Maybe you Scrabble players could explain… do you like it this way, with these sounds and quasi-words in the game? Have you tried playing without them?
Wouldn’t it be more… literate… to limit the list to words that refer to things and actions and qualities? I think Bootis in post #6 was assuming that “the” wasn’t a legal word, for example.
The thing to realize about Scrabble is, it isn’t actually a literate game, it’s a mathematical game. What’s important is that the string of letters be on the official list of approved strings of letters, not that that string of letters carry any meaning.
I don’t think that’s what he was saying. The familiar “etaoin shrdlu” order that everyone’s familiar with is how common the letters are in typical English text, not how common they are in the dictionary. When you’re looking at how common letters are in English text, the letters “T”, “H”, and “E” will get a huge boost, because typical English text has the word “the” all over the place. If you’re just looking at a dictionary-like list of words, though, “the” will still show up, but only once, so it won’t have any greater effect on the frequency of letters than “cwm” will.
Fair enough. My recollection was that the few people who have personally described their love of Scrabble to me have all put it more in the literate sense than the mathematical. But they may not have been serious players.
Ah. Got it.
I see we’re going over this for the nth time.
I like it just fine,then again most of them have been included for some time.They,like any strange word,are just common place to serious Scabble players.
What I do not like is the inclusion of the words QI and ZA, makes the Q and Z much easier to play.They should no longer be worth 10 points,IMO.
Alfred Butts,the man who invented the game, counted the letter frequency from the New York Times, and other sources, and assigned the point values from the results.I am not sure,but I think the point values he gave are the same used today.
The issue would then become… who decides? I mean, I can’t say I’ve ever actually used “Za” or “Qi”, but both are actually nouns, and I’m sure there’s someone in the English speaking world who fairly regularly calls up Dominos to order a large Za or tells his Karate students to focus their Qi. If that person plays Scrabble against me, why shouldn’t he get to spell words he uses every day? And if he gets to spell them, why shouldn’t I?
I do think, though, that Scrabble letter values should be changed to make the luck of the pull less significant. X and H should be worth less, C and V should be worth more, etc. The game as invented way back then was brilliant, but the values assigned to the letters clearly didn’t take into account the way the game is actually played, both the modern dictionary and the importance of two letter words.
(By the way, while I do agree that many of the two letter words are random and arbitrary, they’re also the glue that holds the game together to such an extent that I think you should just have a list of them available to all players at all times…)
I’m not a great Scrabble player by any stretch, but I do like it that way (ie, having an expansive, rather than a narrow, concept of what constitutes a word.) The meaning of ‘word’ that Scrabble seems to use is something that English speakers say to each other and that conveys meaning. That’s it. There are a few excluded categories (eg, words which are exclusively proper nouns, hyphenated, initialisms, contractions), but otherwise, anything goes.
Now that doesn’t mean that if you’ve ever heard anyone say anything once, it’s playable. It has to meet a certain standard of acceptance, but that’s why we have things like the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary.
Do you have problems in a regular (non-tournament) game if the dictionary is a regular dictionary rather than the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary? If you play something like qi or za, it’s not in our household dictionary, and wouldn’t be legal. I suspect a lot of those “weird” words aren’t in there.
A fact which cost Pepsi a lot of money.
They ran a contest in 1983 called the Name Game. There was a letter of the alphabet printed inside each bottle cap. If you collected the letters that spelled your last name, you won a prize (you got five dollars per letter). To limit how much money they would have to pay out, Pepsi printed almost all consonants with just a handful of vowels. But they didn’t limit the number of times you could theoretically win.
And then they discovered that there are people whose legal surnames do not contain any vowels. Various people named Ng made money off this. (Although the biggest winner was a guy named Vlk who turned in 1393 sets of his name and made $20,895.)
“Za” for pizza is just a slangy contraction, not an “actual noun” in my understanding. But “qi” is a word, and knowing it would represent a certain degree of literacy even if you never used it away from the Scrabble board. (You can thumb-rule the difference by thinking of how a speaker would explain them: for the former, the answer would be “Za, you know, pizza.”)
Although looking at it in the mathematical sense that Chronos describes makes two-letter strings of any description seem pretty weak, the rules accept them and apparently they’re a big part of the game.
Basically I think this is just evidence that my concept of what Scrabble is about was inaccurate.
Language evolves. Words that are considered slang today will be the Queen’s English tomorrow. Scrabble’s makers tend to be relatively liberal, which really just means ahead of the curve, in what gets considered a word. Your error isn’t in understanding Scrabble as a word game rather than a mathematical game (it’s both), but in thinking it intends to be ‘literate’ or ‘high-brow.’ It does not - it intends to have an inclusive concept of a ‘word.’
In fact, the official Scrabble rules don’t even actually specify a dictionary, just that what dictionary to use be agreed upon by the players before the start of the game. So it’s perfectly valid to rule those words illegal, as long as it’s done before play starts.
Well, yes, but but someone used to using the “Official” dictionary might not know which words are still present in a real dictionary. I’m wondering if that presents a problem for for players used to the more permissive “Official” dictionary.
