7 ms·

Nigel Richards, The Best Scrabble Player

quotient 12y ago
Well, so, what makes Nigel Richards the best Scrabble Player on Earth? The article does not even answer its own leading question, which is enormously disappointing (though it is otherwise interesting). There are a couple humorous quotations, and literally two or three sentences that could be interpreted as conjecture as to why Nigel Richards is the best player by such a phenomenally large margin: some loose statements about knowing relevant probabilities. This article was a perfectly interesting read about how Richards utterly dominates Scrabble, but unfortunately plagued by a totally misleading headline: I was expecting an answer.
- stinos 12y ago
  exactly. It does show he most likely is the best player, but I too was expecting some interestng theory about how his brain works. That he's somehow capable of some algorithms other humans cannot even grasp. Or something like that, you get the point.
  - judk 12y ago
    For a low-status game like Scrabble, what makes him unique is that people with similar brainpower cluster in more lucrative or rewarding vocations.
- failrate 12y ago
  One could be pedantic and say that the article correctly explains why he deserves to be "classified" as the best Scrabble player on Earth. The very last line says that he knows every legal Scrabble word. The article also claims that he has a "photographic" memory. That's certainly an important skill to have, but can't be the entire reason. Even the strongest Scrabble AI has a worse rating than Richards. The other aspect that the article mentions is a focus on the current game. Richards is not even interested in games that he has completed. So, the article does not definitively conclude, but it does offer two significant factors that are significant to the question it proposed.
  - 1337biz 12y ago
    For the purpose of stimulating the discussion: The article also claims that he has a "photographic" memory. -- But a true photographic memory in this sense has never been proved to exist. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-developed-what-appears-to-be-a-ph/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-developed-what-a...
    - judk 12y ago
      You are misquoting. "Photographic" is a misnomer because exact images are not recalled. But extensive detailed recollection does exist, as the SA article explains.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Well, the article does say "I try to score points. The goal is to score more points than your opponent." and "I’m not sure there is a secret. It’s just a matter of learning the words." Perhaps that (incredibly unsatisfying) explanation is actually true?
  - thret 12y ago
    There's a 'how to play chess' book I can't recall the name of, with similarly useless advice: Rule #2: Make the right move.
    - Isofarro 12y ago
      That worked for Smyslov (7th World Chess Champion), who once quipped: "I will make 40 good moves and if you are able to do the same, the game will end in a draw."
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    So he brute forces it? What's the time per move in official scrabble tournaments?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      25 minutes for all of your moves.
- dang 12y ago
  I thought we'd delinkbaitified the title enough last night, but evidently not, so we've sent it in for another round.
ghshephard 12y ago
Given that he has a better Scrabble rating than a computer algorithm, there has to be an element of poker at this level - otherwise if it were pure probability and memorization of the words (which a computer would have done perfectly, with no room for error), then a human could not outrank a computer. I'm wondering (for the professional scrabble players out there) - do you play words differently depending on your competitor? That is, do you leave a vulnerability with some players, that you wouldn't with others? Or do you play the same game every time. I was surprised that element of Nigel Richard's Scrabble game wasn't discussed.
- icelancer 12y ago
  It could just be that the Scrabble AI is not sufficiently advanced to explore the entirety of the decision tree. For all board states X, there are many deep trees that increase in complexity at boards X+1, X+2, etc (though it's arguable that it decreases in complexity in the late game, or can a game can be played "closed" to reduce the chances of bingos). It may not be purely metagaming that causes the difference between AI and humans; the algorithm probably plays a far-from-perfect game.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    The other advantage a computer (probably?) has over a human, is the analysis of probabilities of words being available given whats known about the word play of the opponent given their current (unknown) tiles, and tiles already played. That is, I suspect it's possible, but difficult for a human player to surmise the probability of tiles hidden in an opponents pieces based on the words they've recently played (or not played) - but being able to do so, based on a count of which tiles have already been played and are visible on the table, is probably more challenging - but straightforward for a computer. Are the games that players have played publicly available? While I presume that players at this level have memorized all 270K or so words, they might have tendencies to favor some words versus others, in particular scenarios - that's another advantage that a computer would have - adjusting it's play based on a players history.
