Still under .500 at Word Biz

I have been playing Scrabble at Word Biz. I'm back over 500 in the rankings (I had dropped to about 390 or so for a while), but I can't get any closer to getting to .500 in games played, i.e. more wins than losses.

What really becomes clear to me is that it's the tiles. If I get good tiles, I win, if I get bad tiles, I lose. Anyone can score big if they get all the power tiles (X, Z, Q, and J) and their opponent doesn't!

I have lost a handful of times because of stupidity on my part, opening up a triple without figuring all the options. (Unfortunately, this game allows people to see the last 7 letters that their opponent has. So I look at 'em, think, oh, they can't get to the triple if I spell this. I spell it, they get to the triple! With a common word, mark you , not one that I don't know.

About 3 months ago I'd talked about how I'd have to start studying seriously for the upcoming spelling bee (August 11) and the upcoming Scrabble Tournament in Irvine Texas (Sept 1).

Well..I still have to start studying seriously for them!

Scrabble and my return to hearing

From New York Times:  Scrabble and my return to hearing

I’VE NEVER BEEN A JUNKIE, but I feel like one when I play Scrabble. My husband, Ethan, and I are recent addicts. Every night after dinner the ancient box comes out, held together by rubber bands, filled with the board, wooden tiles, and scores from bygone games. Our new 8-pound American Heritage Dictionary is rapidly showing wear.
This Scrabble addiction is serious play. Two years ago, after a decade of deafness, I had a cochlear implant. It’s one of the few miracles in my life. I was very lucky — as soon as the implant was turned on, I could hear.
The worst parts of being deaf were losing words and not being able to hear either my own voice or other peoples’. And a third of my speaking vocabulary disappeared. I could read and understand words the way I always had, but not retain them in my brain’s dictionary. Even with the magic implant, I had to struggle to recall words. They came back gradually, and I was ecstatic at their return, but I wanted faster progress. That’s when we started to play Scrabble every night, hoping it would help me re-create and enlarge my inner dictionary.

For us, Scrabble is not just therapy or just a game. It’s a sweet way to repair a relationship decimated by the loss of hearing. My husband was probably a candidate for sainthood as he lived with me and my deafness, but it was impossible, even for him, not to feel annoyed at times and, even worse, disconnected from me, having lost the serious conversations we’d had in the past. 

At first Ethan was very generous with our games. I played with eight letters rather than seven. I could trade in tiles without losing a turn. If I said, “Don’t you dare use that open triple word square,” he graciously moved somewhere else. He let me use abbreviations (hundreds of them) — even the two-letter ones for the chemical elements. As my hearing and vocabulary returned, the game became more competitive. Just like in the old days, Ethan felt entitled to play all seven tiles at once (for a 50-point bonus). I knew I was getting stronger when I didn’t throw a tile at him.
Our competition is also intimate. We take turns asking, “Is this a legal word?” or “May I borrow an ‘E’ from you if you have one?” and complaining, “Damn it, I was going to put something great in that place you just stole!” I’ve been pushing lately to claim extra points for obscene words — my husband grew up with parents who cursed like sailors, so he went to the opposite extreme and never swore, but I could help him enjoy some “dirty words.” Although we still sometimes come to each other’s aid now, our delight in winning overcomes graciousness at other times. Very occasionally I’m generous to Ethan, but not nearly as often as he is to me.
This is a story of my return to the world of hearing. My fingers and my eyes helped give me back my words. The indentations on Scrabble tiles remind me of Braille, even while I both see and hear them touch the board. But it’s also the story of how the strength of a long healthy marriage helped make that return possible — via an old game in a torn box, but with board and tiles intact. Like us.
We’ve been married for more than 50 years, and Scrabble — and the ways we use (and misuse) it — is a good test of how we’re doing. We’ve both discovered that an ancient Scrabble game can also repair. Its give-and-take enriches the many other things we share together.
We do, of course, have other pleasures, but that’s another story.

 

Tourney News: Nigeria: Hallmark School Wins Scrabble Tourney

From All Africa:  Nigeria: Hallmark School Wins Scrabble Tourney

Hallmark School in Ikeja, Lagos has emerged winner of the second edition of the Winifred Awosika Scrabble Tournament for schools (WASTFS) held at the Victor Awosika Hall, Opebi, Ikeja.

Mofetoluwa Lawal of Hallmark School came tops out of over 104 pupils who participated at the 2-day tournament held last Thursday and Friday and went home with a cash prize of N250, 000.00, a trophy and a certificate. Also, second position went to Samuel Enegbuma of Saint Peter's Anglican Pry School while Pese Alo also of Hallmark School finished in 3rd position with a cash prize of N100, 000.00.

Lanre Fajoyomi of Chrisland School, Ikeja came 4th. The tournament was organized by the protégé centre and the scrabble in schools initiative and sponsored by the Winifred Awosika Foundation chaired by Doctor Winifred Awosika.

