…with Gary Moss

Archive for January, 2012

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You won’t find this bit of wisdom found in any book of rules; you won’t find a best selling ‘HOW TO . . .’ book being so bold as to tell you this truth. But all you have to do is read Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried wolf and you will see that this phenomenon has been happening happily ever after.

Actually, liars start off by being believed: Richard Nixon; Bernie Madoff; Stephen Glass; Baron Munchhausen; and too many others to name here.

Then the liars get caught up in their lies: Richard Nixon; Bernie Madoff; Stephen Glass; Baron Munchhausen; and too many others to name here.

And then, even if and when they speak the truth, most people rarely accept their stories.

Liars create all kinds of confusion and frustration for fact-finders, pursuers-of-truth, and true-believers.

It is no different pertaining to playing scrabble. In fact, a savvy scrabble player can utilize the truth/lie factor in the game to their personal advantage. (Purists of the game may find this tactic distasteful or even consider it to be cheating.)

For those who look at scrabble as a game, with rules, where there is ultimately one winner and one loser, lieing (bluffing) is merely one of the piecees of the game.

The game offers remedies to protect players agains the liar (bluffer) and penalties to reward the player who catches the bluffer in the act.

The most common remedy is ‘the challenge’. If and when your opponent plays a word on the board that look suspicious to you, as the opponent you have the remedy of challenging the play. BUT, you must act in a timely fashion.
• say “HOLD” before your opponent pulls a tile from the tile bag to replenish their rack. (once hold is called, your clock continue to run off time while you decide whether or not you want to ‘challenge’.)
• if you decide that you do not want to challenge just tell your opponent and the game continues.
• if you choose to ‘CHALLENGE’, neutralize the clock and have the play adjudicated.
• if the play is acceptable, your opponent gets the points and you lose a turn.
• if the play is ‘NOT ACCEPTABLE’, your opponent retrieves the tiles from the board and it becomes your turn.
(One turn may not seem like very much, but it can usually shift momentum.)

Once a player wins one or two challenges the opponent usually becomes gun shy and doesn’t challenge again.

When a player has a reputation for playing ‘phoneys’ and then they develop an arsenal of strange looking words, they become a nightmare for their opponents. Which of these words would you challenge: ngwee ____; crwth ____; aalii ____; qwertys ____

It is the job of every scrabble play to play both offence and defence. You must learn which words are acceptable and which are phoneys. Would you challenge ‘sealion’?

In an earlier blog I pointed out that ‘sealion’ is a phoney. The real word in that set of letters is ‘anisole’.

Let me coach you to be the best scrabble player you can be. (949) 510-1673

I can help you and your local charity replicate a scrabble event that has proven to fill the coffers of a local charity in Escondido, California for their Literacy Project. For the last several years, I have been a member of a team of players from Orange County, California who have participated in the SCRABBLE-THON put together by The Escondido Library. More than 150 players pay entry fees and battle head-to-head in this scrabble-like competition. The event is a double-elimination tournament that bends the rules of standard, sanctioned, scrabble competitions. But that’s okay. The special rules are announced early on and the playing field is level. (In fact, in my opinion, novice players have a slight advantage in that the games are limited to 20 minutes. If one player takes an early lead in the game, that player can coast to victory.) But on this day, the primary purpose is all about raising funds for charity.

Above is a picture of my team for 2012. We will be playing in the Scrabble-Thon on Saturday, February 4th. We hope to win again, as we did a few years ago. Our team name reflects the hats that we will wear during the tournament. All of our players can be found regularly at CLUB #350 events in Lake Forest and Costa Mesa, California (CLICK HERE).

Would you like to raise funds for your school? church? synagogue?

Call or email me. Gary: (949) 510-1673 or jftsoi.moss@gmail.com

One of the mavens at the scrabble club added ‘pan’ to the front of ‘virus’, extending it to a TWS for a score of 51 points. The player has an extensive vocabulary and the word seemed plausible. I did not challenge but made a note for myself to check the word after the game had ended. Later on when I looked in the OWL2 I learned that ‘panvirus’ was a phoney. I had made a common mistake that occurs frequently when I am playing a much higher rated player. I become too trusting. I assume that my stronger opponent would never play a phoney. WRONG!

