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boardspace.net's Crosswords game
Oct. 24th, 2022 10:31 am
COVID and Scrabble
Oct. 21st, 2022 11:28 am
Mystal's "Allow me to retort" book
Mar. 17th, 2022 02:19 pmCBC featured a recently published book, i.e. Mystal's Allow me to retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution. A Kirkus review hints at its strengths:
( Read more... )
A separate CBC headline mentions that our AIs are catching up fast to what defines us as human. Duh.
The reason I am posting now at 3am is that after an over-inquisitive mouse woke me up, I was thinking about our earlier scrabble game (in which I played voracity, quipu and exodic) which reminded of an earlier idea I had about experimenting with hexagonal scrabble tiles (HST) so that killed whatever sleep I had in me. What I like about HST is not just the more aesthetic shape, but the math behind it and the advantage of forming words in 3 directions. Of course, playing through a word requires two additional 2-letter words to be valid, but might be worth it.
Scrabble: my best play ever
Nov. 28th, 2021 07:04 pm
Scrabble 37x37
Sep. 13th, 2021 03:03 pmI realized that my newest Scrabble board (37x37 regular sized tiles/squares, on a cement table top of 1m diameter since early August) was not featured here yet, so here is the final layout after our 3rd game (CSW19 dictionary, played over 6 out of 10 calendar days, 61 turns each, 34 combined total bingos [compared to 42 in our 2nd game or 33 in our 1st] using racks of 8 instead of usual 7 tiles; first time after reducing # of tiles from 642 to 606 current count in order to limit play with overcrowded board near game end with the last bingo scored on my last turn [RIPpLES] confirming that my tweak worked; 30 blanks total, same 50pt bingo bonus for using 7+ letters from rack to form words):
Saturday, I drove all the way to London ON to pick up a used Scrabble NHL game sold on kijiji. We took Eddie with us and we got a 10 minute walk in Springbank Park by the Thames River in London (off Wonderland). That park is probably wonderful in Spring and Fall.
Sunday at 5pm CST, we hosted our first family zoom session (mom plus all brothers and their families). I had planned for 30 minutes and we ran for about 45 minutes in the end. We will try again next month before mom's planned trip.
This weekend, I played a Scrabble game against myself (with cheats and non-blocking bingo lanes) on the 33x41 board. It turns out that I actually have 21 blanks (in my 652 tiles bag) which were drawn evenly. A total 43 bingos were scored and the final score was i1-i2: 3206 vs 3589. There were 65 1/2 turns. I had one bingo lane (requiring R as first letter) opened until the game's end for 5 1/2 turns.
* i1 averaged almost 48 pts per turn, made 20 bingos (11 blanks) of which 6 were over 100 pts and one non-bingo ZORILS for 105 pts. One bingo contained multiple blanks: SCuMbaG.
* i2 averaged over 54 pts per turn, made 23 bingos (10 blanks) of which 5 were over 100 pts and one-non bingo OZONE for 236 pts. One bingo contained multiple blanks: UNPoLiTE.
Odds and ends
Dec. 28th, 2020 09:49 amOver the past few days I thought of Oblio (a cartoon I remember from when I was a child). It turns out it was released in 1971, it was actually called The Point! and it starred Ringo Starr as the narrator.
A few nights ago I had a dream about noticing in the bathroom mirror that I was shaved save for a Dali-style thin mustache, a 4-propeller mustache on top of it and thin muttonchops. Also, there was no sink and a thin countertop with a metal round plate pullout unto which the water splashed when the faucet was turned on and water simply drained on the bathroom floor towards the drain.
On Sunday, I finished the bathroom flooring and almost completed the drain pipe for the new sink. I also added a towel shelf above the bathroom window. On Monday, I finished the sink drain pipe sealing and tested it (no leaks). Still need to add back the mirror above the sink and the new dryer. Update (29th): Mirror got installed.
On the 24th we started the new and improved 33x41 scrabble board (650 tiles: 20 blanks) and finished on the 27th. I initially thought that I lost by 4 pts and then discovered that the R in my 'planers' I had played flipped as a blank. Since the word was played over a 5x word, that gave me 5 extra points, so I actually won by 1 point: 2878 — 2877. I also discovered that the board shifted when I bumped it and destroyed a few words played earlier (CHILE PEP, the N in INSHORE, the E in CRONE) thus creating an island on the board. I scored 11 bingos (6 blanks) and Marina has 13 bingos (14 blanks). I also played Marina's rack for a while scoring 5 bingos for her and gaining back over 50pts so when she took over at the end we were even-steven (before I discovered the PLANERS snafu). I trimmed the board at the end to fit our coffee table to help with the accidental bumps and shifts.
My SuperDuperScrabble 29x29 board
Sep. 25th, 2020 04:50 pmToday I designed and drew my own 29x29 scrabble board (~45.5 cm2) to be played with 401 original travel-size scrabble 12x12mm tiles (picked from 6 different sets in order to get the nearly correct letter balance based on CSW19 thesaurus which calls for 39S and 24C but which I limited to 24S and 12C). My initial full letter weights (with small vowel overcounts) are: 34A, 7B, 12C, 13D, 46E, 5F, 11G, 10H, 36I, 1J, 4K, 20L, 12M, 27N, 30O, 12P, 1Q, 28R, 24S, 26T, 14U, 4V, 3W, 1X, 6Y, 2Z. I called it SuperDuperScrabble (or QuadScrabble). I can't wait to play this using CSW19 dictionary.
