…with Gary Moss

Archive for February, 2012

One of the funnest parts of writing a blog for me is that as long as my web-blog is hosted, all of my quirky writing is floating around out there in cyberspace. People may still be reading things today that I wrote many moons ago. Then, out of a blue moon, I receive a comment from some reader who propmts me to look back and remind myself just what they are referring to.

One such comment arrive today. Upon rereading my older blog from Feb. 2010 (Click here) I decided that it deserved an update and that inspired today’s offering.

FACT or FICTION

One out of every 20 people have an extra rib.

People who still play with the wooden scrabble tiles (instead of PROTILES) sometimes create an extra BLANK during the game, when either they accidently or purposefully place a tile upside down onto the board. (PROTILES can be easily detected when placed upside down. No one gets away with an extra BLANK.)

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44% of kids watch television before they go to sleep

73% of club and tournament scrabble players report that they frequently dream about words. 2% of those interviewed say that they have awoken abruptly yelling “CHALLENGE”.

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The Gastric Flu can cause projectile vomiting

On two occasions, after hard fought losses, I have witness scrabble players lose it and reduced to infantile behavior throwing their board and tiles in acts of disgust.

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Smokers are twice as likely to develop lower back pain than non-smokers

Scrabble players are twice as likely to develop ass pain that joggers

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In the summer of 1858, the smell of the sewage in the Thames River in London was so bad that the Members of Parliament had to leave from the chamber of the House of Commons. This was a result of two million people dumping all their sewage into the river

In the spring of 1992, at a scrabble tournament at a campground in Proud Lake, Michigan, the nighttime snoring of John Conelious was so loud that it disturbed the sleep of most through the camp. This resulted in many sleep deprived players during the next day’s competition (except for Cornelious), giving John a major advantage in the tournament.

Why is it that so many of us wax nostalgically about ‘The Good Ole Days’?

Were they really all that ‘GOOD’?

Time and Memory have a way of holding on to and highlighting points time that were exceptional, one-of-a-kind events that funnel into a memory folder, which we refer to when we think of our ‘good ole days’.

The truth is: “There was so much more time that was routine, just everyday stuff, and often downright boring, or worse, painful.”

We frequently glorify ‘Good Ole Days’ because they are familiar to us, because we were there. We usually find ourselves thinking back to ‘the good ole days’ when our present circumstances are stressing us; when we are unhappy or uncertaian. The ‘good ole days’ substitutes as a comfort food, providing a temporary escape from the now.

Another truth is: “We each have the power to create ‘the good ole days’ of tomorrow with the actions that we take and the lives that we live today.

We have no power to change or rewrite the past, unless we opt to create a fiction.

All the power is in the present. Use the past as the life lessons that they are. Strive to repeat the good stuff. Strive to avoid the pitfalls and bad choices. And even when you are thinking about the past, keep your eyes focused on the road and times ahead.

What does this blog have to do with scrabble? Absolutely everything!

Players who have been playing competitively for a while can recall events back to the beginning when they found joy in learning new words, scoring their first bingo at club, maybe evening winning an honor at a tournament. As time past, many of those players have slacked off their study habits and have settled for the amount of knowledge that they currently possess.

That’s when dissatisfaction can creep into the picture. The other players in the club keep improving and the ones who are treading water keep losing ground. This is what separates the men from the boys. Some settle to sit back and recall ‘the good ole days’. Others get back into the game.

It is said that in order to stay alive a shark must keep moving all the time. The same is true of competitive scrabble players. If a player is not reviewing word lists and learning new words and strategies, that player is adrift and losing ground.

I coach people to become the best they can be. CLICK HERE

After playing competitive scrabble for twenty-five years I still find a thrill in every game. Some of the people who know that I have devoted more than 40 hours per week at scrabble during all that time question how I can possibly still find it intriguing.

That’s easy to explain to anyone who has been passionate about anything or anyone. (Most others may never understand.)