 

Take a look at my new business: Scrabble Event Planners

My main idea is to perform this service for folks in Cheyenne, Denver, and areas around here, but depending on the urgency I'll do it for anyone who cares to renumerate me adequately.

Basically, if you want to hold a Scrabble Fundraiser, birthday party, wedding with a scrabble theme, etc. I and my Scrabble Event Planners will do it for you. I provide the boards - regular or specialty, the scorecards, the oversight and judging, the prizes, etc - you just provide the participants.

http://volcanoseven.com/CheyenneScrabbleClub/ScrabbleEventPlanners.html

At 390 now...

My goal is to get up over 400 by the end of tonight (playing Scrabble on WordBix) and back up to 500 by the end of this weekend.

One thing that I must stop doing is playing people who have the "Validation" function turned on. If that is on, the computer tells you automatically if what you've spelled is a word or not, which gets you in to bad habits!

Shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch...but

Here in Cheyenne we have a bi-monthly newspaperish type newspaper in which people put in ads for sale, want ads, etc. And it also features community announcements.

I emailed them last week asking if they'd care to run regular column on building one's vocabulary using the Scrabble dictionary. The guy who is in charge said to send him some examples, I did so, and he said that they'd start running it in their next issue.

But he'd have to contact me later to work out details.

So, I'm thinking I'm going to have my name up in lights! Or at least, in print.

Of course it's a free gig, but that's all right.  I'll have my byline and hopefully a little explanatory thing at the end of each column saying that I"m the President of the Cheyenne Scrabble Club, which meets every Thursday at the library.

So free advertising for my club - which is what I want.

Also a byline in an actual print paper (as opposed to the web) which could help me get future, paying gigs.

So hopefully it doesn't fall through, and will start with the next issue in two weeks....

I'm Just Above 300 rating points at WordBiz

I have had a very bad couple of days...losing to people I should have beat... hate it when that happens.

Still haven't been able to study properly for the upcoming Spelling Bee or Scrabble Tournament...I've got to get my girdle in gear.

The ex-footballer who learnt to choose his words carefully

From Mid-Day.com: The ex-footballer who learnt to choose his words carefully

Irineu Gonsalves used to play football at the state level. He now owns his own pharmacy in Verna, a village in south Goa. His passion, however, lies elsewhere — in his love for words; a passion that drove him to become this year’s national Scrabble champion. The fifty-three-old tells us about what it’s like to get into a battle of words with professionals. Excerpts from the interview:

Your earliest association with the game...?
I am a voracious reader. Solving crosswords helped a lot. I also have a passion for writing and write columns for two Goan publications. I have been playing serious Scrabble for almost a decade, now. I started playing Scrabble around the early ’90s. Scrabble caught my attention when a group of word enthusiasts conducted tournaments in Goa, and I won most of them. Between 1990 and 2000, I only played living-room Scrabble, but the desire to consolidate my word power never waned.

Do you practice every day?
I practice a lot — I put in around four to five hours every day. It helps that Goa has good Scrabble players. On weekends, we play around 10 competitive games.

What’s it like to participate in a Scrabble championship?
I’ve been participating in the championship for the last decade and it’s been an amazing journey. In the last few years, the competition has been getting tougher. The final day was played in the King-of-the-Hill format, which means repeats are allowed. At the beginning of the final day, Sherwin Rodrigues, the third-time national champion, had 14 wins and I had 12 wins. We played four games straight, and I beat him all four times. I finished with 18 wins out of 24 games.

Are there any shortcuts or strategies to winning?
There are no shortcuts, but there are certain techniques. You can’t win against players of Sherwin’s (Rodrigues) caliber, if you are not technically sound. He has amazing word power, and his spotting of scoring chances is also very good. Beating him back-to-back gave me immense satisfaction.

Tell us about life when you’re not playing Scrabble?
I am a businessman. I have my own manufacturing unit for detergents and deodorants; I also have a pharmacy in my village, Verna. I am a former state football player and have played for famous clubs in Goa, including the Salgaocar Sports Club and Vasco Sports Club.

The auto-correct generation that can’t spell
A recent survey commissioned by Mencap, a UK-based charity, to mark the launch of its Spellathon competition, found that technology has created an auto-correct generation unable to spell common words like ‘necessary’ and ‘separate’. Only one in five adults of the 2,000 surveyed, was able to answer all five questions correctly. 65% respondents failed to spell ‘necessary’, while 33% struggled with spelling ‘definitely’ and ‘separate’. Respondents also admitted to the over reliance on spell checks and auto-correct functions.

McMartin: The video games people play, over and over and over and over ...

From the Vancouver Sun: McMartin: The video games people play, over and over and over and over ...