Most players do not play phoneys on purpose (except at the end of the game when they need the points to win).

When I am the stronger of two opposing players I sometimes stretch myself and try to recall some word that I think I know. That sometimes falls short and I end up playing a phoney.

Competitive scrabble players all know that they need to learn all the words and all the ‘non-words’ too. One common newbie error always seems to occur with the rack AEILNOS. The newbie will usually play ‘SEALION’, a mammal seen at zoos and aquariums. WRONG! Sea Lion is two words according to the OWL2. ‘sealion’ is a phoney. The seasoned players know this; and further they know that there is a legal word living in this set of letters: ANISOLE.

Some people become very frustrated when they make mistakes. Some of those people become very negative and think to themselves, “I can’t do this!” Some even abandon the game or their projects.

Other people take a more realistic approach. These people think to themselves, “ I need to do something more, to figure out why I make this kind of mistake.” These people learn from there mistakes and expand their knowledge and abilities.

It is always easiest to participate in life at a level where we make few to no mistakes. We can find a scrabble club weher we are the best. We can choose never to attempt the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzel and stick with the Tuesday puzzel in the Orange County Register. These kinds of choices are less stressful but offer little to no growth.

It is okay to fall down. Learn something from the experience and rejoin the game at a higher level.

Do you remember the bingo in this rack? AEILNOS _________________

Have you ever been in a place where you’ve overheard one person giving bad advice or misinformation to another person?

It happens frequently in regard to giving directions. I’ve had the misfortune of asking for directions from a random person when lost enroute to some destination, having never been there before. Ooops! The fellow meant turn right and wrongfully said turn left. Ooops! The lady said 2100 Main Street and the correct address was 21000 Main Street. These days we’ve become used to using GPS systems and expect them to always be correct. WRONG! Usually correct, not always.

Sometimes an error can be due to a typo. It is especially upsetting when such an error is part of a recipe. The correct recipe calls for 1 tsp Salt, the typo was 5 tsp Salt. Yuch!

And then there is the newbie scrabble player who shows up at club, full of enthusiasm. Wanting to understand and get things ‘right’, the newbie picks a friendly face in the crowd and uses him/her as their go to person.

Wrong!

I’ve been witness to too many friendly types giving out bad scrabble information and poor scrabble advice.

What is a GOOD scrabble source for a newbie? The director or CLICK HERE

There are no laws about providing bad advice. Commercials and politicians lie to us all the time. Infomercials frequently overstate the benefits of and the embellish the value of the products which they sell.

Just like you, not wanting to receive bad or misleading information, you and I owe it to others not to disseminate inaccurate information. Simply say “I don’t know” or “Why don’t you ask the director” or something helpful. Of course, when you do know the answer, provide it clearly.

What are the 9 correct steps to complete your turn when playing scrabble?

IV.G.1. How to Complete a Turn

a. After your opponent’s last play, record the cumulative score. (May be waived if bag is empty.)

b. Position your tiles on the board. You may remove or reposition tiles before starting opponent’s clock.

c. If playing a blank, designate it appropriately. (See Rule IV.F.)

d. Declare the score.

e. Start your opponent’s clock, ending your turn. If opponent’s clock has already been running, the turn ends after step d.

f. Record your cumulative score. (May be waived if bag is empty.) You may NOT pre-record this score.

g. Record your play, if desired.

h. Draw tiles to replenish your rack.

i. Track tiles, if desired.

Link to all the rules: CLICK HERE

Some force has been drawing me to become more philosophical these days. At times I think that I shouldn’t write these thoughts in this blog. But then again, I feel very comfortable, at home, and it seems to me that this is the perfect place for me to express these concepts.

I have come to believe that everything is connected, That includes you to me. That includes the present and the past and the future. Scrabble and farming and the arts are a part of this connection too.

The orange doesn’t appear to have the kinds of choices that we humans have. It’s genome has developed throughout time to be what we know as an orange today. And it has no control over how it will further evolve in the future. We on the otherhand are somewhat orangelike, but with a major twist. Our genome has developed in a direction that permits us the opportunity to steer, a little. We have a growing ability to shape our own destiny as well as that of the orange and others.

