Ntuple Indemnity

With less than two weeks to go before Western Canadians and just as thoroughly unprepared as I was before New Orleans, I can use all the help I can get when it comes to word study. As far as study aids go I still swear by the freeware flashcard program LeXpert, though if Mike Wolfberg’s WHAT is everything it promises to be, I would consider shelling out a few bucks for a copy.

I glanced over Mohan Chunkath’s Daily Scrabble Puzzle Blog earlier this week, but promptly forgot about it in spite of its bingo stem exercises. It’s a great idea, mind you, but because it comes from one of the directors of the club in Chennai (Madras), India, the whole thing is in SOWPODS. Given that I am not preparing for the World Championships, nor does it seem I will be moving to England at least until my education is finished, this makes it rather useless for my purposes. It would probably serve to confuse me more than help.

Of course, today I realized that the bingo puzzle solutions do indicate the words that are unplayable in North America with the standard pound symbol, so maybe it could come in handy. But that only applies to the bingo stems, and not the Java-powered anagram crossword puzzles. A pity, really, as an OWL edition of that puzzle blog would be of much utility.

Last Friday I got two rounds of Scrabble in with Dan Lazin of The Edmonton Journal, formerly of The Gateway. I will let him tell the story when the time comes (and direct you all to it accordingly), but know this: I still can’t believe I let him get away with SWANEES* for 80 points. The convenient excuse is that we were both thinking of SWAMIES. Fortunately, that was not the game that was photographed.

There is a word in that rack, WAENESS, but I do not recall there being a place for it at the time.

Remember Vote Out Anders? Leave it up to none other than Steve Smith to top it with a guerrilla campaign of his own: Defeat Jung-Suk Ryu. Do not be fooled, citizens: Ryu, an occasional reader of this blog (at some point or another, anyway) who has accumulated a few headlines by being the token nineteen-year-old running for Edmonton City Council in Ward 5, bears no relation to the dragon-punching, ha-do-ken-throwing karate champ of the same name – and that is the least of his hoodwinkings.

As mentioned on the site above, one thing that falls under scrutiny is Mr. Ryu’s frequent claims to have won university debating awards at the national level. This appears to be in reference to the Top Novice lamp awarded to him at the 2003 Hugill Cup, which I recall to be the direct consequence of both a Chris Jones judging decision in Round 5 and the disqualification of the actual highest-scoring novice at the tournament, Sharon’s pink rubber duck Bismarck. Sometimes I think debating should follow Scrabble’s example and award a prize for the Most Outrageous Phoney.

Unfortunately, Jung-Suk has removed his own campaign weblog, which is a tragic loss to those of us who derive hours of wild amusement from the obliviously shameless self-promotion of others. But replace a thoroughly guilty pleasure with a dissection akin to a Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I’d call that a net gain.

Lastly: I know I pointed this out last time, but is this the greatest blog ever or what? When the linguistics professors there are not busy busting malaprops they cover everything from lie detection to the phonetic sexual attraction of names. Just what advantage does ‘Nick’ confer?

You know you are behind schedule on the path to being someone important in the world when your peers include Olympic gold medallists.

Yesterday – as almost the whole country should know by now, even Summer Olympics hermits such as yours truly – gymnast Kyle Shewfelt claimed Canada’s first gold medal in Athens. This came as a surprise, not in the sense that I didn’t expect the representatives of my dear country to ever get back on their feet, but because Mr. Shewfelt was one of my elementary school classmates at Queen Elizabeth. (Queen Elizabeth Jr./Sr. High, that is, not the adjacent Queen Elizabeth Elementary… it’s complicated. Suffice to say, that was back when GATE was all housed in one school, not eight.) We never knew each other very well, and it is unlikely he remembers me, but he looks pretty much exactly the same today as he did eleven years ago, aside from having hit puberty sometime along the way. Back then he had a reputation for being the resident gymnast, much like how many of the other students had reputations for their respective special hobbies and super powers à la Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, only they haven’t won Olympic medals, now have they. Somewhere in this paragraph lies the moral of the story, that indeed, real people around you can be national heroes. Then again, they could also go into politics.