This morning, I woke up, made a pot of coffee, padded out to the front porch in my underwear to get the paper, wondered whether my neighbours could see me padding out to the front porch in my underwear, drank a cup of coffee, scanned the paper for stories that might be germane to my work (Bigfoot sightings, two-headed cats, Premier Christy Clark nude windsurfing, etc.), turned on the news, opened my laptop and played Junior Pacman for an hour and 20 minutes. In other words, it was a morning like any other. Then, as usual, a wave of self-loathing washed over me for playing Junior Pacman for an hour and 20 minutes rather than using my time constructively, such as reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or talking to my daughter. (Wait, I have a daughter? When did that happen?) I have spent a significant portion of my life zoning out playing video games. I can’t explain why I have done so — maybe it has something to do with not reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People — but I am pretty sure I have plenty of company. New York Times reporter Sam Anderson, himself a compulsive game player, reported that the chief executive of Rovio, the Finnish company that markets the improbably popular game of Angry Birds, claimed that players were spending 200 million minutes inside the game daily — “a number,” wrote Anderson, “that seems simultaneously absurd and plausible.” I know what he means. A few months ago, my wife discovered Scrabble online. She played it all the time. She introduced me to it. We have a perfectly good Scrabble board at home that we used to play on, but the other night, we were sitting at the coffee table in our den, and both of us were playing Scrabble online on our laptops. Against other people. It felt vaguely sinful, not to mention simultaneously absurd and plausible.

Is it an addiction? I would like to think not. And whether “addiction” can even be applied to game-playing is still under debate, though a growing industry of video game addiction counselling has sprung up to address it.

There is debate, too, around the effects of gaming. The nays see it as soul-destroying; the yeas feel the fun that video games offer is just and only that: fun. Some feel games contribute to the epidemic of obesity, while some believe the mechanics of games can be applied to solving problems like obesity. Depending on whom you talk to, video games are either an escape from reality or an effective way to deal with it.

“I think video game addiction exists in some capacity,” said Kimberley Voll, a staff member and lecturer at the University of B.C.’s department of computer science. “I don’t know that it’s taking over the world as some doomsayers would say, but I do think we have to be conscious of it.

“It definitely taps into the pleasure centres of the brain.

“It’s no secret in the industry that certain aspects of psychology are being used to leverage people’s interest in the games. I know companies that actually employ psychologists to help understand how we perceive games.”

Voll, 34, started UBC’s first course in video game design last year. For a research university like UBC, the course was something of a departure for its commercial nature.

But what a commerce it is: The video gaming industry is now bigger than the film industry. Voll had 60 students in the course’s first year, and expects the number to grow.

She herself is a lifelong gamer.

“I wrested the Atari controls from my uncle when I was two years old and I never stopped playing. As far as I was concerned, it was a whole new world and I couldn’t get enough of it.”

She could, however, get too much of it. She had to “quit cold turkey,” she said, to finish her PhD.

Not that she’s against the occasional break from work.

“There is a real social stigma that still exists regarding these kinds of things. Obviously, if you’re on the clock and people are paying you to do some particular job and you’re frittering away hours playing whatever, that’s a different problem.

“But there’s nothing wrong with taking breaks. I think there are ways to healthfully include games as breaks. There are studies out there that say you take an hour off, you clean up your brain by doing something mindless like playing a game, and you come back and you’re productive again.

“But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying, ‘You know what? I’ve been working hard and looking at this screen for hours. I’m going to play a quick little game for 15 or 20 minutes.’ Why not?”

Exactly. Why not indeed?

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to play a quick little game of Junior Pacman, and I’ll be back in, oh, a half-hour, let’s say, to finish this column.

Spellbound: When Words Attack

My own view on the Romney app debackle was that it wasn't a mispelling so much as a typo - someone just transposed the letters!

From CNN Press Room: Spellbound: When Words Attack

If you’re like most Americans, it’s possible that the subject of spelling hasn’t crossed your mind since grade school. Sad, perhaps, that the same society who once stirred Alphabet Soup and spent their evenings playing Scrabble has been replaced with a culture of grammar zombies, totally dependent on gizmos like ‘autocorrect’ and ‘spell check.’ But recently, the news proved, if nothing else, that spelling is still good for a few hot headlines. Don’t believe us? Ask Mitt Romney.

Team Romney recently learned the perils of poor spelling the hard way after misspelling America – “Amercia” in a new smart phone app. The grammatical gaffe spread like wildfire, making the Governor’s campaign a fast butt of jokes online and through social media. CNN tech writer Doug Gross's article quips,“Somebody didn't observe the ‘I-before-C’ rule.’”

Coincidentally, as CNN’s Schools of Thought blog points out, this week also played host to the National Spelling Bee. Really, the connection writes itself, no? And in honor of orthographic accuracy, CNN Eatocracy’s own Kat Kinsman shared with users a personal story about her own Spelling Bee experience while reflecting on the emotion and anxiety young competitors face.

And just like that, Spelling got its groove back. So next time you defer to technology for your text-based needs, think of this story and remember: only one letter separates ‘laughter’ from ‘slaughter.’