Last night was my weekly Scrabble club at our local library.
I played 3 games with the best player in the club - best in the sense that he is an excellent anagrammer.
I beat him handily the first game - he was getting lousy tiles apparently and I was getting great tiles, had two bingoes.
So I was feeling pretty good...then in Game Two the wheels fell off. I got all vowels to start with and kept getting them for the rest of the game.
Then came Game Three...and the same thing happened. I'd spell a three letter word to get rid of some vowels, and draw - invariably - two vowels and a consonant. And the vowels were not good ones - Is and Us rather than As and Es. In fact on one turn I drew two Us and two Is.
Late in the game I managed to get a bingo that got me even, but had to place it in such a way that it opened up a triple, which enabled my opponent to get 30 points. Meantime, as is usual after I have a bingo, I drew all vowels again and was thrust right back into that rut.
Very frustrating.
I don't think this guy is any better than I am, frankly. It's just that 3 games out of 4 he is able to draw better tiles.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Friday, May 25, 2018
The Tale of the Tiles...or, My Tournament Record So Far
Here's my Scrabble Tournament Record.
May 21, 2016. The very first tournament, sanctioned or otherwise, that I played in, held in Loveland, Colorado. I won 3, lost 3, tied 1 and had a "B", whatever that means. The story of that tournament is that I was 2 and 3, I think, then my next opponent had some kind of health issue and left without telling anyone. So I won that game. Then I was to play that same guy in the position round, so I won that by default, too. However it worked out, I took 3rd place out of 8 players in C division. (I don't remember the tie, but unfortunately I didn't keep my records for that tournament. The event that sticks in my memory is the guy who left without telling anyone where he was going, so I won two games by default.)
Ending rating:758
September 17, 2016. I placed 7th out of 8th in the next tournament, winning only 2 times.
Ending rating: 693
May 20, 2017. I missed the January tournament because of a storm, I believe/ For this tournament in May, I won 5, lost 3, and took home 3rd place.
Ending rating: 738
September 16, 2017. I won only 3 games, lost 5, and was 9th out of 12th. For this tournament, there was an A and B division for some reason, with the Cs lumped in with the Bs.
Ending rating: 741
November 18, 2017. The previous four tournaments were held in Loveland, CO. This tournament was held in Monument, at a person's house. (Or should I say, mansion?) I lost all 8 games in the C division. Because every single game I drew lousy tiles. All vowels or all consonants every turn. Turn in three of something, get three of something else. Every single game. If I did get some decent tiles, they came for one rack only, usually at the end of the game. I remember in one game, getting one bingo with about 2 turns left to go, and after that I was still down by 200 to the other player...and drew lousy tiles as I normally do after any bingo I ever get!
Ending rating: 630
January 1, 2018. First tournament of the new year. I won 3 and lost 5. Of the two I won, both were against members of my Cheyenne club whom I brought with me.
Ending rating: 610
May 19, 2018. Second tournament of the new year. Won 5, lost 3, and took third place because another player, who also finished 5-3, had less of a point spread than I did. One of the games I lost was to a woman from my Cheyenne Scrabble Club. I got stuck with the Z at the end, with no place to put it, so ended up giving her 20 points, and she won by 6.
This tournament had 30 players, so there were 10 people in the C division, although everyone only played 8 games.
Ending rating: 671
MY TOURNAMENT RECORD AS OF May 24, 2018
Rating: 671.
Recrod of 21-33-1, for a winning percentage of 39.1%.
Average score 316-342
And 671 is the new starting point! I don't intend to go below 671 again and indeed in the next 4 tournaments that I'll be attending before the Word Cup, I intend to get my rating up to the 900s!
May 21, 2016. The very first tournament, sanctioned or otherwise, that I played in, held in Loveland, Colorado. I won 3, lost 3, tied 1 and had a "B", whatever that means. The story of that tournament is that I was 2 and 3, I think, then my next opponent had some kind of health issue and left without telling anyone. So I won that game. Then I was to play that same guy in the position round, so I won that by default, too. However it worked out, I took 3rd place out of 8 players in C division. (I don't remember the tie, but unfortunately I didn't keep my records for that tournament. The event that sticks in my memory is the guy who left without telling anyone where he was going, so I won two games by default.)
Ending rating:758
September 17, 2016. I placed 7th out of 8th in the next tournament, winning only 2 times.
Ending rating: 693
May 20, 2017. I missed the January tournament because of a storm, I believe/ For this tournament in May, I won 5, lost 3, and took home 3rd place.
