Quote of the Day (Dawn)

"It doesnt get more painful than what im about to do to you" - Fisch, just before bingoing with turquois on the triple word line for 128 points.

Scrabble rule the twentieth

So, I went and violated Scrabble rule the ninth and taunted Fisch out of his online Scrabble retirement. He has mercilessly killed me in something like eight games straight. Which leads me to believe online Scrabble is rigged. Because I'm just not that bad. I'm not. I can't be.
However, today, out of defeat, I salvaged the pride in playing the player.
(That's the rule right there in case you missed it.)
All winter Fisch and I had been playing hours and hours and hours of Scrabble, and no one remembers win/loss records or anything like that, but sometimes a play or two will just stand out for some reason. Like there were five days in a row where he would play ricier or riciest or ricy even though all derivations are invalid.
And then there was the time I played outseer. And Fisch challenged it. And I was sad when it wasn't in the book.
Then today, I have outseer on my rack again, and I'm losing by about a hundred and I've had the crappiest racks of all time. I need to bingo. So...I play outseer. And I hope that he remembers that I've played that word before and lets it go. And in fact, in the chat he writes:


Fisch: outseer
Fisch: i seem to rem that...but it wouldnt make sense...one who outsees?
Fisch: grrr
And I play it totally cool.

Dawn: ive played it b4 dingus
Fisch: hm did i sucesfully challenge it be4?
Dawn: of course.eyeroll
Dawn: riciest!
Fisch: 80 points...ahhhh...i dunno....ok ure turn.

He didn't challenge it!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH
I laughed. A lot. I laugh still.

I love this game.

Quote of the Day

Also, your stats currently show you are playing -1 games. It's official, you're no longer playing Scrabble; it's PLAYING YOU! -Texas April

Oh, and Fisch would like it known that he still owns me in Scrabble. I bingoed TWICE TWICE!!! in three moves and still...I lose by two hundred points and have to concede. It's just not fair. Stupid Scrabble :-(

I now look forward to Fisch's comment of "it's over, dear."

Coz we all like to Scrab

I think I have 14 Scrabulous games going right now. Including my personal nightmare, a three person game where I can't play phonies. I am getting my ass kicked. I hate regular games so much.
The word mun has been played on me three times in the last two days. I challenged it the first time. Doh.

Of course, as awesome as online Scrabble has been, nothing beats actual tiles. I played Scrabble with some people from the club tonight and won two out of three games. Ugh I played the phony tearies AGAIN cause I couldn't remember what word was there. Seriate. Aeriest. Idiot. Maybe that'll help me remember. I did manage to bingo with zaniest with the z on the triple letter AND Heating where I hooked the h onto fe and the e onto ar. It was beautiful. My opponent plum lost his mind when I played zaniest and decided to exchange four tiles three times in a row. I crushed him something like 478 to 242. And then I got him to challenge limn! My favorite akeelah and the bee word. He lost the challenge and gave up.
We like crushing people.

Scrabble lesson the ninth

F-train: I don't read your Scrabble blog.
Me: mmm...I can tell.

F-train came to visit me in the ghetto, braved the evils of Times Square to buy a Scrabble set and violated his previously declared "I wont ever play you in Scrabble anymore because you know 'words'" rule. And for all these amazingly nice things from a guy known as "assface," I did not blog about our game. F-train, on the other hand, went and told my Scrabble tutor about my two...er...maybe three mistakes in the game. So, after being mercilessly taunted by Fisch for the last two days because I let said assface play "Fi" on me, while I was too busy looking for a bingo with the tiles: deeitss. (I came up with sedites and desisters, but F-train challenged them both off the board.) I have decided to set the record straight on my 300 point destruction of F-train. Reenactment style.

Well, ok, we're only going to reenact one particular series of genius moves on my part. Never mind that I got him to challenge the word destain or that I played yi on him without a challenge or that in the middle he was crying about his bad tiles and how he needs a handicap.

F-train decided to adopt a closed board strategy on me, which actually is a pretty good road to take...if you know a lot of high scoring three and four letter words and all the possible hooks. F-train. Does. Not.

So, he plays something -- I don't remember what, but I pluralize it to make the word soja. Which he doesn't challenge, even though I needle him to.