    - 12y ago
kp25 12y ago
So, It seems like No Human Player could beat Nigel, time to take over the challenge of building a better Scrabble AI than Nigel is!
- noswi 12y ago
  Well, you can still jump in on the very fun and competetive Al Zimmerman's challenge (which ends in about a week, though), the current task is exactly about solving the given Scrabble sets in the best possible way: http://www.azspcs.net/Contest/AlphabetCity http://www.azspcs.net/Contest/AlphabetCity
mrb 12y ago
"there are more than 16 billion ways to draw seven tiles" Wrong. Even assuming the order matter (which is false, ABCDEFG is the same draw as GFEDCBA) and even assuming there are 7 tiles of each letter and 7 blanks in a bag (which is false), that would be 27^7 = 10.5 billion ways. Because these assumptions are false, the real number of combinations is lower.
- kqr2 12y ago
  For calculating the number of combinations, it looks like they are simply using 100 choose 7, or C(100, 7) which yields 16,007,560,800. http://what-are-the-chances.blogspot.com/2008/02/7-letter-words-and-8-card-suits.html http://what-are-the-chances.blogspot.com/2008/02/7-letter-wo...
  - psychometry 12y ago
    That doesn't take into account repeated letters. You actually want the number of 7-combinations of the multiset { A * 5, B * 3, C * 4, ... } or whatever the letter frequencies are. That's for the first draw from the bag.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I was noodling around to find the correct answer to this question, when I found this. It has nothing to do with why Nigel is the best Scrabble player. "It is very hard to draw a rack that does not contain a valid word" - http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/6075 http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/6075 This statsSE answer includes an R program.
- Terr_ 12y ago
  I started working on a python script to monte-carlo the problem, but it's pretty complex. Even if we assume that you always start with a full bag of 100 tiles, every tile drawn changes the odds of the next draw in a different way. Right now I've got a series of "unique draws" that grow slightly slower than the number of tries, but I'm not yet sure what single number it would converge to at infinity tries.
  - 12y ago
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Because he can make a word out of O X Y G E N ? Edit: see one of the earliest Simpsons episodes Edit: it is interesting that the articles assumption has been he is better than current algorithms and so better than algorithms can be. This just indicates to me a lack of time and research into the correct algorithm. That's not meant as a trivial throwaway comment but that in pretty much every area of human endeavour we have lots of headroom for new algorithms.
kevinwang 12y ago
Can he actually beat the AI in a head-to-head match?
- zem 12y ago
  yes (as can a lot of the other top players). though due to the element of luck in the game, the right question is whether he would have an overall winning record after repeatedly playing quackle (also yes; as of now he's definitely better than the state of the art ai)
300bps 12y ago
Richards has won an estimated $215,000 in his tournament career Here you have a person that has dedicated their life to playing a game professionally and has attained literally the top ranking in he world. Yet in his entire career has made less than many software engineers make in a year. That is why I stopped participating in Scrabble tournaments years ago. Casual play is fun but tournament play is about memorizing a dictionary. It was less fun than work and paid horribly.
- vacri 12y ago
  The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play, and the recompense is simply a factor of how much economic pull the game has - if people aren't going to shell out to watch other people play, no prize money for you.
  - 300bps 12y ago
    The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play Read the book "Word Freak" and you'll read all about the people that win Scrabble tournaments. It's really sad.
    - mertd 12y ago
      Why is it sad?
      - judk 12y ago
        It's also on Netflix. Scrabble champs have no job and now money and scrape together funds to travel to events. It seems like a lifestyle that no one withing a few standard deviations of neurotypical would desire. Elite Scrabble feels an unrewarding life goal.
DrBazza 12y ago
Competition scrabble games are typically more open, where players lay out longer words to allow more opportunities to play more words and larger scores to develop. After that it's vocabulary and experience.
contingencies 12y ago
Isn't Chlorodyne a brand name and therefore capitalized? I would have rejected that. By the way, massive scrabble fan here. If anyone finds themselves in south-west China hit me up for a game!

