there’s definitely a gulf between someone who knows how to play chess and someone who plays chess, but it’s nothing compared to scrabble
ALTspecifically, “uwu” is being added to the international english scrabble dictionary, which is apparently a big deal because uuw is a terrible tile combination otherwise
(via @airlock)
I tried to write an essay about competitive scrabble but got so overwhelmed by it I stopped. But its insane.
So for most players, the challenge of Scrabble is just thinking of words, but at high level its literally not a problem. Instead it plays more like a card game where player's share a deck.
Each bag contains a known number of pieces. Players card count to figure out what letters are left to be played. Players have biases towards certain words. You can earn points but you can also block point squares with ridiculous words.
So you can place a word with the intention of preventing your opponent from playing a word they're statistically likely to play into a high points square because you know there are no loose 'o's left in the bag.
Its hard to imagine that these strategies could exist at all, and yet they're executed with precision.
