5 ms·

Scrabble, Anonymous

82 points by crescit_eundo 2y ago

ZenThereWere0 2y ago
Thanks for posting. I've been a user of the Internet Scrabble Club for over 15 years now. I came to it after learning of competitive scrabble from reading Word Freak by Stephan Fatsis [1]. I had a background playing internet chess. I started with yahoo and gravitated towards lightning (1/0 time controls). I think there's more than a grain of truth to the quotation, "I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol." ~ attributed to Nigel Short, English grandmaster. Fast-paced board games that deliver rewards are addictive. As a student of neurotransmitters, I can attest that playing blitz chess or scrabble does result in dopamine hits. Particular to Scrabble, one can receive such a hit of dopamine from a bingo (50 point bonus for playing all seven tiles). In a three minute (or less) time control, a medium to expert player can look forward to an average of two of these per game. All that's missing from this slot machine is the lights and sounds. Isc.ro is a unique little corner of the internet. It's navigated away from a downloaded console to a browser. It has its fair share of persistent trolls. There's a chat room, channel 20, that used to regularly have over 100 members active at any given time, and significantly more than that during peak hours. Competitive scrabble as a community peaked, IMO, in 2004 with the nationals in New Orleans. There's a Sports Illustrated article chronicling its subsequent problems [2]. NASPA in particular is undemocratic in its governance and pushed a woke agenda during the pandemic, resulting in the removal of hundreds of words from the official lexicons. The net result is there are now at least 4 dictionaries, fracturing an already small and arguably dwindling community of word enthusiasts. An alternative to NASPA in the competitive Scrabble tournament and club scene is WGPO [3]. My personal experience is that most mid-size cities have clubs, and you'll meet worthwhile people in them. I liked to say, at a Scrabble club I always felt comfortable that I was typically not the most nor the least odd fellow there but rather squarely in the middle of the pack. I've noticed a pattern at the Internet Scrabble Club that I also noticed at the Free Internet Chess Server (fics.org), where I migrated after Yahoo games was phased out: a loss of members. ISC now competes with numerous viable alternatives easily accessible from a smartphone. In its heyday, it was unique place where you could navigate the interface with telnet commands. [Insert finger pun here.] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Freak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Freak [2] https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/10/26/how-scrabble-blew-its-big-moment https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/10/26/how-scrabble-blew-... [3] https://wordgameplayers.org/ https://wordgameplayers.org/ Edited: for grammar and clarity.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > ISC now competes with numerous viable alternatives easily accessible from a smartphone. Is there any technical reason why ISC never became easily accessible from a smartphone? Have there been attempts?
  - bluescrn 2y ago
    Probably Mattel/Hasbro and trademark/copyright issues. Official mobile games have to be ruined by aggressive monetisation and scammy in-app ads, it seems. Words With Friends got away with a making A Scrabble clone by using a slightly different board layout and dictionary. But they eventually transformed that into a very annoying experience overloaded with the usual F2P clutter. WordFeud seems to be the recommended mobile Scrabble clone these days.
    - akudha 2y ago
      I play Wordfeud almost every day, and it is the best 3$ (I think it was 3$ at the time I paid for it years ago, not sure what it costs now) I ever spent on an app. So how does Wordfeud get around copyright issues with Hasbro? Do they pay them a royalty?
      - heyoni 2y ago
        It’s $6 now. And I’m happy to pay it. The official scrabble app is a horrible testament to psychotic UI’s being passed off as “normal”. I swear to god, it’s like living in a clockwork orange. I just want to play the game but there are chests and gemstones and adds you can watch and unlocks mid game and on and on…
        akudha 2y ago
        It is just nuts. I installed a mobile game couple of days ago, liked it. Paid 4.99 to "remove ads" without realizing that it only removed some ads. They got me. I uninstalled it, 5$ down the toilet. I understand game makers need to pay rent too, that is why I spent that 5$ to support them. But they treated their customer (me) like shit, lost me forever. Good job guys This insatiable greed to make more and more and more money...Yikes So far, Wordfeud hasn't done anything crappy like this. I hope they stay that way
masto 2y ago