Every game is the same; every game is totally different. With 100 tiles in the bag and only 7 at a time on your rack, there are thousands of different possible combintions. In the course of a single year, IF I were to play 40 games each week x 52 weeks = 2,080 games (with an average of 17 turns per game) = 35,360 words played, I would have played less than 1/4 of all the words in the OWL2 (if I had never repeated playing any single word).

Some words played are common and ho-hum. Other words played are the ones we learned to challenge our opponets. (Words like: mbira; etesian; and crwth).

At times we find 7-Letter-Words on our rack and they just do not play on the board. That is so frustrating. The mavins of the game understand that this will occur often, so they learn the anagrams of many of the words. (so when a MAVIN has the word ‘nastier’ on their rack, they are not limited to finding a hook to play it on the scrabble board. The MAVIN knows that there are 8 other words thay can be made with the same 7 tiles.)

Do you know what those other words are?

anestri
antsier
ratines
retains
retinas
retsina
stainer
stearin

Last evening at Scrabble Club #350 I was playing a cat-and-mouse game with one of my fiercest opponents when I found the word ‘dewiest’ on my rack. About 2/3 of the tiles were already on the board, so there was not much room to mak a play. The ‘S’ in ‘dewiest’ would make the most logical hook to something already on the board, but nothing was available. A ‘D’ is often a great hook to other words, but that didn’t work on this particular board either.

AMAZING! Look what I found. I saw the unbelievable spot for ‘dewiest’ where it hooked making five additional words.

And that’s one of the reasons that I LOVE GAME. WOW!

Most people can’t imagine losing the freedom that goes along with still owning and driving their own automobile. But let’s be honest. As we become older our reflexes become slower and our eyesight become dimmer. I’m certain that we’d all feel devastated if we were the reason that some other person was injured in an accident if we were driving. (Recently my wife’s car was sideswiped in a parking lot. When she exchange driver’s information she learned that the man was 99. No one was injured.)

Every Monday afternoon at 12:45PM at Laguna Woods Village you will find 30 – 40 people play scrabble. For more than 30 years the LWV scrabble club has entertained players of all ages (mostly seniors). I can say that other than bruised feelings and egos, no other injuries have occurred as a result of playing the game.

Other games take place all across the country and around the world. If not in your neighborhood, you can initiate a club of your own.

Recent scientific studies of the brain have shown that games like scrabble, that require thinking and strategizing, are beneficial to people, helping them maintain and expand their memory muscle.

An afternoon of playing scrabble is cheaper than most other activities too, usually no more that $2 – $5. Driving around town cost the gas + wear and tear on the car plus the cost of all the shopping and spending that happen along the way.

It is a no brainer to me, except the part when you use your bain to play the game.

People who want to prepare themselves for the scrabble wars with an arsenal of words and strategies to help win their games, can prepare in the comfort of their own homes by engaging in the online class, SCRABBLE 101. Click Here.

A lot of people don’t really get me. But that’s alright. I appear normal enough at first glance. That gets me by. No obvious tattoos or spiked hair; no golden diamond-studded tooth in my mouth; I don’t drive a Bentley or some rusted out clunker. But what is it that ‘THEY’ say? You can’t tell a book by its cover.

My ‘slant’ makes me somewhat different than the average bear. A list of my heros will expose me a bit. Whereas many bible thumpers choose Job as a hero, I lean toward Job’s wife. If you remember the story you’ll recall that Job’s God threw all sorts of stumbling blocks into Job’s life. Do you remember what Job did? He continued to pray to and praise his God and all his wisdom. Meanwhile his wife tore him a new one and pushed him to pick himself up and to Do instead of Pray. She may have been the very first ‘humanist’, a person who believes that we each have the power in our own hands.