The closest I’ve gotten to winning an Olympic gold in the past few days, or an award of any sort, is the Most Outrageous Successful Phoney prize at an eight-round tournament I played yesterday, in which I finished second place in my division with a 5-3 (+381) record. At big events like the Western Canadian Scrabble Championship, this earns nothing less than a statuette of a horse’s ass, but all that one-day mini-tournaments bestow are bragging rights – and what bragging rights they are. I played BETRAYS for 99 points just the turn before, but it was challenged off because I tacked it onto an ill-advised hook in a desperation play, putting the S on CAW to make SCAW*. Then my opponent opened the triple line by playing PEES, but it was too low for me to play BETRAYS with the E making EPEES, so instead I confidently dumped the other word I spotted. No, not BARYTES. At 97 points on a triple-word score, BREASTY* is a horse’s ass of a play if I ever saw one.

The great thing about Scrabble is that unlike gymnastics, it is one of those things that you can master without having to start at the age of six. Athletics are not alone in differing; despite not being quite so intertwined with physical conditioning, the visual and performing arts are harder to get into than one would think, should one have no experience prior to leaving high school. The stars we hear about in all these fields invariably started early with a premonition of a destiny to fulfil and pursued it from the beginning. As somebody who is drawing-impaired but holds private aspirations of a brief foray into animation someday, I challenge thee: just try to get into an art college that does not expect you to come in fully armed with a portfolio at the ready. Entry level it ain’t.

There are a few exceptions, of course. The film trade, with the considerable resources that it demands, offers next to no opportunity to get hands-on experience as a child or adolescent. Novelists almost exclusively start late in life, though who knows how many years they spend trying to nail a breakthrough manuscript. And correct me if I’m wrong, but a few sports – curling, for instance – are more amicable to latecomers, though playing a few bonspiels in youth clubs undoubtedly offer a head start.

In most cases, though, it is already too late to shift gears into a new pursuit. Now go do something useful in your life before it’s too late.

This is going to be one of those entries where I step aside and let the more qualified do the talking.

Throughout the week, Slate has been running a five-part feature on the National Scrabble Championship by Division 1 player Dan Wachtell. It’s more of a bird’s-eye-view, or at least a Division-1-player’s-eye-view, of the action in New Orleans and covers a great deal about the Scrabble culture that I did not. For example, I have yet to defeat Scrabble legend Brian Cappelletto, still considered by some to be the best player in North America. Wachtell also imparts some wisdom about the strength of second-language players, the world-class Thai contingent in particular. Naturally, one of the entries also concerns the LEZ scandal. If you liked my Scrabble coverage earlier this month, get reading, because this is even better and a lot more accessible.

For those of you interested in where video games are headed with Nintendo and Sony’s new portable systems, right now there is no better analysis than the “State of the Handheld Industry: DS vs. PSP” feature at GameCube Advanced. It features interviews with some of the biggest names in both electronic gaming journalism and software development, some heavily favouring one system, the others undecided. At times the views and predictions about certain issues are so disparate that the only certainty is, somebody will turn out wrong.

This isn’t the only fight Sony has been picking lately. It is one of the companies that has pledged support for the Blu-ray disc format (BD-ROM), one of the two competing specifications vying to succeed DVDs as standard optical media. Regardless of who wins, format wars are always a headache for consumers; every now and then, what we really need is a side-by-side comparison of state-of-the-art technology.

I’ve watched the feature-length Pixar movies several times apiece, and just when I think I’ve caught everything, they continue to surprise me with the sheer depth of the artists’ care and attention to detail. Most of the hidden Easter eggs that I came across for the first time in this week’s pass are fairly common knowledge as far as obscure trivia goes, like how the bookshelf behind Woody when he delivers his “moving buddy” briefing in Toy Story sports several hardcovers entitled after Pixar’s pre-Toy Story shorts, Tin Toy and Knick Knack among them. But while watching A Bug’s Life again last night I noticed something that, as far as a quick flip through the major search engines and film sites I’ve found, nobody has made a point of catching before.

You know the scene where the circus bugs, freshly fired, are all having a few drinks in the empty Low Fat Lard can that serves as a bar? Listen carefully. In the background is the faint and familiar sound of a honkytonk piano playing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. That, my friends, is the Pixar difference.

Hypothetical question for the experts: your opening rack is Al’s all-consonant license plate from Toy Story 2. How many tiles do you exchange, and which ones?