I have a theory that you are a board game family or you are not. We were not a board game family, apart from the occasional attempt to get through Monopoly without my little sister flinging it onto the floor. My partner, however is from board game people. When we're with her family, there are dice and cards and tokens, words and numbers fly through the air, and I am utterly lost. I played Scrabble with her once. I used to think I was smart.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  Tbf, that's a perfectly reasonable reaction from your sister.
- Fnoord 2y ago
  I come from a (board) game family, and competitive family. I loved games as kid, computer games and board games and physical sports (even though I was bad at most sports, with the exception of running and stealth which is useful for 'levend stratego' [1]). But with my kids I don't enjoy board gaming much yet, as they get angry quickly. I like playing with them, but when it has to go their way solely I feel like 'OK, go solo, you can have control.' I play Wordfeud (a Scrabble clone) with my wife and mother. The three of us are quite competitive with each other. My mother-in-law played a few games, lost each of them, and then called it. Because her idea of having fun is, well, not doing your best. My mother had colleagues whom she played games with (quizzes I think?), and they were terrible simply because she doesn't care. An old book on this is 'Play To Win' by Dave Sirlin. Anyway, legend has it the people who are best at Scrabble are from an SE Asian country (not sure which one it was), often barely speak English, but know all the 2 and 3 letter combinations and are able to lay those down well. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levend_stratego https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levend_stratego
  - thatguy0900 2y ago
    There are plenty of good board games out now that are cooperative in nature, rather than competitive. Maybe start with those if there are anger issues? I really enjoy this one in particular with my younger relatives https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze
jasone 2y ago
This is an interesting read. As a software engineer who accidentally discovered the depth of Scrabble in middle age, I fell down a slightly different Scrabble rabbit hole. The probabilities behind the imperfect bag/rack state knowledge fascinate me, and I spent most of a year writing a strong Scrabble engine to explore the problem. I've put that aside for now, but it remains a background pressure on the computing problems I tackle.
fogleman 2y ago
Way back in 2006, I reverse engineered the protocol used between isc.ro and its desktop client so that I could write my own GUI. It was just a fun side project. https://www.michaelfogleman.com/projects/word-warrior/ https://www.michaelfogleman.com/projects/word-warrior/ In the process I discovered all sorts of vulnerabilities (potential cheating vectors). Nothing prevented a malicious client from: - picking your own tiles (even if they no longer exist in the bag) - seeing your opponent's tiles - setting your clock to any value after making a move - aborting a game at any time without opponent approval If you exchanged tiles, the number of tiles you exchanged was sent through the # of seconds on your clock. So if you exchanged 3 tiles at a point where you had 1m40s on your clock, it would change to 1m43s or 1m33s or something like that! There was no other way to communicate to the server how many tiles you exchanged. I never took advantage of any of this. Like I said, I just wanted a nicer GUI to play Scrabble on. But I was pretty shocked at what I discovered in the process. Not sure if anything has changed since then!
billfruit 2y ago
I am not really getting why people are praising the article, it is mostly autobiographical naval-gazing by the authour. I think it is an uninteresting way to explore the topic where the writer focuses on themselves than the topic.
- munchler 2y ago
  I agree, but it’s also strangely appropriate, because Scrabble is far less interesting a game than it first seems, as the author points out.
- kevindamm 2y ago
  Perhaps the topic is not Scrabble, as you assume, but actually the internal voice of an addict who has transferred their addiction to anagramming and other word thoughts. I could see how others would feel they can relate to that.
- gizajob 2y ago
  It’s not navel-gazing, it’s an expression of the mind of another presented in a way that is entertaining for others to read. In seeing the obsessions of another, we see the same in ourselves. I’d also posit that the author has read a bit of David Foster Wallace over the years, because the tone and themes are similar to some of his work, both the fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps these kind of diaristic long-form articles aren’t really for you.
flax 2y ago
Shameless plug for my scrabble-adjacent word game https://markmywordsgame.com https://markmywordsgame.com . Think Scrabble on a hexagonal board, with territory capture mechanics.
- zem 2y ago
  it said 1-4 players, which made me think I could play against an AI, but I couldn't figure out any way to make that happen.
ASUfool 2y ago
I would like to also point out https://woogles.io https://woogles.io as a mobile-friendly place to play Scrabble, either against humans or against bots with different "ability levels".