Another of my heros is Alfred Butts. It was during the depression when ‘downsizing’ (a word not yet invented) at his firm caused Alfred and others to be laid off. Many men define themselves and are defined by others by the work that they do. Without work, there was despair and mental depression for multitudes. Men jumped out of windows, people turned to drink an drugs, mother’s abandoned their children at orphanages. Not Alfred. Alfred shifted his creativity and invented a game which he called ‘Lexico’. Later he changed the name of the game to ‘Kriss Cross Words’. And even later the name was changed to ‘Scrabble’. A mere mortal man making something out of nothing. ‘And There Was Light’

One more example of my heros is the father in Johnny Cash’s song, “A Boy Named Sue”. Here’s a guy who knew that he didn’t have the stuff to hang around and be a day-to-day dad. So he followed his best instinct. Before walking away he named his son Sue, hoping that a boy named Sue would have to learn to develop ways to survive the mean world, especially if one is different.

Many yeas ago, going through a rough patch in my own life, I connected with a wise counselor. It was a time when I was going through self-discovery and working on reinventing myself. One thing he told me about me, after listening to my story, is that ‘I play Lacrosse’. It took a while until I truly understood. I live my life and make my choices outside of the mainstream. Millions play Chess, Dominos, and Bridge; I play scrabble.

P.S. Sue held some resentments about his name, toward his father, until he was old enough to understand the why. But he never changed his name, even when he could.

Celebrate Uniqueness

Every year, for the last eight years, The Escondido Library, in Escondido, California has sponsored a fund raising tournament for their Literacy Project. How great is that!

Yesterday was the day for this year’s competition.

A few of us players from Orange County (about 30 miles away to the north) frequent the Escondido scrabble club, and we have supported the SCRABBLE-THON for the last three years.

Most players at the tournament are ‘kitchen-table’ players, without the skills and word power of club players. Many of the scrabble-thon players are high school age players. For the club players to compete in this kind of an event it is a bit like taking candy from baby. BUT, the special rules at the scrabble-thon are different enought from club and sanctioned tournament rules that the playing field is leveled a little.

This tournament is a double elimination tournament. If you lose two games you are out.

Each game is only 20 minutes long; at the end of 20 minutes the player with the highest score is the winner.

Two-minute sand timers limit the time of each individual turn. (Sand timers are not necessarily exact measurements of time.)

If and when a challenge occurs, a word judge uses the OSPD4 to adjudicate. The amount of time used to adjudicate is a part of the 20 minute game.

If a player is in the lead after 18 minutes and it becomes their turn, they can sit and allow the clock to run out of time, to secure a win.

Matchings and pairings are done according to some exotic formula (created by a committee), as compared to standard sanctioned formulae.

When all the dust settles, trophies are awarded to the top 2 Four-Person teams, 1st Place & 2nd Place, the best finish among the high school students, and the 1st Place & 2nd Place finish among all individual players. Team scores are determined by aggregate total points earned by the players on the team. Individual awards are based upon the number of total WINS.

Seasoned tournament players find many new challenges in adapting to a different style of play. Whereas, in sanctioned tournaments a player may come from behind and bingo out to win on the last play of the game, in this tournament a game may end with more than half of the tiles remaining in the bag and less than 11 total turns having been played. It is often too costly to challenge your opponent’s phoney and loose precious time off the clock. If you are to win, you must secure a large lead, early in the game and control the clock.

Appearantly our Orange County team understands the formula. We have competed three consecutive years and finished 1st, 2nd, and 1st respectively. Members from our team have also consistantly taken top honors. 2010 – Lynn Gunn – 1st Place; 2010 – Gwen Rea – 2nd Place; 2011 – Margie Gordon – 2nd Place; 2012 – Gretchen Cowan – 1st Place

For all photos, CLICK HERE.

Learning is a process. Every process can be represented as a jagged line. Two steps forward; one step back. A lot of learning is trial and error.

Becoming proficient at the game of competitive scrabble requires hundreds to thousands of hours of memorization of words. All that time is filled with learning and digesting information; all that time is filled with moments when some information drifts away, like the leaves falling from the trees in autumn. The loss of vital information is a natural process that coincides with infrequent use and gaps in reviewing.

