8 ms·

Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'

63 points by pshaw 7y ago

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
Blasphemy!
Pfhreak 7y ago
Ok
- gridlockd 7y ago
  GG
LeoPanthera 7y ago
That seems okay to me.
glitchc 7y ago
Next: KO
- alreadyaword 7y ago
  KO is already a valid word in international (English language) tournament play. Personally, I am sad about this. Serious scrabble play is largely about rack management - i.e. trying to get a set of tiles that you can play all at once for a 50 point bonus (bingo). That means dumping tiles that make it harder to score a bingo (duplicates, difficult letters) while taking into consideration the likelihood of drawing better tiles given what's been played and what letters your opponent is dumping (signalling what's in their rack). Most turns are about maximizing the points from non-bingos while putting together a good rack, and that frequently means playing words parallel to what's already on the board to double-up on a premium tile. The 2006 OSPD addition of "ZA" and "QI" really changed the game, and not in a good way. Q-sticks (sticking your opponent with an unplayable Q) were a staple of end-game play, especially but are now basically obsolete. OK rankles especially as an initialism. There will be (very nerdy) riots if a 2 letter 'V' word is ever added.
  - mj_olnir 7y ago
    I'm unfamiliar - do common noun acronyms (like scuba) with more common usage than their full-fledged counterparts get in? If so, I could see UV being added.
    - mj_olnir 7y ago
      Edit: just kidding, KO is in, and a quick search says scuba is in as well. Yeah, I'm very surprised that UV is not.
      - T-hawk 7y ago
        The general rule is, if the letters are pronounced phoenetically together as a word, it counts. That's why Scuba and Laser are in. It's the difference between AWOL (in) and MIA (not). OK was never accepted before because it's not said as "ock". UV isn't pronounced "uhv" so should also be excluded. I guess now the distinguishing feature between those cases is that UV is an initialism while OK isn't. I can't think of any other example like OK, a word that is not an initialism and is said by naming each letter rather than pronouncing them phonetically. Ko is in for being a (loan)word in its own right, not as the two-letter abbreviation for "knockout". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_fight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_fight
  - glitchc 7y ago
    To my knowledge, KO is only accepted in the CSW list and is not part of OWL/TWL. Link: https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Two_Letter_Words https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Two_Letter_Words
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    >There will be (very nerdy) riots if a 2 letter 'V' word is ever added. Found the Emacs user. :)
codeulike 7y ago
This is huge. Two letter words are very important in Scrabble for exploiting double use of double/triple letter/word scores. K is a medium-scoring letter so being able to have a two-letter word with it in makes quite a difference.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mistrial9 7y ago
playing a lot of scrabble -- our regular play includes a list of two-letter words on paper, in pencil, nearby to settle disputes (not visible during play). The arguments get heated ! .. (our list is smaller than the official list of two letter words, based on mutual agreement of real-world use). Personal opinion is that the official list is already too broad, and makes the play "muddy." Dictionary exploration is nerd-fun! We use a 1950s Webster's Unabridged English (which webster? have to check) and a 1980s Oxford American-English; both have their quirks ! happy SCRABBLE™
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  How is keeping a handwritten list of words any different than violating the rule against using a dictionary to find words, though? Most of the hardcore Scrabble people I've known would object to that. ("This isn't 'Nam, there are rules.")
  - dmurray 7y ago
    I doubt that actual hardcore Scrabble players would care, any more than a hardcore chess player would mind if you kept referring to an index card with a diagram to remind you which way the horsey moves. Of course, they would care about you having access to the entire dictionary, just as a serious chess player would object to you having a collection of chess opening or endgame reference books to hand. At a beginner level, it's more fun when no one knows the word list perfectly, and you shouldn't allow it. At a slightly-above-beginner level, say where one player knows the two-letter words and others do not, knowing the two-letter words is such a huge advantage that it's a sensible house rule to level the playing field a little, and likely make it more fun for both.
    - vkou 7y ago
      A serious chess player would play timed games, and if you want to spend your time leafing through a dead tree book... It's your time to waste.