Well, so, what makes Nigel Richards the best Scrabble Player on Earth? The article does not even answer its own leading question, which is enormously disappointing (though it is otherwise interesting). There are a couple humorous quotations, and literally two or three sentences that could be interpreted as conjecture as to why Nigel Richards is the best player by such a phenomenally large margin: some loose statements about knowing relevant probabilities. This article was a perfectly interesting read about how Richards utterly dominates Scrabble, but unfortunately plagued by a totally misleading headline: I was expecting an answer.

stinos 12y ago
exactly. It does show he most likely is the best player, but I too was expecting some interestng theory about how his brain works. That he's somehow capable of some algorithms other humans cannot even grasp. Or something like that, you get the point.
- judk 12y ago
  For a low-status game like Scrabble, what makes him unique is that people with similar brainpower cluster in more lucrative or rewarding vocations.
failrate 12y ago
One could be pedantic and say that the article correctly explains why he deserves to be "classified" as the best Scrabble player on Earth. The very last line says that he knows every legal Scrabble word. The article also claims that he has a "photographic" memory. That's certainly an important skill to have, but can't be the entire reason. Even the strongest Scrabble AI has a worse rating than Richards. The other aspect that the article mentions is a focus on the current game. Richards is not even interested in games that he has completed. So, the article does not definitively conclude, but it does offer two significant factors that are significant to the question it proposed.
- 1337biz 12y ago
  For the purpose of stimulating the discussion: The article also claims that he has a "photographic" memory. -- But a true photographic memory in this sense has never been proved to exist. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-developed-what-appears-to-be-a-ph/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-developed-what-a...
  - judk 12y ago
    You are misquoting. "Photographic" is a misnomer because exact images are not recalled. But extensive detailed recollection does exist, as the SA article explains.
michaelt 12y ago
Well, the article does say "I try to score points. The goal is to score more points than your opponent." and "I’m not sure there is a secret. It’s just a matter of learning the words." Perhaps that (incredibly unsatisfying) explanation is actually true?
- thret 12y ago
  There's a 'how to play chess' book I can't recall the name of, with similarly useless advice: Rule #2: Make the right move.
  - Isofarro 12y ago
    That worked for Smyslov (7th World Chess Champion), who once quipped: "I will make 40 good moves and if you are able to do the same, the game will end in a draw."
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  So he brute forces it? What's the time per move in official scrabble tournaments?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    25 minutes for all of your moves.
dang 12y ago
I thought we'd delinkbaitified the title enough last night, but evidently not, so we've sent it in for another round.

ghshephard 12y ago

Given that he has a better Scrabble rating than a computer algorithm, there has to be an element of poker at this level - otherwise if it were pure probability and memorization of the words (which a computer would have done perfectly, with no room for error), then a human could not outrank a computer. I'm wondering (for the professional scrabble players out there) - do you play words differently depending on your competitor? That is, do you leave a vulnerability with some players, that you wouldn't with others? Or do you play the same game every time. I was surprised that element of Nigel Richard's Scrabble game wasn't discussed.

icelancer 12y ago
It could just be that the Scrabble AI is not sufficiently advanced to explore the entirety of the decision tree. For all board states X, there are many deep trees that increase in complexity at boards X+1, X+2, etc (though it's arguable that it decreases in complexity in the late game, or can a game can be played "closed" to reduce the chances of bingos). It may not be purely metagaming that causes the difference between AI and humans; the algorithm probably plays a far-from-perfect game.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  The other advantage a computer (probably?) has over a human, is the analysis of probabilities of words being available given whats known about the word play of the opponent given their current (unknown) tiles, and tiles already played. That is, I suspect it's possible, but difficult for a human player to surmise the probability of tiles hidden in an opponents pieces based on the words they've recently played (or not played) - but being able to do so, based on a count of which tiles have already been played and are visible on the table, is probably more challenging - but straightforward for a computer. Are the games that players have played publicly available? While I presume that players at this level have memorized all 270K or so words, they might have tendencies to favor some words versus others, in particular scenarios - that's another advantage that a computer would have - adjusting it's play based on a players history.
  - 12y ago

kp25 12y ago

So, It seems like No Human Player could beat Nigel, time to take over the challenge of building a better Scrabble AI than Nigel is!