Back at the Scrabble tournament earlier this month I mentioned a new game board design that I procured for beta-testing purposes. Before I comment on the board itself, I want to go into a little bit of background, as the story of how this board came into being is an interesting one.

Right now the most upscale Scrabble set commercially available in North America is Hasbro’s Deluxe Edition. For all competitive purposes, it’s useless. If you go to a typical Scrabble tournament, everybody brings their own gear, and under optimal circumstances you would be hard-pressed to find anything from the Deluxe Edition box. Nationals, however, operates differently; out of logistic concerns, the tournament employs a standard board at every table fresh out of the box.

This raised the ire of many a player back at the 2002 Nationals in San Diego, as these boards are clearly inadequate for tournament play. The ridges around the individual letter spaces, designed to hold the tiles in place, don’t hold the tiles in place; turn the board, and they are in for a slip-slide ride. Spinning the board is also a problem. With about an inch-wide bevel around the square board, it is all too common for a corner to inadvertently knock over your opponent’s rack, should he place it too close. This is not an issue for casual players, because the Deluxe Edition comes with a storage ring that doubles as a turntable support, which raises the board high enough that toppling racks is not an issue. Tournament players cannot do the same, as it is against the rules. Yes, there is indeed a rule that says the board must be low enough so the number of tiles on your rack is visible to the other player, so one can spot overdraws or plan out-plays in the endgame.

The fallout of these complaints was that the National Scrabble Association talked to Hasbro and consulted on the design of a new tournament board to eliminate some of the problems with the Deluxe set. It was scheduled for a surprise unveiling as the board that would be used at this year’s Nationals in New Orleans.

That did not account for shipping delays en route to New Orleans from the manufacturers in China, and the boards arrived on the last day of the tournament.

Instead, a board was bestowed upon every winner of Round 30, the last game of the tournament aside from the Wright-Gibson final. The new design’s debut in tournament play was in the best-of-five final itself, and you can see a photo of it here as it looked after the deciding Game 3.

In the two weeks since the tournament I have had the opportunity to play a few casual games with the new board. While Victoria player Thana Kamabanonda covers pretty much what I think in this post, I have a few things to address.

The new design is a huge improvement on the Deluxe set. The ridges are high – perhaps too high, as I observed that it took longer than usual to slot the tiles into place when making a play. But once they are in, they stay in. The turning mechanism is stable and avoids raising the surface too high. The board is thin enough for easy transport in a tote bag, though the wooden framing adds some weight and makes it heavier than it looks. Gone is the outer bevel of the Deluxe Edition, though there is a wide margin on one side sporting the Scrabble logo and the tile count, so it does feel big enough for a square board that knocking racks over is still something to be cautious about.

The set comes with two wooden racks that match the frame, but these are just asking for trouble. They are too narrow and too steep, and tiles look like they might fall off at any moment. At Nationals a lot of people will bring their own racks anyway, but if Hasbro is actually planning to sell this thing, they need better racks now.

I am unsure as to the look of the board – specifically, how the plastic surface is the dull grey of a Civil War ironclad. Let’s be honest: it’s ugly, and it doesn’t match the frame. Aesthetically, it looks unfinished. Now, in the context of a game, this does not matter so much, and the fact that the background is as dull as it is actually evades excessive glare and other distractions. But if Hasbro wants to send this to store shelves, it is in serious need of colour coordination.

I still prefer my personal board, a circular wooden one with a green marble-pattern finish made by Calgary player Ross Stevenson, which I keep in a padded Sabian cymbal case. Round boards are an indispensible comfort once you play with them frequently, though they are a bit difficult to lug around. Also, if Hasbro wants to sell a line of boards geared towards competitive types, they might as well make it a complete out-of-the-box experience. Right now, the woodcarved tiles in every Scrabble set on the market are against tournament regulations, because the grooved surfaces are an invitation to cheat. The tile bags are also poorly made; mine ripped at the seams not long ago, but I replaced it with a more spacious flock bag with a cylindrical bottom, far less prone to wear and tear. If you are going to sell a tournament board, sell it with flat plastic tournament tiles, stable racks and a better bag. Omitting the clock I can understand, as a standard digital timer like the SamTimer or Adjudicator is by far the most expensive part of a complete tournament-ready Scrabble set, but everything else needs to be there. There’s no point in targeting competitive players if after buying the set, they still have to run over to Word Gear and replace half their equipment.