    - diminoten 7y ago
jdoliner 7y ago
This promises to causes a big shakeup of the Scrabble meta, two letter words are the lifeblood of high-level scrabble play and `K` is a juicy, juicy letter (points wise) to have an extra 2 letter word for.
- erickhill 7y ago
  Indeed. I wonder if Words with Friends (et al) will quickly follow suit?
gerry_shaw 7y ago
The addition of ze (gender-neutral pronoun) is even better than OK.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  (tangent to scrabble per se) I like the idea of "ze" (gender-neutral pronoun), but this is the first I've come across it. Hopefully it'll catch on as IMHO it's a big improvement over alternatives like "they". While on the topic of "missing" words, when will our language finally get something reasonable for "you (plural)"?? Extant "y'all" (southern) and "yous" (NJ) are not cutting it!
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    > when will our language finally get something reasonable for "you (plural)"?? Extant "y'all" (southern) and "yous" (NJ) are not cutting it! We still have ye.
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    Why is it a big improvement over 'they'? Singular they has become popular naturally, whereas 'ze' has existed for years without anyone naturally using it(except for trolls on the internet).
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Singular "they" still sounds wrong to me every time I see it. Which is a shame since it would be very useful. Perhaps more importantly, I don't think singular "they" would be considered proper in formal writing.
      - wiredfool 7y ago
        The singular they is quite old: > The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. from https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
hammock 7y ago
I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for swaps, just for playing your word. Rule 2: Dictionary may be consulted at any time to look up a specific word - however you cannot "leaf" or browse through it. Dictionary priority goes to whoever's turn it is. The net result of this variation is that a) the board remains MUCH more open the whole game - there are many more places to play, and the words played are more likely to be bingos or longer words, which in turn open the baord up even more. Often under official rules you get three or four letter words that just close down the future play possibilities. b) high-point letters which usually are "luck of the draw" like Q and Z, now become skillful, since they will be reused by many players throughout the game c) turns can take 5-10 minutes at a time :) Source: my grandmother, who played these rules with the inventor of Scrabble back in college, before he had sold the game for mass distribution (they changed his rules to simplify them)
- frogpelt 7y ago
  How are Q and Z getting reused so much? There can't be that many times they can be replaced with another letter can there? Also, after I saw how many "words" are in the Scrabble dictionary I realized that Scrabble was not a vocabulary/spelling competition like I thought when I first played. Some of those "words" are a joke, a few are mentioned in the article (eeew being one example).
  - mxwsn 7y ago
    "For living-room players, Scrabble is about language, a test of vocabularies. For world-class players, it’s about cold memorization and mathematical probabilities. Think of the dictionary not as a compendium of the beauty and complexity of the English language, but rather as a giant rulebook. Words exist merely as valid strings with which to score points. A Scrabble board after two top players are finished playing on it might look, to the uninitiated, as though they had played in Martian. Here’s a taste: In a single game in last year’s Nationals, Richards played the following words: zarf (a metal holder for a coffee cup), waddy (to strike with a thick club), hulloed (to hallo, to shout), sajous (a capuchin, a monkey), qi (the vital force in Chinese thought), flyboats (a small, fast boat), trigo (wheat) and threaper (one that threaps, disputes). Top players tend not to be novelists or poets, but more often computer programmers or mathematicians." https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-nigel-richards-the-best-scrabble-player-on-earth/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-nigel-richar... Sidenote on replacing Q and Z: "Qi" and "Za" are common and useful ways of using q/z which also readily support replacement. In my experience, this is the first "rules change" that one encounters when going from casual Scrabble/Bananagrams/etc to something slightly more competitive. Enabling or disabling these two two-letter words in particular has a huge impact on the game. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-qi-and-za-changed-scrabble/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-qi-and-za-changed-s...