Did you know that most championship-level scrabble players may still study and review the dictionary and word lists as much as 25 – 50 hours per week? That’s what it takes to stay at the top of the pack.

The marathon runner will run miles everyday to prepare and condition for race day. The professional boxer will spend many months in camp running, jumping rope, and sparring to develop strength for their 12 rounds in the ring.

Students spend 12 years in school followed by more years at college to prepare themselves for the world of work.

During each of these processes lessons are learned, mistakes are made and corrected; the eraser plays a major role.

Some newbie scrabble players are very hesitant to challenge a seasoned player, for fear of being wrong and losing a turn. ( The seasoned player slaps down the word ‘mbira’. The newbie doesn’t know the word and simply accepts the play. The seasoned player then plays ‘qiad’. The newbie accepts the play again.) In fact, ‘mbira’ is acceptable: a African musical instrument; ‘qiad’ is phoney.

When I began playing at clubs and tournaments I did a lot of challenging. I lost many turns when my opponents played strange, but legal, words. I believe that I learned many to most of those words because of my interaction with them.

Sometimes we learn to play the game of scrabble one word at a time.

What percentage of the words in the OWL2 does a club player come into contact with during the course of an entire year of club play?

During a typical game each player makes 17 plays. A typical club plays 4 games in a session and 52 times during a year. Assuming that we are considering both your plays and the plays of your opponents, and knowing that 20% or more of the words played are repeats from game to game, consider this.

17 x 2 (words in a single game) x 4 (games in a session) x 52 (sessions in a year) – 20% =

7,072 – 1,414 = 5,658 words

There are about 155,000 words in the OWL2.

The average player will see only 3.6 percent of the words from the OWL2 in a given year.

However, the frequent winners are those player who know much more than 4 % or 10% or 15%.

The average person on the street know only about 5% of the words in the dictionary. Seasoned scrabble players know 20%+ of the words in the OWL2.

Allow me to help you expand you word knowledge and word power. For as little as $1 a week, you can enroll in my Word List Of The Week Club. I will send you a weekly list as a PDF for you to download, save and/or print. CLICK HERE

Now and then a Beethoven comes along and effortlessly creates symphonies at the age 5.

More often it is the case that people, over time, develop a passion and a skill, attend school or an apprenticeship to obtain knowledge and develop techniques, and then wow the world with their creations.

Last week a lovely 90ish lady called me, after seeing one of my fliers about my 1st Sunday Scrabble Tournaments. She told me about her love for the game of scrabble and informed me that her Sundays were free and that she’d like to play in my tournaments.

“Great!” I replied. “How do you rate yourself as a scrabble player’” I enquired. “Better than aveerage,” was her response.

I went on to describe in detail what she could expect when playing in a competitive scrabble tournament. I asked if she had ever played at scrabble clubs in the past and learned that she nad not.

I asked if she had considered playing in the local scrabble club before attempting tournament play. She related that she had attend the local club on 2 ocassins. She told me that they insisted that she learn the 2-Letter-Word-List in order to improve her game. She then told me that learning that list was much more than she wanted to do.

I then invested 30 minutes of my time in an attemp to clue her into what competitive scrabble was all about. Much more than the words being played; not solely about the memory skills being exercised and strengthened; much more than the strategies being employed to shape cognative victories. When I finished my oration she thanked me for explaining all that.

The next Monday she introduced herself to me at the local scrabble club.

I don’t know whether Millie will ever become a formidable student and player of the game. But I do know that she might be, if she understands and employs the TRICKS that all scrabble mavens have learned and use when playing the game.

When you stop and think about it, you’ll know that all people at the top of their game have paid their dues by learning the specific TRICKS of their TRADES. Scrabble is no different.

I can coach you via my online class: (949) 510-1673