82 points by crescit_eundo 2y ago

Thanks for posting. I've been a user of the Internet Scrabble Club for over 15 years now. I came to it after learning of competitive scrabble from reading Word Freak by Stephan Fatsis [1]. I had a background playing internet chess. I started with yahoo and gravitated towards lightning (1/0 time controls). I think there's more than a grain of truth to the quotation, "I play way too much blitz chess. It rots the brain just as surely as alcohol." ~ attributed to Nigel Short, English grandmaster. Fast-paced board games that deliver rewards are addictive. As a student of neurotransmitters, I can attest that playing blitz chess or scrabble does result in dopamine hits. Particular to Scrabble, one can receive such a hit of dopamine from a bingo (50 point bonus for playing all seven tiles). In a three minute (or less) time control, a medium to expert player can look forward to an average of two of these per game. All that's missing from this slot machine is the lights and sounds. Isc.ro is a unique little corner of the internet. It's navigated away from a downloaded console to a browser. It has its fair share of persistent trolls. There's a chat room, channel 20, that used to regularly have over 100 members active at any given time, and significantly more than that during peak hours. Competitive scrabble as a community peaked, IMO, in 2004 with the nationals in New Orleans. There's a Sports Illustrated article chronicling its subsequent problems [2]. NASPA in particular is undemocratic in its governance and pushed a woke agenda during the pandemic, resulting in the removal of hundreds of words from the official lexicons. The net result is there are now at least 4 dictionaries, fracturing an already small and arguably dwindling community of word enthusiasts. An alternative to NASPA in the competitive Scrabble tournament and club scene is WGPO [3]. My personal experience is that most mid-size cities have clubs, and you'll meet worthwhile people in them. I liked to say, at a Scrabble club I always felt comfortable that I was typically not the most nor the least odd fellow there but rather squarely in the middle of the pack. I've noticed a pattern at the Internet Scrabble Club that I also noticed at the Free Internet Chess Server (fics.org), where I migrated after Yahoo games was phased out: a loss of members. ISC now competes with numerous viable alternatives easily accessible from a smartphone. In its heyday, it was unique place where you could navigate the interface with telnet commands. [Insert finger pun here.] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Freak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Freak [2] https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/10/26/how-scrabble-blew-its-big-moment https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/10/26/how-scrabble-blew-... [3] https://wordgameplayers.org/ https://wordgameplayers.org/ Edited: for grammar and clarity.

pessimizer 2y ago
> ISC now competes with numerous viable alternatives easily accessible from a smartphone. Is there any technical reason why ISC never became easily accessible from a smartphone? Have there been attempts?
- bluescrn 2y ago
  Probably Mattel/Hasbro and trademark/copyright issues. Official mobile games have to be ruined by aggressive monetisation and scammy in-app ads, it seems. Words With Friends got away with a making A Scrabble clone by using a slightly different board layout and dictionary. But they eventually transformed that into a very annoying experience overloaded with the usual F2P clutter. WordFeud seems to be the recommended mobile Scrabble clone these days.
  - akudha 2y ago
    I play Wordfeud almost every day, and it is the best 3$ (I think it was 3$ at the time I paid for it years ago, not sure what it costs now) I ever spent on an app. So how does Wordfeud get around copyright issues with Hasbro? Do they pay them a royalty?
    - heyoni 2y ago
      It’s $6 now. And I’m happy to pay it. The official scrabble app is a horrible testament to psychotic UI’s being passed off as “normal”. I swear to god, it’s like living in a clockwork orange. I just want to play the game but there are chests and gemstones and adds you can watch and unlocks mid game and on and on…
      - akudha 2y ago
        It is just nuts. I installed a mobile game couple of days ago, liked it. Paid 4.99 to "remove ads" without realizing that it only removed some ads. They got me. I uninstalled it, 5$ down the toilet. I understand game makers need to pay rent too, that is why I spent that 5$ to support them. But they treated their customer (me) like shit, lost me forever. Good job guys This insatiable greed to make more and more and more money...Yikes So far, Wordfeud hasn't done anything crappy like this. I hope they stay that way

masto 2y ago

I have a theory that you are a board game family or you are not. We were not a board game family, apart from the occasional attempt to get through Monopoly without my little sister flinging it onto the floor. My partner, however is from board game people. When we're with her family, there are dice and cards and tokens, words and numbers fly through the air, and I am utterly lost. I played Scrabble with her once. I used to think I was smart.

