents were already anticipating my Bar Mitzvah, 5 years down the pike. In their synagogue, in order for a boy to be Bar Mitzvah, he was required to have 5 years of Hebrew School training. So, every Monday thru Thursday, after public school classes ended at 3:30 PM, I’d wait on the curb at Fullerton and Cherrylawn for the Hebrew School bus to pick me up and deliver me to Mrs. Tuckle at B’nai Moshe Hebrew School. There I learned how to read and write Hebrew, chant the traditional prayers, and be steeped with the history of the Jewish people.

Noble Elementary School was my public school. It was K – 8 and housed more than 500 students. I was one of about 4 Jewish kids who attended that school. Because I was different from the student body, I was BRANDED as the ‘token Jew’. At age 8, teachers would ask me questions about my heritage as if I were an authority.

Hebrew School was not easy for me. Maybe I was just tired from 4PM – 6PM. Maybe I wasn’t motivated. Maybe I was daydreaming about all the free time being enjoyed by my Public School friends. As a result of my lackadaisical attitude, I earned poor grades at Hebrew School. Mr. Schechter, one of my teachers, often wrote the comment on my report cards, “A nice boy who doesn’t know much.” That became another BRAND for me. I still remember it vividly today and it haunted me over the years. Years later at Mumford High School, when I opted to spend my energy doing things other than earning good grade, I wore Mr. Schechter’s BRAND and used it as my excuse for being a ‘D’ student.

As an 11th Grader, for some unknown reason, I was singled out by Mrs. Armstrong to be included in an elective class called ‘LEADERSHIP’. That was almost laughable related to my academic performance. My school counselor, Mrs. Kaplan, had a fit. She had told me to my face that I was a ‘lost cause’. I was an oxymoron. Being branded ‘LEADER’ turned out to be very important for me. I put that ‘brand’ deep down in my pocket, to keep it safe, and years later I took it out and claimed the brand of LEADER for myself.

Scrabble players are riddled with brands too. Some brands are inspiring; some brands are self defeating.

The truth is, a BRAND is only a BRAND. It is not the truth; it is merely a label, manufactured by someone for some purpose.

You are free to use the BRANDS on your back or dismiss them.

If someone told you that you are a poor speller, that is only a brand, it is not true, If you have gone through life to this point believing that you are a poor speller, that has been your choice. You can change all that right now if you choose.

What BRANDS have empowered you? Keep them.

What BRANDS have limited you? Shed them.

All you have to do to create a new BRAND for yourself is take an action. Don’t believe me? Try it. You will have to shed those old notions about yourself that may be in the way. I’ll help you if you choose.

Start with the power pack of WHIZ CARDS. The top 3 sets. CLICK HERE. Create a new BRAND that is the real you.

John Lennon continues to be near the top of my list of favorite songwriters and performers. I imagine that if John had been an avid scrabble player he may have written a different set of lyrics to one of his more popular songs. Click Here, go to the music, and sing these lyrics to his music and see what you think.

Imagine there’s a bingo, it’s easy if you try.

Remember all the stems, see them in your mind’s eye.

Imagine balanced racks, I wonder if you can.

Imagine hooks on hot spots

It isn’t hard to do.

Recall the words you learned last evening

And no phonies too.

Imagine you opponents pulling out their hair.

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one.

I hope some day you’ll bingo

And you’ll walk away having won.

Imagine fewer losses

I wonder if you can?

No lack of blanks or esses

You’re a winner and you jam.

Imagine all the losers

Sobbing at your feet

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one.

I hope someday you’ll bingo

And you will be Number One.

http://web.mac.com/jftsoi/List_Of_The_Week/Imagine.html

About a week or so ago the scrabble air waves and computer servers were alive with the misinformation that Mattel had approved the infusion of ‘Proper Nouns’ into the scrabble dictionary.

The first clue that the post was incorrect was that the decision was said to have been made by ‘Mattel’. Mattel has no connection with the scrabble world in North America. The powers that be here are Hasbro and NASPA. DUH!

But, the release of that report caused about an extra hundred emails to find their way to my email-box, each beginning with, “Did you hear . .?”

I can only imagine how such a change would distroy the game. Almost any word would be fair game to play. The size of the dictionary would grow from 155,000+ to double that size.

It is not like there aren’t words in the OWL2 already that smack of being a ‘proper noun’. However, those words all have a second meaning like ‘jo’ = a sweetheart or ‘sally’ = a sudden charge out of a besieged place against the enemy or ‘henry’ = the SI unit of inductance, equal to an electromotive force of one volt in a closed circuit with a uniform rate of change of current of one ampere per second.

There are some words that are in the OWL2 that were proper nouns and have become so commonly used that they have been inducted into the dictionary as ‘common nouns’. (jello, xerox, and kleenex are a few.)

As I’ve shared in the past, the final decision of whether a word is included in the OWL2 or excluded from it is the arbitrary decision of the Word Committee of the NASPA. That process is no more or less arbitrary than any other games in which the rules change from time to time (ie. major league baseball, football, etc. etc. etc.)

Hense, scrabble is a memory game. He/she who memorizes the OWL2 is most likely to be the winner.
(LOL) I have known several scrabble players through the years who have claimed to have memorized the dictionary. The most recent is Mr. Mark Landsberg, ‘Mr. 770′. He put on a demonstration for us at Club #350 that made us all believers.

Pictured on the right is a low cost, low tech memory method used by many players when they first begin playing at club. They use this method until they become serious about moving up in the ranks.

Do you want a copy the list of about 700 words in the OWL2 that some consider ‘proper nouns’? They all have another meaning. CLICK HERE

loyalty |ˈloiəltē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
• the quality of being loyal to someone or something.
• a strong feeling of support or allegiance.

A lot of us have forgotten, or maybe never learned, lessons about loyalty.

For many years now, we have been describing the way that Americans have been living as the ‘ME generation’. It could be that we have been over-reacting to our past and have swung like the pendulum of a clock, to the other extreme.

Loyalty hasn’t deserted us completely. It shows up in time of tragedy and disaster (Katrina and 9-11). It shows up for the Super Bowl and March Madness. Better it should show up for family and children. (The divorce rate and the number of fatherless children is staggering.)

‘LOYALTY’ is very important for scrabble players and the continuation of our scrabble community too. We depend on each other, friends and opponents alike, to show up at clubs and tournaments. We create the scrabble scene for one another just by being there. I am saddened when I see some clubs and tournaments fade, due to poor support. CHANGE, in the way that people play scrabble in today’s computerized world is a huge factor. More than a million scrabble games are played every day on home computers and hand-held iPhones and iPads. People no longer have to go to a club location or a tournament site to enjoy a game of scrabble.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned. Maybe it’s because of my investment of time, building a scrabbledom in my community. But I hope scrabble clubs and face-to-face competition doesn’t fade away like 8-Track-Tapes and Poodle Skirts and the Nickel-A-Pickel.

Actually, you have all the power in determining the fate of clubs and tournaments. All it takes from you is showing up and taking part in the action. Help spread the word to others. There has rarely been a week gone by when some man or woman hasn’t stopped to watch us play at club and said, “I never knew that scrabble clubs existed.” I guess we haven’t been doing enough to let the masses know.

Sometimes loyalty is not convenient.

JUST DO IT.