noswi 12y ago
Well, you can still jump in on the very fun and competetive Al Zimmerman's challenge (which ends in about a week, though), the current task is exactly about solving the given Scrabble sets in the best possible way: http://www.azspcs.net/Contest/AlphabetCity http://www.azspcs.net/Contest/AlphabetCity

mrb 12y ago

"there are more than 16 billion ways to draw seven tiles" Wrong. Even assuming the order matter (which is false, ABCDEFG is the same draw as GFEDCBA) and even assuming there are 7 tiles of each letter and 7 blanks in a bag (which is false), that would be 27^7 = 10.5 billion ways. Because these assumptions are false, the real number of combinations is lower.

kqr2 12y ago
For calculating the number of combinations, it looks like they are simply using 100 choose 7, or C(100, 7) which yields 16,007,560,800. http://what-are-the-chances.blogspot.com/2008/02/7-letter-words-and-8-card-suits.html http://what-are-the-chances.blogspot.com/2008/02/7-letter-wo...
- psychometry 12y ago
  That doesn't take into account repeated letters. You actually want the number of 7-combinations of the multiset { A * 5, B * 3, C * 4, ... } or whatever the letter frequencies are. That's for the first draw from the bag.
DanBC 12y ago
I was noodling around to find the correct answer to this question, when I found this. It has nothing to do with why Nigel is the best Scrabble player. "It is very hard to draw a rack that does not contain a valid word" - http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/6075 http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/6075 This statsSE answer includes an R program.
Terr_ 12y ago
I started working on a python script to monte-carlo the problem, but it's pretty complex. Even if we assume that you always start with a full bag of 100 tiles, every tile drawn changes the odds of the next draw in a different way. Right now I've got a series of "unique draws" that grow slightly slower than the number of tries, but I'm not yet sure what single number it would converge to at infinity tries.
- 12y ago

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Because he can make a word out of O X Y G E N ? Edit: see one of the earliest Simpsons episodes Edit: it is interesting that the articles assumption has been he is better than current algorithms and so better than algorithms can be. This just indicates to me a lack of time and research into the correct algorithm. That's not meant as a trivial throwaway comment but that in pretty much every area of human endeavour we have lots of headroom for new algorithms.

kevinwang 12y ago

Can he actually beat the AI in a head-to-head match?

zem 12y ago
yes (as can a lot of the other top players). though due to the element of luck in the game, the right question is whether he would have an overall winning record after repeatedly playing quackle (also yes; as of now he's definitely better than the state of the art ai)

300bps 12y ago

Richards has won an estimated $215,000 in his tournament career Here you have a person that has dedicated their life to playing a game professionally and has attained literally the top ranking in he world. Yet in his entire career has made less than many software engineers make in a year. That is why I stopped participating in Scrabble tournaments years ago. Casual play is fun but tournament play is about memorizing a dictionary. It was less fun than work and paid horribly.

vacri 12y ago
The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play, and the recompense is simply a factor of how much economic pull the game has - if people aren't going to shell out to watch other people play, no prize money for you.
- 300bps 12y ago
  The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play Read the book "Word Freak" and you'll read all about the people that win Scrabble tournaments. It's really sad.
  - mertd 12y ago
    Why is it sad?
    - judk 12y ago
      It's also on Netflix. Scrabble champs have no job and now money and scrape together funds to travel to events. It seems like a lifestyle that no one withing a few standard deviations of neurotypical would desire. Elite Scrabble feels an unrewarding life goal.

DrBazza 12y ago

Competition scrabble games are typically more open, where players lay out longer words to allow more opportunities to play more words and larger scores to develop. After that it's vocabulary and experience.

contingencies 12y ago

Isn't Chlorodyne a brand name and therefore capitalized? I would have rejected that. By the way, massive scrabble fan here. If anyone finds themselves in south-west China hit me up for a game!