Ending rating: 738
September 16, 2017. I won only 3 games, lost 5, and was 9th out of 12th. For this tournament, there was an A and B division for some reason, with the Cs lumped in with the Bs.
Ending rating: 741
November 18, 2017. The previous four tournaments were held in Loveland, CO. This tournament was held in Monument, at a person's house. (Or should I say, mansion?) I lost all 8 games in the C division. Because every single game I drew lousy tiles. All vowels or all consonants every turn. Turn in three of something, get three of something else. Every single game. If I did get some decent tiles, they came for one rack only, usually at the end of the game. I remember in one game, getting one bingo with about 2 turns left to go, and after that I was still down by 200 to the other player...and drew lousy tiles as I normally do after any bingo I ever get!
Ending rating: 630
January 1, 2018. First tournament of the new year. I won 3 and lost 5. Of the two I won, both were against members of my Cheyenne club whom I brought with me.
Ending rating: 610
May 19, 2018. Second tournament of the new year. Won 5, lost 3, and took third place because another player, who also finished 5-3, had less of a point spread than I did. One of the games I lost was to a woman from my Cheyenne Scrabble Club. I got stuck with the Z at the end, with no place to put it, so ended up giving her 20 points, and she won by 6.
This tournament had 30 players, so there were 10 people in the C division, although everyone only played 8 games.
Ending rating: 671
MY TOURNAMENT RECORD AS OF May 24, 2018
Rating: 671.
Recrod of 21-33-1, for a winning percentage of 39.1%.
Average score 316-342
And 671 is the new starting point! I don't intend to go below 671 again and indeed in the next 4 tournaments that I'll be attending before the Word Cup, I intend to get my rating up to the 900s!
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Time...time...time
I've got 4 months to study for the next Scrabble tournament in Loveland, Colorado, which is happening in September.
In one sense that's a lot of time, but I know from past experience that time passes before you know it.
Unfortunately, since I am a freelance writer and have to work, I can't spend as much time studying as I would like, or need to.
However, I'll shortly be launching an IndieGoGo or Kickstarter project that will help me with that little problem.
But for today, the morning was wasted because I had to run around taking care of a legal issue. I'm garnishing the wages of an individual who took money from me to create a website, and then didn't do the job. (Yes, it was stupid of me to have paid her in advance, but I had thought that an advance payment would engender good will - hah!)
Anyway, I took her to small claims court and won and have garnished her wages. But here in Cheyenne - and elsewehere - you can only garnish someone's wages in increments of three months. That is incredibly stupid. A garnishment should last until the debt is paid off, not just for three months!
So today I had to go file a "Writ of Continuing Garnishment", and I still haven't completed that task after two trips into town because there's these little things they don't tell you until you return with your copies and find out, oh no, you've got to get a certified mail receipt, too, even though you haven't yet sent out the envelope to the (Insert appropriate Tournament Scrabble word here)'s
employer.
Oh! The word describing what this woman is, actually is in the regular Scrabble dictionary, just used as a verb, not a noun!
I am using it as a noun.
Anyway, I'm not going back into town again until tomorrow, because I have four articles to write for one client and at least one article to write for another client. If after those articles have been written I still have the mental energy to learn some words, I will do so.
In one sense that's a lot of time, but I know from past experience that time passes before you know it.
Unfortunately, since I am a freelance writer and have to work, I can't spend as much time studying as I would like, or need to.
However, I'll shortly be launching an IndieGoGo or Kickstarter project that will help me with that little problem.
But for today, the morning was wasted because I had to run around taking care of a legal issue. I'm garnishing the wages of an individual who took money from me to create a website, and then didn't do the job. (Yes, it was stupid of me to have paid her in advance, but I had thought that an advance payment would engender good will - hah!)
Anyway, I took her to small claims court and won and have garnished her wages. But here in Cheyenne - and elsewehere - you can only garnish someone's wages in increments of three months. That is incredibly stupid. A garnishment should last until the debt is paid off, not just for three months!
So today I had to go file a "Writ of Continuing Garnishment", and I still haven't completed that task after two trips into town because there's these little things they don't tell you until you return with your copies and find out, oh no, you've got to get a certified mail receipt, too, even though you haven't yet sent out the envelope to the (Insert appropriate Tournament Scrabble word here)'s
employer.
Oh! The word describing what this woman is, actually is in the regular Scrabble dictionary, just used as a verb, not a noun!
I am using it as a noun.
Anyway, I'm not going back into town again until tomorrow, because I have four articles to write for one client and at least one article to write for another client. If after those articles have been written I still have the mental energy to learn some words, I will do so.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Anagram Fail #1
I hope that this will be the first and only time I have to title a post, "Anagram Fail," although realistically there will probably be many more to come!