As often as an orange may pray, as frequently as an orange may wish, it can never become an apple or a banana, or a real boy. Meanwhile, a growing number of humans have been fiddling with and influencing the direction of evolution in order to cure disease, eliminate hunger, and build memory to, in turn, create more scrabble players.

There will always be some people who are less ambitious and willing to live their lives like an orange, steady and predictable. (There is nothing wrong with oranges. They are a striking color and offer us delicious juice.)

And there will always be other people who are gourmets. These people want to taste every kind of food, not just oranges. Gourmets are not limited to lovers of food. There are gourmets of language (scrabble players fall into this category). There are gourmets of medicine and space exploration and music and movies and architecture and history and futuristic possibilities.

And all the while that we and the oranges are simply being, we are strapped to our planet by gravity and whisking through the galaxies changing, in spite of ourselves.

If it could speak, an orange would say, “I can’t learn all of those words.”

You can be orangelike, if you choose, or you can opt to jump into the game of scrabble by expanding your word knowledge. Be all that you can be and before you know it you may be maven-like. CLICK HERE

I just hate it when I’m sharing scrabble information with newbies and one of them pipes up and declares, “I could never learn 101 2-Letter Words”. It makes me want to turn my back on that person and walk away. Their true response should be, ‘I have no interest in spending my time learning that information’.

We all not only have the capability to learn 101 2-Letter Words, we can do much more than that. Just think back to the time that you spent in school; how many different things did you have to remember every year? every week? every day? A: a lot

When we have to do things for ‘other peoples’ reasons’ those things often become chores and difficult for us because they are not of our own choosing.

When we take on a project of our own, consumed by our own interest and passion, there is usually little to no effort at all spending long hours working on that project. Time moves oh so fast when we are doing the things that we enjoy. Then, when doing CHORES a minute can often seem like an hour.

During the developmental years, some people become fooled by their parents and teachers. Those people are mostly the ‘pleasers‘ of the world who follow all the rules and follow every leader. The pleasers are extremely timid. The pleasers manifest a fear of striking out on their own. At times it may be a strick taskmaster who instills the fear. Some ‘pleasers’ learn their lessons so well that when they grow up they transform into carbon copies of their taskmasters and impose their will upon others.

The good news is that they are some ‘rebels‘ out there. I’m not talking about the people who burn cars after a World Series victory. I’m thinking about those people who march to the beat of a different drummer. (Many of them have been classified as sort of nerdy.) Most of them didn’t do well in traditional school settings. Many of them received poor grades, like Einstein. Many of them dropped out of school when they realized that school had little or nothing to teach them. Many of them went forward to do great things because they knew that they could.

You and I CAN TOO. If you lived your life as a ‘pleaser’ up until now that’s okay. You still have the rest of your life to follow your passions. Write your book; paint your mural; memorize the dictionary; join the Peace Corps; feed the hungry; create your legacy.

When I take on a student, coaching scrabble, I strongly suggest that they find a student of their own. Why? We all learn best by doing and teaching. Teaching others helps reinforce the subject matter within ourselves.

Whatever your passion, pass it forward. You can do most anything.

Check out the ultimate visionary. CLICK HERE

Do you know those people who are always saying that they’ll do it LATER? For many of those people ‘later’ never comes. “I’ll do it later” is simply another way of saying “No!”

The truth is that we cannot do everything. There is just too much to do. BUT . . . if and when we do want to accomplish something, there is no time like the present. We all have insulated ourselves from doing many of the important things in life. Maybe for fear of failure. Maybe for fear of success. T.V. is a great insulator; we allow ourselves to develop patterns of watching endless, mindless scheduled presentations. We veg in our favorite chairs or man caves and the real world and time passes us by. The relative comfort of this state of being holds us back from going out into the unpredictable world. We rarely, if ever, make any kind of meaningful contribution to the world from that chair (maybe we enhance the Neilson Ratings).

I meet people all the time who say that they want to become better scrabble players. Talk is cheap. Much of talk is just a filler to avoid awkward silences. I usually jump on their statement, coming back with a plan to help them move toward their scrabble goal. That quickly exposes the emptiness of their declaration.

But really, anyone who does decide to learn how to play better scrabble can do it. And there are many real contributions that scrabble mavens can make to their children, their communities, and world.

