> word games […] are very rarely games about words > Scrabble is adversarial optimization A friend of mine used to joke that Scrabble is an area control game

> word games […] are very rarely games about words > Scrabble is adversarial optimization A friend of mine used to joke that Scrabble is an area control game with 40,000 rules for tile placement. Like many good jokes, there is a kernel of truth in there.