I suspect that for a player puts some effort into learning some of the more obscure words (two letters, vowel dumps, words with Q not followed by U, etc) present in the OSPD who then switched to playing with a different dictionary, that it could cause him a problem, yes.
But that’s because it would be a change, same as if you were used to playing with the OED and switched to Webster’s. I just don’t agree with your usage of ‘real dictionary’ here, though. The aspects of the OSPD that make it not a real dictionary are its limit on the size of words it lists, the fact it doesn’t bother with all meanings of a word, and its exclusions. Its degree of ‘permissiveness’ does not disqualify it as a ‘real’ dictionary.
Thoroughly bored this afternoon, I did some spreadsheet exercising this Sunday afternoon while watch VCU beat Kansas.
This sitedoes not have all the recent scrabble additions like “QI” and “ZA” but the list is complete enough to give an idea of frequency of letters. Here is compilation of letter frequency of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 letter words in the dictionary. the list is sorted on the total frequency, largest first.
2L 3L 4L 5L 6L 7L 8L Total
e 20 267 1504 4456 11364 19387 7395 44393
s 8 142 1379 4511 8316 14965 5579 34900
a 27 313 1470 3842 7489 12738 8322 34201
r 4 124 838 2834 6697 11975 6750 29222
i 13 169 902 2546 5969 12528 5416 27543
o 24 244 1170 2871 5467 9347 6607 25730
n 9 119 695 1957 4879 9616 4440 21715
l 5 98 866 2371 5029 8979 4196 21544
t 7 150 821 2261 4865 9175 4101 21380
u 9 132 625 1633 3513 6061 4486 16459
d 4 117 599 1676 4163 6757 2583 15899
c 0 62 437 1444 3133 5787 4494 15357
p 5 129 549 1353 2715 4786 3850 13387
m 13 109 509 1291 2684 4547 3036 12189
g 2 108 430 1063 2564 5180 1829 11176
h 10 94 443 1177 2319 3825 2436 10304
b 6 111 438 1035 2175 3656 2795 10216
y 7 99 406 1347 1968 2614 790 7231
f 4 70 349 770 1411 2425 1849 6878
k 1 51 420 917 1373 2183 521 5466
w 4 88 349 679 1133 1862 1231 5346
v 0 35 150 466 917 1435 1325 4328
z 0 20 88 229 466 710 239 1752
x 5 36 63 203 324 505 370 1506
j 1 26 100 173 297 420 300 1317
q 0 3 16 75 162 300 302 858
Oops, I had the 8 letter frequency wrong:
2L 3L 4L 5L 6L 7L 8L Total
e 20 267 1504 4456 11364 19387 26865 63863
s 8 142 1379 4511 8316 14965 21241 50562
a 27 313 1470 3842 7489 12738 17667 43546
i 13 169 902 2546 5969 12528 18547 40674
r 4 124 838 2834 6697 11975 16647 39119
o 24 244 1170 2871 5467 9347 13940 33063
n 9 119 695 1957 4879 9616 14042 31317
t 7 150 821 2261 4865 9175 13847 31126
l 5 98 866 2371 5029 8979 12894 30242
d 4 117 599 1676 4163 6757 9024 22340
u 9 132 625 1633 3513 6061 7932 19905
c 0 62 437 1444 3133 5787 8656 19519
g 2 108 430 1063 2564 5180 6690 16037
p 5 129 549 1353 2715 4786 6376 15913
m 13 109 509 1291 2684 4547 6276 15429
h 10 94 443 1177 2319 3825 5329 13197
b 6 111 438 1035 2175 3656 4889 12310
y 7 99 406 1347 1968 2614 3491 9932
f 4 70 349 770 1411 2425 3248 8277
k 1 51 420 917 1373 2183 2750 7695
w 4 88 349 679 1133 1862 2385 6500
v 0 35 150 466 917 1435 2233 5236
z 0 20 88 229 466 710 867 2380
x 5 36 63 203 324 505 664 1800
j 1 26 100 173 297 420 391 1408
q 0 3 16 75 162 300 421 977
Based on the distribution above and E=1 point, here is the point value of each letter:
e 1.00
s 1.26
a 1.47
i 1.57
r 1.63
o 1.93
n 2.04
t 2.05
l 2.11
d 2.86
u 3.21
c 3.27
g 3.98
p 4.01
m 4.14
h 4.84
b 5.19
y 6.43
f 7.72
k 8.3
w 9.83
v 12.2
z 26.83
x 35.48
j 45.36
q 65.37
Acknowledging that this is a faulty assumptions as 2 and 3 letter words in scrabble are much more common than 4, 5, and 6 letter words. Especially in casual games. 7 letter and 8 letter Bingos are common in championship scrabble.
Very cool!
It seems the case can be made that H is actually valued correctly.
The bold part is what I meant as the difference between it and “a real dictionary”.
The “permissiveness” comment is because they go out of their way include words that make it easier to make big plays, versus including words because they’re, you know, words. OED tries to include every word, but others limit their size based on usage, not favoring words that are useful in Scrabble.
This is true… There are probably plenty of words more obscure than “a’a” which don’t make it into the Scrabble dictionary.