While it is true that some people might only substitute scrabble as an escape mechanism like T.V., others use it to teach language and thinking skills to their children; some use it with seniors to exercise and maintain memory function; some use scrabble’s popularity to create fund raising activities for meaningful charities; still others use scrabble to network and interact with people around the planet.

People learn things when there is an element of FUN in the mix. Scrabble bring that to the mix.

What are you waiting for? There is no time like the present. Call me today 949.510.1673 and invite me to be your scrabble coach. Begin your fun scrabble adventure now. letter.man.moss@gmail.com

So, you want to be an ‘EXPERT’ scrabble player. Experts win much more often than lose; and winning is much more fun than losing.

But I’m sure that you know that expert scrabble players didn’t get to that status by wishing and hoping and praying. They didn’t even get there by being very lucky (there is about a 30% luck factor in the game due to random drawing of tiles).

How did those beginning novices become expert players? Each player made the decision to improve, developed a passion and drive, found a mentor or coach, adopted a system and study habits, and melded all that.

Did they become experts in a day? a week? a month? a year?

Each success experienced most likely contributed to the next spurt of energy that led to the next level of success. That’s how most learning happens. Each accomplishment stands upon the shoulders of previous accomplishments.

Some systems are more productive than others. One person may choose to open the dictionary and learn one word at a time. That is great. But what would you say if I told you that there is another system that,when applied, will help you identify dozens of bingo combinations, with a fraction of the effort of random study? Would you consider using that system for a fast start?

Some people are proud and want to do it there own way. That’s fine. Other people, like myself, are always looking for valid shortcuts that are time tested by previous experts in the field. Meanwhile, I always remain open to new possibilities to improve on older systems.

When the handheld Franklin (electronic dictionary) came on the scrabble scene in the early 1990s, word power and word knowledge experience a quantum leap among scrabble players. This hand tool was relatively easy to use and provided easy access for players to anagram and unscramble racks of tiles, finding lesser known words. I watched players ratings climb and soar dramatically following the introduction of the Franklin.

Even though the Franklin is still on the market, other newer tools have emerged. The experts have helped fashion these tools and those who use these tools properly have soared to the highest levels in the ranks.

Learning and knowing words alone is no guarantee for becoming an expert. The words are only one of many components of the game of scrabble.

Allow me to become your coach. CLCIK HERE

“Oh you’re so lucky.” You can usually hear those words being uttered at any scrabble club. Due to the LUCK FACTOR in the game (about 30%, based on the luck of the drawing of tiles) a player may have perfectly balanced racks in one game then struggle with rack after rack of mostly vowels in the next game.

Seasoned players understand how frequently the tiles turn. In order to be prepared for unbalanced racks, the wise scrabble player may study word lists that are ‘heavy with vowels’: aalii; aioli; teniae; or ourie. Or, lists that are heavy with consonants: crwth; qwerty; rhythm.

I played 3 games this afternoon at the club in Huntington Beach, CA. I guess that I can say that my day today was a typical day in the life of a scrabble player. The score in the first game was very close, teetering back and forth. With the tile bag empty, with only a play or two to go, I had no vowels. Having tracked the tiles, I knew exactly which tiles were on my opponent’s rack. I assumed that my opponent would go out in 2 turns without opening the board, giving me a chance to play off my consonants. My opponent was struggling and didn’t understand my predicament. At one point she said, “I guess you’re going to win.” I took a deep breath and sat quietly waiting for her to make her next move. She made a rookie error. She played to earn the most points, but that gave me an opportunity to go out, play ‘rent’, using an ‘e’ which she supplied. Later I showed her that by playing her tiles one at a time without opening the board would have won the game for her.

In Game #2 I opened with a bingo. I was feeling very confident and unbeatable. WRONG! My opponent matched my bingo with one of her own. Then she played 3 more bingos on during her next 5 plays. I lost my more than 200 points.

The 3rd game was a turn around for me of game #2. I did play a 64 point bingo (bonnets); but I had 3 other huge scoring plays: injects for 64 points (a double/double); zoos for 92 points (‘z’ on a DWS playing two ways and the play touching the TWS); lastly, I played quey for 78 points with the ‘q’ on a DWS to a TWS.

Two scrabble games are never the same. That make for interesting fun and new challenges in every game.

Get into the game in 2012. Allow me to coach you online. CALL NOW: 949.510.1673