63 points by pshaw 7y ago

aldoushuxley001 7y ago

Blasphemy!

Pfhreak 7y ago

gridlockd 7y ago
GG

LeoPanthera 7y ago

That seems okay to me.

glitchc 7y ago

Next: KO

alreadyaword 7y ago
KO is already a valid word in international (English language) tournament play. Personally, I am sad about this. Serious scrabble play is largely about rack management - i.e. trying to get a set of tiles that you can play all at once for a 50 point bonus (bingo). That means dumping tiles that make it harder to score a bingo (duplicates, difficult letters) while taking into consideration the likelihood of drawing better tiles given what's been played and what letters your opponent is dumping (signalling what's in their rack). Most turns are about maximizing the points from non-bingos while putting together a good rack, and that frequently means playing words parallel to what's already on the board to double-up on a premium tile. The 2006 OSPD addition of "ZA" and "QI" really changed the game, and not in a good way. Q-sticks (sticking your opponent with an unplayable Q) were a staple of end-game play, especially but are now basically obsolete. OK rankles especially as an initialism. There will be (very nerdy) riots if a 2 letter 'V' word is ever added.
- mj_olnir 7y ago
  I'm unfamiliar - do common noun acronyms (like scuba) with more common usage than their full-fledged counterparts get in? If so, I could see UV being added.
  - mj_olnir 7y ago
    Edit: just kidding, KO is in, and a quick search says scuba is in as well. Yeah, I'm very surprised that UV is not.
    - T-hawk 7y ago
      The general rule is, if the letters are pronounced phoenetically together as a word, it counts. That's why Scuba and Laser are in. It's the difference between AWOL (in) and MIA (not). OK was never accepted before because it's not said as "ock". UV isn't pronounced "uhv" so should also be excluded. I guess now the distinguishing feature between those cases is that UV is an initialism while OK isn't. I can't think of any other example like OK, a word that is not an initialism and is said by naming each letter rather than pronouncing them phonetically. Ko is in for being a (loan)word in its own right, not as the two-letter abbreviation for "knockout". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_fight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_fight
- glitchc 7y ago
  To my knowledge, KO is only accepted in the CSW list and is not part of OWL/TWL. Link: https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Two_Letter_Words https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Two_Letter_Words
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  >There will be (very nerdy) riots if a 2 letter 'V' word is ever added. Found the Emacs user. :)

codeulike 7y ago

This is huge. Two letter words are very important in Scrabble for exploiting double use of double/triple letter/word scores. K is a medium-scoring letter so being able to have a two-letter word with it in makes quite a difference.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mistrial9 7y ago

playing a lot of scrabble -- our regular play includes a list of two-letter words on paper, in pencil, nearby to settle disputes (not visible during play). The arguments get heated ! .. (our list is smaller than the official list of two letter words, based on mutual agreement of real-world use). Personal opinion is that the official list is already too broad, and makes the play "muddy." Dictionary exploration is nerd-fun! We use a 1950s Webster's Unabridged English (which webster? have to check) and a 1980s Oxford American-English; both have their quirks ! happy SCRABBLE™

CamperBob2 7y ago
How is keeping a handwritten list of words any different than violating the rule against using a dictionary to find words, though? Most of the hardcore Scrabble people I've known would object to that. ("This isn't 'Nam, there are rules.")
- dmurray 7y ago
  I doubt that actual hardcore Scrabble players would care, any more than a hardcore chess player would mind if you kept referring to an index card with a diagram to remind you which way the horsey moves. Of course, they would care about you having access to the entire dictionary, just as a serious chess player would object to you having a collection of chess opening or endgame reference books to hand. At a beginner level, it's more fun when no one knows the word list perfectly, and you shouldn't allow it. At a slightly-above-beginner level, say where one player knows the two-letter words and others do not, knowing the two-letter words is such a huge advantage that it's a sensible house rule to level the playing field a little, and likely make it more fun for both.
  - vkou 7y ago
    A serious chess player would play timed games, and if you want to spend your time leafing through a dead tree book... It's your time to waste.
  - diminoten 7y ago

jdoliner 7y ago

This promises to causes a big shakeup of the Scrabble meta, two letter words are the lifeblood of high-level scrabble play and `K` is a juicy, juicy letter (points wise) to have an extra 2 letter word for.