I drove down to Fort Collins today to play a woman 3 games of Scrabble. We're part of a "marathon" Scrabble tournament consisting of 10 women. Over the course of 3 months we meet to play each other 3 games, individually, and after everyone has played everyone else, we'll get together to award prizes.
It's an informal tournament, not a sanctioned one, just a group of friends and Scrabble lovers getting together in a semi-structured environment to add a little spice to the games.
I won the first game, lost the second by six points because I didn't find the bingo that I referenced in my title, and won the third because I found two bingos, that time.
My opponent played the word PIERCE vertically. If I could play a word with a D or R below that, that was a bingo, I'd win.
In addition, there was a D in another part of the board, that also had enough room so that if I could play a bingo through it, I'd also win the game.
I could not find the bingo.
I had
What I did not see was NATURED, which was the word with the "R" in just the right spot for me to get a bingo and spell PIERCER.
(There are 21 other bingos that I also didn't see, but I wasn't looking for them, either. I was desperate to find a word with the third letter from the left being an"R" or a "D."
I then shifted my attention to that free D, trying to find an 8 letter word with that extra D.
And there were two.
I never would have guessed DENUDATE in a month of Sundays, but I should have at least seen ADDUCENT and wondered if it could be a word. But I didn't see it, either!
I don't feel too bad about not seeing either of those 2 words but I really should have seen NATURED.
What other bingos did I get?
In the first game, RAVINES, spelling STET where TET had been.
In the second game, not only did I miss NATURED when I really needed it, but earlier on, in two subsequent turns, I missed
DOATERS which anagrammed to ROASTED
and
STARLED which anagrammed to DARTLES. I have never heard of DARTLES so don't mind missing that!
DARTLES is to "dart repeatedly." Pish, tosh, I say.
But I'm really embarrassed about not seeing that DOATERS would anagram to ROASTED. I usually do pretty good finding the -ED and -ER bingos if I know the word to begin with.
In our third and final game, I had:
MEWLERS.... I think the R was a blank but unfortunately I didn't write down the letters I had, I guess I must have anagrammed it without hesitation. I placed the S on top of CARING for SCARING.
And FEATURES (playing through an E already on the board) as well.
On Monday, May 28, I'll be playing a few games in Wellington, CO with a woman who is ranked considerably higher than I am. She's in B division.
I've never played her before and it's not part of the "marathon" tournament, I just saw her at the May 19, 2018 tournament (in which I took 3rd place in Division C with a 5-3 record and a spread better than my opponent who also had a 5-3 record at the end, with me having defeated her in the position round) and someone had told me that this woman didn't work and liked to play Scrabble even with those in lesser divisions, so I asked her.
(I've never played her, but I talked to her at a previous tournament, and she has an interesting family. Her father was a diplomat in the 1970s and was in Vietnam just before everyone pulled out before the war...)
My next "marathon" set of games will be on May 30.
I drove down to Fort Collins today to play a woman 3 games of Scrabble. We're part of a "marathon" Scrabble tournament consisting of 10 women. Over the course of 3 months we meet to play each other 3 games, individually, and after everyone has played everyone else, we'll get together to award prizes.
It's an informal tournament, not a sanctioned one, just a group of friends and Scrabble lovers getting together in a semi-structured environment to add a little spice to the games.
I won the first game, lost the second by six points because I didn't find the bingo that I referenced in my title, and won the third because I found two bingos, that time.
My opponent played the word PIERCE vertically. If I could play a word with a D or R below that, that was a bingo, I'd win.
In addition, there was a D in another part of the board, that also had enough room so that if I could play a bingo through it, I'd also win the game.
I could not find the bingo.
I had
U N T A E D ?
I saw the bingo UNTAMED, but what wouldn't do me any good.What I did not see was NATURED, which was the word with the "R" in just the right spot for me to get a bingo and spell PIERCER.
(There are 21 other bingos that I also didn't see, but I wasn't looking for them, either. I was desperate to find a word with the third letter from the left being an"R" or a "D."
I then shifted my attention to that free D, trying to find an 8 letter word with that extra D.
And there were two.
I never would have guessed DENUDATE in a month of Sundays, but I should have at least seen ADDUCENT and wondered if it could be a word. But I didn't see it, either!
I don't feel too bad about not seeing either of those 2 words but I really should have seen NATURED.
What other bingos did I get?
In the first game, RAVINES, spelling STET where TET had been.
In the second game, not only did I miss NATURED when I really needed it, but earlier on, in two subsequent turns, I missed
DOATERS which anagrammed to ROASTED
and
STARLED which anagrammed to DARTLES. I have never heard of DARTLES so don't mind missing that!
