
An experiment in controlling how much of Scrabble is luck - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/does-scrabble-need-to-be-fixed
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hammock
In my family, we play a variation that makes the game much more skillful. I'm
not sure how common it is. But my grandmother's claim to fame is that she
played in college with the inventor of Scrabble, before it was commercialized
(the rules were different). These are the variations we play:

1) a dictionary can be used whenever you want, to look up a specific word in
mind only (you cannot leaf through it for ideas)

2) When it is your turn, before playing your letters, you may swap a letter in
your hand, for a letter on the board. This can be done as much as you like,
but only one letter at a time, and each letter must make a new, valid word. No
points are scored when swapping.

The result is that turns can take 10 minutes or more, but bingos are very
common and individual scores get into 5-600 points often. There is much more
skill and very little luck- as you are not limited by the letters you draw-
rather, you can use just about any letter that's on the board, if you can get
it! Likewise, if you draw the X you are not "lucky" because the X will likely
get used again and again over the course of the game by multiple players.

I'm not sure how common this variation is, but I like it, and it's well-suited
for serious players.

~~~
frabbit

       a dictionary can be used whenever you want, to look up a specific word in mind only (you cannot leaf through it for ideas)
    

I really dislike this idea. It turns the human into a mere mechanical Turk,
searching through the dictionary. Fails to reward those who have built up a
large vocabulary and draws out turns agonizingly.

I would argue that it makes it much less "skillful".

Horrible ;)

~~~
IanCal
> searching through the dictionary.

Sounds like they explicitly forbid this.

> Fails to reward those who have built up a large vocabulary

You need to know the word exists to search for it, and larger vocabs will
still be an advantage.

~~~
frabbit
I did not say searching through the _entire_ dictionary. It is still removing
one of the skills that Scrabble traditionally rewards: knowing how to spell.

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sethrin
I'm glad someone did these experiments. I find that Scrabble begins to seem
unfair after a certain level: there is certainly a great deal of strategy
involved, but just as much of the game involves memorizing a fairly arbitrary
collection of words: "za" is allowed, but "ok" is not, and there are far too
many obscure transliterations of Arabic terms. The Scrabble Dictionary is
more-or-less synonymous with the game itself, and the if the idea of
memorizing a particular dictionary is already of dubious entertainment value,
this is not improved by using a bad dictionary.

Scrabble is a classic game. The basic idea seems great. I just wish you could
have a Scrabble game without having to say, "Seriously, _that_ is considered a
word? This game is ridiculous!" and feeling like the other person has an
unfair advantage.

~~~
kyleblarson
The high level players will memorize all 3 letter words and sometimes 4 letter
words as well. Their scrabble-dictionary vocabularies are incredible. Here's
an old article about the highest score ever (at the time). It included a
triple triple worth 365 points alone for QUIXOTRY.
[https://slate.com/technology/2006/10/830-how-a-carpenter-
got...](https://slate.com/technology/2006/10/830-how-a-carpenter-got-the-
highest-scrabble-score-ever.html)

~~~
sethrin
What odds would you give that that word has been used more than five times in
the history of English literature?

~~~
notahacker
Google Books returns over 8000 results, and some of them aren't even
dictionaries!

~~~
sethrin
The corpus I searched returned no results, but I'll take the correction: mea
culpa.

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labster
In my opinion, all of the best games have some portion of luck in them, but a
larger portion of skill. Catan is boring to me because dice rolls determine
too much of the game; chess is boring to me because I know I'm always going to
lose unless I feel like investing hundreds of hours into learning the game.
Scrabble is one of the few pre-Euros that manages to get the luck to skill
balance right.

The skill of having a larger vocabulary is actually useful IRL, so that helps
a bit. There's another part of it that's the game itself, like knowing all of
the two-letter words, which isn't quite as useful.

~~~
tomjakubowski
In case anyone else didn't understand "pre-Euros" in this context: it refers
to the abstract, strategy-oriented styles of table game that first became
popular in Europe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame)

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laurentl
Surprised that no one mentioned Duplicate Scrabble, which is the most common
tournament form in France. Ar each round, everyone gets the same draw and
submits their best word. The overall best word is kept and added to the board.

This completely eliminates the luck factor, as everyone gets the same draw at
each round. Missing an “easy” bingo in one round is a surefire way to lose.
Obviously this means that to play at a competitive level, you need to memorize
all possible words up to 9 letters or so. Fun fact: the current top player of
French scrabble is from New Zealand and doesn’t speak a word of French. He
just memorized all ~200k valid words in the OSD.

Needless to say, this version is vastly less fun to play casually.

~~~
dfan
If I understand your description of the rules correctly, it sounds like that
removes any sort of strategy from the game (manipulating the board and the
rack), making it a sequence of Scrabble puzzles instead with no between-player
interaction. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, but I think it would
remove a lot of the interest for many people (me included).

I have read about Nigel Richards, the New Zealander French Scrabble champion
who doesn't speak French, and I think that the game he is the champion of is
"regular" Scrabble (with French vocabulary). For example the Guardian article
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/21/new-
fre...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/21/new-french-
scrabble-champion-nigel-richards-doesnt-speak-french) talks about his "pretty
rotten draw of letters".

Edited: Ah, I see from his Wikipedia page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_(Scrabble_playe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_\(Scrabble_player\)))
that he has won both Classique and Duplicate titles.

~~~
laurentl
Your understanding of the Duplicate rules is correct. It removes any element
of chance (all players are judged on how well they manage a given draw) but it
also removes any element of strategy. As an aside, it also makes it a lot
easier to organize large scale tournaments - you can organize a Duplicate game
with any number of players.

I find it a lot less fun to play, but I know serious players who don’t
understand why you would play Classic scrabble.

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njarboe
If you are playing a game with people of various skill levels it is a good
thing to have a decent amount of luck involved or one person will win all the
time (unless they lose on purpose). That is not enjoyable, especially for the
losers. In tournament play, where you are ranked and play against similarly
skilled opponents, it makes sense that upping the skill factor can increase
fun, but for casual home play, not so much.

My family has quite a bit of variance in skill levels in scrabble and we have
different rules depending on who is playing. When the skill levels are very
mixed, we allow one word lookup for free and then the next word must be in the
dictionary to play (ie. no need to challenge and possibly lose your turn). We
also have a list of two letter words you can consult.

This works pretty well and when only the hard core players are playing we go
back to the official rules.

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IngoBlechschmid
(Off topic) In case anyone is intrigued by the post /How to Build a
Probability Microscope/ linked from the article, I created a
JavaScript/Python-based simulation:

The linked article: [http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/-how-to-build-a-
probability-m...](http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/-how-to-build-a-probability-
microscope)

The simulation: [https://www.speicherleck.de/iblech/zufall-im-
browser/index.e...](https://www.speicherleck.de/iblech/zufall-im-
browser/index.en.html) (select the bottommost example)

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aidenn0
Can confirm bingos are luck. My only win against my mom in scrabble was a 1st
turn bingo that she challenged and lost (EJECTOR, she was less than 50% sure
that the "or" was wrong, but didn't want to concede a 1st turn bingo that was
questionable).

~~~
cdelsolar
you make your own luck. I average around 2 bingos per game.

~~~
autokad
clearly the data suggests that its bingos that make up most of the luck in the
game.

