5 ms·

Sorry, they're part of the game. It's like getting offended at a chess player for castling.

by dfan 14y ago

RyJones 14y ago
I'd guess en passant is more surprising to neophytes than castling
- jacquesm 14y ago
  At a guess check-mate is the most surprising to neophytes. It gets them every time no matter how often it happens.
  - lmm 14y ago
    Huh? If checkmate is confusing you can just play until you take the opponent's king, with minimal difference to the game.
- mediocregopher 14y ago
  I had never even heard of that (although I'm by no means an avid chess player). I think I'll have a hard time convincing my friends that's a real rule.
  - jspthrowaway2 14y ago
    The Wikipedia article is good at explaining the rationale. According to it, it was added around the time the two-space opening move for a pawn was added to balance the game. Oddly, though Wikipedia deletes programming languages like Factor due to non-notability[1], editors get to go nuts on everything chess or Star Trek without recourse. If you want to know more about why things in chess are the way they are, Wikipedia is your pal. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Factor_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Factor_(programming_langua...
    - zem 14y ago
      wow, that factor notability discussion was a depressing read.
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  I've had people shout at me about making up rules after capturing en passant.
- Someone 14y ago
  That, and stalemate ("what do you mean, a tie? You can't move, so you lose!"), but that is a rarer occurrence, as it requires the neophyte to be on the winning side (he won't complain if he is the one without a legal move, and you announce it a tie)
- dfan 14y ago
  Yeah, I was actually going to use en passant, but I figured more people would understand the comment if I used castling.
  - RyJones 14y ago
    They're both outside the norm enough. I remember the first time en passant was used on me (4th or 5th grade?), I thought it was made up. If you want to start an argument, stop someone from castling through check.
Cushman 14y ago
Good analogy, actually. There is a popular perception that being good at chess indicates skill at strategy or reasoning. In reality, these are helpful, yes, but mostly what it indicates is that you know a lot about the game of chess. Similarly, there is a perception that skill at Scrabble indicates a large English vocabulary. It's reasonable for someone with good reasoning or a large vocabulary to find it distasteful that they lose consistently simply because they haven't memorized the 1,000 most common moves.[0] In chess, this is pretty much built into the mechanics of the game, but it's easy to fix in Scrabble with a simple house rule: Don't use bullshit words. It's only part of the game if you let it be. [0] I'll give an illustrative example. The official Scrabble dictionary[1] lists "re" with the definition "the second tone of the diatonic musical scale". Just so for the other sounds of diatonic solfeggio that everyone knows: re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti. All of these, according to Hasbro, are English words, with plurals. We're all descriptivists here, that's fine. But did you ever wonder why there are only seven words for the diatonic scale, but actually twelve tones in an octave? Or why re, mi, and fa have different vowel sounds? The answer is that solfege has a way to verbalize accidentals (notes not in the key) or non-diatonic scales by modulating the vowel sound. A raised do is a di; a lowered re is a ra. So you can easily pronounce a chromatic scale beginning at do: do, di/ra, re, ri/me, mi, fa, fi/se, sol, si/le, la, li/te, ti, do. (The syllable used depends on the key.) Go ahead, look up any of those accidental syllables in the dictionary. La and le: Both French articles, both solfeggio syllables. Only one is a Scrabble word. You can't say that's not stupid. [1] http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_US/search.cfm http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_US/search.cfm
- arthurdenture 14y ago
  You've just moved the line of argumentation: instead of "is the word in the dictionary we're using", it's "is that word a bullshit word" -- but only one of those questions is answerable definitively. The only way to play without argument is to use a dictionary, at which point you might as well use the standard one. (Like another poster in this thread, I do also play friendly games with an open two-letter-word list, to level the playing field for people who don't care to memorize trivia.)
  - 14y ago
jfoutz 14y ago
It's a little different than chess. Chess rules can be laid out in a few thousand words, including castling. Right off the bat, you need to pick a set of words that are allowed. Tournaments play, of course, allow a small set of those odd two letter words. However, both sides have to agree on a word set up front. it's perfectly reasonable to pick a dictionary that doesn't recognize "za" as a real word for pizza. However, i think if transfire really wants to use "fu", he'd have to resort to urban dictionary for the word list. That also admits za, so it's kind of a lose lose there.