DARTLES is to "dart repeatedly." Pish, tosh, I say.
But I'm really embarrassed about not seeing that DOATERS would anagram to ROASTED. I usually do pretty good finding the -ED and -ER bingos if I know the word to begin with.
In our third and final game, I had:
MEWLERS.... I think the R was a blank but unfortunately I didn't write down the letters I had, I guess I must have anagrammed it without hesitation. I placed the S on top of CARING for SCARING.
And FEATURES (playing through an E already on the board) as well.
On Monday, May 28, I'll be playing a few games in Wellington, CO with a woman who is ranked considerably higher than I am. She's in B division.
I've never played her before and it's not part of the "marathon" tournament, I just saw her at the May 19, 2018 tournament (in which I took 3rd place in Division C with a 5-3 record and a spread better than my opponent who also had a 5-3 record at the end, with me having defeated her in the position round) and someone had told me that this woman didn't work and liked to play Scrabble even with those in lesser divisions, so I asked her.
(I've never played her, but I talked to her at a previous tournament, and she has an interesting family. Her father was a diplomat in the 1970s and was in Vietnam just before everyone pulled out before the war...)
My next "marathon" set of games will be on May 30.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
The Scrabbleist Manifesto
There are two Scrabble organizations that put on sanctioned tournaments (meaning after each tournament your rating goes up or down depending on your success), NASPA, which costs money to join and which holds no tournaments in Wyoming or Colorado, and WGPO, the Word Game Players Organization, which does hold tournaments in Colorado, and which is free to join.
From July 7 - 11, 2018, the National Scrabble tournament, WORD CUP 8, hosted by the WGPO, will be held in Burbank. At the moment there are 114 entries.
I will not be attending, because I live in Cheyenne and the cost to go to California and stay for 5 days is prohibitive. as I only have a 671 rating! If I'm going to go to a National tournament, I intend to win.
Which means that I am going to start training seriously for the 2019 WGPO National Tournament. Nothing has been announced yet, but I'm going to assume that it will be held in July, somewhere on the east or west coast.
So, here's what I need to do to win the C division in a national Scrabble tournament in 2019:
1. Start studying now. I know all the 2-letter words, but there are still a handful of 3-letter words that I'm not quite sure about. Then I have to start on the 4-letter words...
2. Start saving now. Depending on where the tournament is being held, I'd love to take an Amtrak train to and from it (having to go to Denver to do so as there are no passenger trains passing through Cheyenne, more's the pity). I'd also like to stay in the hotel where the event is taking place, and those hotels are usually over $100 a night.
3. Continue to practice. The Colorado Scrabble Club holds 3 sanctioned tournaments each year.
The upcoming tournaments are:
So that's 4 tournaments between now and July 2019 (when I'm assuming WORD CUP 9 will take place) and I'd like to be near the top of Division C in ranking at that time...if not even at the bottom of Division B!
But the main thing to do is study. Study. Study.
The NASPA website is: scrabbleplayers.org/w/Welcome_to_NASPAWiki
The WGPO website is wordgameplayers.org/
From July 7 - 11, 2018, the National Scrabble tournament, WORD CUP 8, hosted by the WGPO, will be held in Burbank. At the moment there are 114 entries.
I will not be attending, because I live in Cheyenne and the cost to go to California and stay for 5 days is prohibitive. as I only have a 671 rating! If I'm going to go to a National tournament, I intend to win.
Which means that I am going to start training seriously for the 2019 WGPO National Tournament. Nothing has been announced yet, but I'm going to assume that it will be held in July, somewhere on the east or west coast.
So, here's what I need to do to win the C division in a national Scrabble tournament in 2019:
1. Start studying now. I know all the 2-letter words, but there are still a handful of 3-letter words that I'm not quite sure about. Then I have to start on the 4-letter words...
2. Start saving now. Depending on where the tournament is being held, I'd love to take an Amtrak train to and from it (having to go to Denver to do so as there are no passenger trains passing through Cheyenne, more's the pity). I'd also like to stay in the hotel where the event is taking place, and those hotels are usually over $100 a night.
3. Continue to practice. The Colorado Scrabble Club holds 3 sanctioned tournaments each year.
The upcoming tournaments are:
- September 2018
- January 2019
- May 2019
So that's 4 tournaments between now and July 2019 (when I'm assuming WORD CUP 9 will take place) and I'd like to be near the top of Division C in ranking at that time...if not even at the bottom of Division B!
But the main thing to do is study. Study. Study.
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