This leaves both the J and the a hanging in double word scoring lanes. I have QDITESA on my rack, so I can make a word with the J on the double,but Ftrain will probably take that, I just hope I'm able to dump the q on that double word after he plays.

F-train thinks for a long time, periodically saying "I know you want that j", but instead he exchanges! HA!

I'm about to play Jet, when I decide for rack sake, dump the q and the d. So...I make



F-train doesn't challenge. I draw y, a, n. Boo. Stupid y.

Plus, I figure he'd definitely take the j double word now. But no!

He plays:



And then triumphantly says "well at least I blocked you." (Better play would have been playing the o under the j.)

At first I was mad because he did block jet...but then I saw that really, he gave me a way to play the y off with the j for the double word.



Aya!

And so, boys and girls, today's Scrabble lesson: you mess with the bull...you get the horns.

I now await Fisch's comment of "Fi."

I'd like to think I am to blame

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I love English

So the single biggest non-memorization based technique that helped my Scrabble game was learning to put the letters on your rack in predictable order based on knowledge of the English language. ees and ars together, us preceded by the other vowels, ing clumped together at the end. In this way, and I guess it's been a gift and a curse, I am now the self-proclaimed bingo master. Sometimes my words are fake...but sometimes, just sometimes I play valid bingos of words I've never seen before. So it was tonight when I played spelter on the triple because I needed to start with the s...my opponent challenged and I was like dang. But woo hoo...spelter is evidently some kind of metal! Grin. I am becoming addicted to the internet scrabble club.

Sigh

I remember my first bingo. It was herniate in the Spring of '06. Also it was the first time I won a Scrabble game without throwing a temper tantrum.

Conversation of the Day (Dawn)

I missed the Scrabble club for the first time since I ran screaming in fear two months ago, because into every life a little surgery must fall, but here's a funny Scrabulous story.

I started a game with Alceste in which crushed him by hundreds of points, he then started a game with me. He opened with the word 'Tex' I had a very craptacular rack, so I tried to play off my ug and g to make gut or tug or xu. But all these words were rejected as invalid. So I emailed him to say that Scrabulous wasn't working, but I'd make my play as soon as I figured out what was wrong. He replied
"ok, just so you know we're playing with the French dictionary. It was the only way to level the playing field."
I laughed.
And then proceeded to bingo on him in French five times. And beat him by 400 points.

So yesterday we had this conversation:

Alceste: Speaking of which, now that it's over, can you please tell me how exactly you pulled off the french game? :)
Me: hahhaahaha...i traveled through time, learned french, played years of scrabble against a film student named francoise and then came back to 2007 to demolish you.
Alceste:well done then

Lifetime of Scrabble Tilt

I will be on Scrabble tilt for the rest of my life after the game I just played. First, I hate playing badly. But, I especially hate playing badly against an asshole.
Here's what happened. He drew the tile closest to a, so he goes first.
He says "pass." Now, any idiot that has played Scrabble for one frickin day knows that there's only one reason someone gives up double score advantage. A bingo rack that needs one letter. Ergo, therefore, any idiot knows to exchange tiles, unless they have a seven letter bingo. I, evidently, am less than an idiot, so I play pond. He bingos with hollowed. I then play three turns for single digit points trying to complete a satire rack. Which I do, I then spend three full minutes trying to find a bingo that I should already have memorized. I find it, but I decide to play a PHONY bingo which hits the triple. WITH A RACK THAT EVERYONE has memorized. He challenges. Of course. He then blocks my bingo lane. So, I spend another 6 turns with single digit plays drawing to a satine rack. Cause yeah my rack was the problem. I then bingo again, hooking an s onto tae. Which I am fairly sure is no good. He challenges. And in the end, I have something like 130 to his 542. And then he says "well that wasn't pretty. Looks like you get the mercy rule."
Kill me. And I still have two more dang games to play.
Mood: Glum.

UPDATE: I lost those two games. Including my last match, which was supposed to be the 'gimmee' against the woman that asked me to help her get better.
And at the end, when I just wanted to take my 1-3 self and get the hell outta there, I had to wait ten minutes for these newbies to finish their game because they were playing with my clock.