erickhill 7y ago
Indeed. I wonder if Words with Friends (et al) will quickly follow suit?

gerry_shaw 7y ago

The addition of ze (gender-neutral pronoun) is even better than OK.

chrisweekly 7y ago
(tangent to scrabble per se) I like the idea of "ze" (gender-neutral pronoun), but this is the first I've come across it. Hopefully it'll catch on as IMHO it's a big improvement over alternatives like "they". While on the topic of "missing" words, when will our language finally get something reasonable for "you (plural)"?? Extant "y'all" (southern) and "yous" (NJ) are not cutting it!
- sdegutis 7y ago
  > when will our language finally get something reasonable for "you (plural)"?? Extant "y'all" (southern) and "yous" (NJ) are not cutting it! We still have ye.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Why is it a big improvement over 'they'? Singular they has become popular naturally, whereas 'ze' has existed for years without anyone naturally using it(except for trolls on the internet).
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Singular "they" still sounds wrong to me every time I see it. Which is a shame since it would be very useful. Perhaps more importantly, I don't think singular "they" would be considered proper in formal writing.
    - wiredfool 7y ago
      The singular they is quite old: > The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. from https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

hammock 7y ago

I've posted this before but in my family we play serious Scrabble but with house rules that improve the game. Rule 1: On your turn, but before playing your word, any letter in your hand may be swapped with any letter on the board, as long as the swap makes a valid word (some people already do this with blanks, we do it with any letter). Swap one letter at a time, as many times as you like. No points are scored for swaps, just for playing your word. Rule 2: Dictionary may be consulted at any time to look up a specific word - however you cannot "leaf" or browse through it. Dictionary priority goes to whoever's turn it is. The net result of this variation is that a) the board remains MUCH more open the whole game - there are many more places to play, and the words played are more likely to be bingos or longer words, which in turn open the baord up even more. Often under official rules you get three or four letter words that just close down the future play possibilities. b) high-point letters which usually are "luck of the draw" like Q and Z, now become skillful, since they will be reused by many players throughout the game c) turns can take 5-10 minutes at a time :) Source: my grandmother, who played these rules with the inventor of Scrabble back in college, before he had sold the game for mass distribution (they changed his rules to simplify them)

frogpelt 7y ago
How are Q and Z getting reused so much? There can't be that many times they can be replaced with another letter can there? Also, after I saw how many "words" are in the Scrabble dictionary I realized that Scrabble was not a vocabulary/spelling competition like I thought when I first played. Some of those "words" are a joke, a few are mentioned in the article (eeew being one example).
- mxwsn 7y ago
  "For living-room players, Scrabble is about language, a test of vocabularies. For world-class players, it’s about cold memorization and mathematical probabilities. Think of the dictionary not as a compendium of the beauty and complexity of the English language, but rather as a giant rulebook. Words exist merely as valid strings with which to score points. A Scrabble board after two top players are finished playing on it might look, to the uninitiated, as though they had played in Martian. Here’s a taste: In a single game in last year’s Nationals, Richards played the following words: zarf (a metal holder for a coffee cup), waddy (to strike with a thick club), hulloed (to hallo, to shout), sajous (a capuchin, a monkey), qi (the vital force in Chinese thought), flyboats (a small, fast boat), trigo (wheat) and threaper (one that threaps, disputes). Top players tend not to be novelists or poets, but more often computer programmers or mathematicians." https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-nigel-richards-the-best-scrabble-player-on-earth/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-makes-nigel-richar... Sidenote on replacing Q and Z: "Qi" and "Za" are common and useful ways of using q/z which also readily support replacement. In my experience, this is the first "rules change" that one encounters when going from casual Scrabble/Bananagrams/etc to something slightly more competitive. Enabling or disabling these two two-letter words in particular has a huge impact on the game. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-qi-and-za-changed-scrabble/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-qi-and-za-changed-s...