paulddraper 2y ago
Tbf, that's a perfectly reasonable reaction from your sister.
Fnoord 2y ago
I come from a (board) game family, and competitive family. I loved games as kid, computer games and board games and physical sports (even though I was bad at most sports, with the exception of running and stealth which is useful for 'levend stratego' [1]). But with my kids I don't enjoy board gaming much yet, as they get angry quickly. I like playing with them, but when it has to go their way solely I feel like 'OK, go solo, you can have control.' I play Wordfeud (a Scrabble clone) with my wife and mother. The three of us are quite competitive with each other. My mother-in-law played a few games, lost each of them, and then called it. Because her idea of having fun is, well, not doing your best. My mother had colleagues whom she played games with (quizzes I think?), and they were terrible simply because she doesn't care. An old book on this is 'Play To Win' by Dave Sirlin. Anyway, legend has it the people who are best at Scrabble are from an SE Asian country (not sure which one it was), often barely speak English, but know all the 2 and 3 letter combinations and are able to lay those down well. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levend_stratego https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levend_stratego
- thatguy0900 2y ago
  There are plenty of good board games out now that are cooperative in nature, rather than competitive. Maybe start with those if there are anger issues? I really enjoy this one in particular with my younger relatives https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209778/magic-maze

jasone 2y ago

This is an interesting read. As a software engineer who accidentally discovered the depth of Scrabble in middle age, I fell down a slightly different Scrabble rabbit hole. The probabilities behind the imperfect bag/rack state knowledge fascinate me, and I spent most of a year writing a strong Scrabble engine to explore the problem. I've put that aside for now, but it remains a background pressure on the computing problems I tackle.

fogleman 2y ago

Way back in 2006, I reverse engineered the protocol used between isc.ro and its desktop client so that I could write my own GUI. It was just a fun side project. https://www.michaelfogleman.com/projects/word-warrior/ https://www.michaelfogleman.com/projects/word-warrior/ In the process I discovered all sorts of vulnerabilities (potential cheating vectors). Nothing prevented a malicious client from: - picking your own tiles (even if they no longer exist in the bag) - seeing your opponent's tiles - setting your clock to any value after making a move - aborting a game at any time without opponent approval If you exchanged tiles, the number of tiles you exchanged was sent through the # of seconds on your clock. So if you exchanged 3 tiles at a point where you had 1m40s on your clock, it would change to 1m43s or 1m33s or something like that! There was no other way to communicate to the server how many tiles you exchanged. I never took advantage of any of this. Like I said, I just wanted a nicer GUI to play Scrabble on. But I was pretty shocked at what I discovered in the process. Not sure if anything has changed since then!

billfruit 2y ago

I am not really getting why people are praising the article, it is mostly autobiographical naval-gazing by the authour. I think it is an uninteresting way to explore the topic where the writer focuses on themselves than the topic.

munchler 2y ago
I agree, but it’s also strangely appropriate, because Scrabble is far less interesting a game than it first seems, as the author points out.
kevindamm 2y ago
Perhaps the topic is not Scrabble, as you assume, but actually the internal voice of an addict who has transferred their addiction to anagramming and other word thoughts. I could see how others would feel they can relate to that.
gizajob 2y ago
It’s not navel-gazing, it’s an expression of the mind of another presented in a way that is entertaining for others to read. In seeing the obsessions of another, we see the same in ourselves. I’d also posit that the author has read a bit of David Foster Wallace over the years, because the tone and themes are similar to some of his work, both the fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps these kind of diaristic long-form articles aren’t really for you.

flax 2y ago

Shameless plug for my scrabble-adjacent word game https://markmywordsgame.com https://markmywordsgame.com . Think Scrabble on a hexagonal board, with territory capture mechanics.

zem 2y ago
it said 1-4 players, which made me think I could play against an AI, but I couldn't figure out any way to make that happen.

ASUfool 2y ago

I would like to also point out https://woogles.io https://woogles.io as a mobile-friendly place to play Scrabble, either against humans or against bots with different "ability levels".