And naturally I thought of you all when my rack was NOBAAAS.
Of course, this XKCD comic can’t be missed…
Joe
This is exactly what I was going to post (except for the wife part. I have yet to play with Gangster Octopus’ wife).
Up to about a year ago, I was playing with high level opponents and I would occasionally play against a “wordsmith” who had no clue when it came to strategy. I continued to play knowing that my small concise words were usually more valuable in the long run than “sequela” or “bezants”. Why bother accusing someone, especially when you can’t be 100% sure.
One piece of advice I’ve given to new players was to try to limit their words to four letters. I’d direct them to a website which listed all the 2 and 3 letter words used in WWF. Over time, they’d also learn the strategic points of the game, and that would put them way ahead of the majority of “cheaters”
This is how I caught a guy I used to play with. His total game score would literally double when playing on WWF instead of a real board–I know the double/triple score locations in WWF are somewhat better in terms of encouraging a high-scoring game but it was just too obviously ridiculous.
I made a generic facebook post (“SOMEONE that I play WWF with is a dirty, dirty cheater.”)…and of the dozen or so folks I played with, he’s the only one who immediately stopped playing. 
I get some crazy words a lot with trial and error which really isn’t that fair that you can just do that forever but I don’t think WWF would be improved by having to challenge. A couple of times I’ve had a regular word and I’ll stick on the leftover letters as a prefix or suffix and have it turn out to be legal. I have a few people I beat all the time and I’m not cheating so I don’t know if they’re just not trying, not making sure to use the bonus squares or what. I feel like they think I’m cheating.
Dude just played “liroth” on me. He’s not cheating. :rolleyes:
I don’t see the fun in cheating. However, I do enjoy the ability to try out stuff that kinda sounds like it might be a word. I’ve learned some interesting new words that way. I’m kind of obvious about it, though, as I usually can’t resist texting my opponent with something along the lines of, “Can you believe that went through? Who knew that was a word??”
Frankly, I’m still not convinced that “za” is really a word, but that doesn’t stop me from using it as often as possible.
I thought you couldn’t use proper nouns? Isn’t that the last name of that Van Halen singer guy?
I agree with BetsQ. It’s not really cheating to try things because in the virtual games, you have no chance to bluff or challenge. We have a game similar to WWF called Word Skill, in which you can find out the highest potential score before your move. It’s fun to try to figure out where the word must go on the board to get that score. I wrote an article titled Word Play, Math, Cheating, and Having a Tail (or Not) that discusses this strategy and whether or not it amounts to cheating.
Ultimately, I think it depends on the expectations of the people playing. Make your own rules as long as you both agree to them.
I wish there were a way to suggest corrections to the dictionary used. How is “dane” not a word? A person from Denmark.
I play Facebook Scrabble. Same potential problem.
One person I’ve played with I am absolutely certain cheats. She’s a smart lady and all, but she makes absolutely perfect, ideal plays of incredibly obscure words on almost every turn. It’s extremely difficult for me to believe she’s not using a Scrabble website. A great move now and then, sure. Excellent, tight multi-word play, absolutely. Hitting a 17th-century word for 49 points on every turn, turn after turn, just isn’t something I can believe.
I don’t mind losing; my sister kicks my ass nine outta ten games and doesn’t need to cheat. Really good players aren’t the ones who know a lot of preposterously unlikely words; they’re the ones who know a series of short words for tough letters like Q, Z, X and K, and who are extremely ruthless at preventing openings to triple word and letter scores and grab them whenever possible. The great Scrabble player is not trying to maximize their score; they’re trying to maximize the delta between their score and what their opponent can score.
[QUOTE=InsomniaMama]
How is “dane” not a word? A person from Denmark.
[/QUOTE]
Demonyms (proper terms designating origin from a place) have never been legal moves in Scrabble or its ripoff children. If it’s capitalized, it isn’t legal. “Dane” should always be capitalized.
Years ago, friends and I used to play Scrabble using my OED as the reference. We ended up making a rule that you had to be able to define any word you played, as one of the guys took to just playing any pronounceable combination of letters he had, and hoping it would turn out to be in the dictionary if it was challenged. Learned some useful words that way, though…
But I’ve never capitalized it! So it should be fine. Huff. (I kid.)
Why would you need to make a rule like that? If your word is not valid, you lose a turn and those points, so that should be punishment enough. Hell, I encourage players to try to sneak bogus words past me, and I think part of the game (for me, at any way), should be bluffs like this. I almost never bluff, but it’s a part of the game, hence the whole challenging aspect of the game. But I suppose it depends on how you see the game.
Just in general, there’s plenty of words I know are valid in Scrabble that I wouldn’t be able to define.
I’ve always said the game should be called Cheating With Friends. I’m cynical enough that I eventually assumed most everybody I played was cheating. It’s not the occasional surprising word that got me; but the continual beat down by the people that I know could barely string two sentences together. I just came to the conclusion that more people are cheating than not; so I stopped playing because I didn’t get enjoyment out of it anymore.
I suspect they’re cheating, too, but being ultra-literate doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good Scrabble player, and being seemingly at a loss for words when speaking, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll suck at Scrabble. I’ve seen players with otherwise average vocabularies consistently kick English major asses by being strategically smart, knowing all those two-and-three letter words as well as the “q” without “u” words, and saving up for bingos (using the most common bingo stems like TISANE ,SATIRE ,RETAIN, etc. There’s plenty of lists out there.) A decent player should be able to hit at least a bingo a game, quite often two, and sometimes three (or more.) This is why I say it doesn’t matter (to me) whether you can define a word: just know which ones are valid. For example, using the SATIRE stem, I know ATRESIC is a valid word, but I couldn’t tell you what it means.
Reported.