Sorry, they're part of the game. It's like getting offended at a chess player for castling.

by dfan 14y ago

Sorry, they're part of the game. It's like getting offended at a chess player for castling.

RyJones 14y ago

I'd guess en passant is more surprising to neophytes than castling

jacquesm 14y ago
At a guess check-mate is the most surprising to neophytes. It gets them every time no matter how often it happens.
- lmm 14y ago
  Huh? If checkmate is confusing you can just play until you take the opponent's king, with minimal difference to the game.
mediocregopher 14y ago
I had never even heard of that (although I'm by no means an avid chess player). I think I'll have a hard time convincing my friends that's a real rule.
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  The Wikipedia article is good at explaining the rationale. According to it, it was added around the time the two-space opening move for a pawn was added to balance the game. Oddly, though Wikipedia deletes programming languages like Factor due to non-notability[1], editors get to go nuts on everything chess or Star Trek without recourse. If you want to know more about why things in chess are the way they are, Wikipedia is your pal. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Factor_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Factor_(programming_langua...
  - zem 14y ago
    wow, that factor notability discussion was a depressing read.
jspthrowaway2 14y ago
I've had people shout at me about making up rules after capturing en passant.
Someone 14y ago
That, and stalemate ("what do you mean, a tie? You can't move, so you lose!"), but that is a rarer occurrence, as it requires the neophyte to be on the winning side (he won't complain if he is the one without a legal move, and you announce it a tie)
dfan 14y ago
Yeah, I was actually going to use en passant, but I figured more people would understand the comment if I used castling.
- RyJones 14y ago
  They're both outside the norm enough. I remember the first time en passant was used on me (4th or 5th grade?), I thought it was made up. If you want to start an argument, stop someone from castling through check.

Cushman 14y ago

Good analogy, actually. There is a popular perception that being good at chess indicates skill at strategy or reasoning. In reality, these are helpful, yes, but mostly what it indicates is that you know a lot about the game of chess. Similarly, there is a perception that skill at Scrabble indicates a large English vocabulary. It's reasonable for someone with good reasoning or a large vocabulary to find it distasteful that they lose consistently simply because they haven't memorized the 1,000 most common moves.[0] In chess, this is pretty much built into the mechanics of the game, but it's easy to fix in Scrabble with a simple house rule: Don't use bullshit words. It's only part of the game if you let it be. [0] I'll give an illustrative example. The official Scrabble dictionary[1] lists "re" with the definition "the second tone of the diatonic musical scale". Just so for the other sounds of diatonic solfeggio that everyone knows: re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti. All of these, according to Hasbro, are English words, with plurals. We're all descriptivists here, that's fine. But did you ever wonder why there are only seven words for the diatonic scale, but actually twelve tones in an octave? Or why re, mi, and fa have different vowel sounds? The answer is that solfege has a way to verbalize accidentals (notes not in the key) or non-diatonic scales by modulating the vowel sound. A raised do is a di; a lowered re is a ra. So you can easily pronounce a chromatic scale beginning at do: do, di/ra, re, ri/me, mi, fa, fi/se, sol, si/le, la, li/te, ti, do. (The syllable used depends on the key.) Go ahead, look up any of those accidental syllables in the dictionary. La and le: Both French articles, both solfeggio syllables. Only one is a Scrabble word. You can't say that's not stupid. [1] http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_US/search.cfm http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_US/search.cfm

arthurdenture 14y ago
You've just moved the line of argumentation: instead of "is the word in the dictionary we're using", it's "is that word a bullshit word" -- but only one of those questions is answerable definitively. The only way to play without argument is to use a dictionary, at which point you might as well use the standard one. (Like another poster in this thread, I do also play friendly games with an open two-letter-word list, to level the playing field for people who don't care to memorize trivia.)
- 14y ago

jfoutz 14y ago

It's a little different than chess. Chess rules can be laid out in a few thousand words, including castling. Right off the bat, you need to pick a set of words that are allowed. Tournaments play, of course, allow a small set of those odd two letter words. However, both sides have to agree on a word set up front. it's perfectly reasonable to pick a dictionary that doesn't recognize "za" as a real word for pizza. However, i think if transfire really wants to use "fu", he'd have to resort to urban dictionary for the word list. That also admits za, so it's kind of a lose lose there.