![]() The creator of Scrabble, Alfred Butts, first determined the values by hand in the 1930s by studying letter frequency, including of articles published on the front page of The New York Times. Somewhere in that range.” Lewis’ hypothesis is that the degree of luck can be tuned by changing the point values of tiles. “But some people say it’s more like 20 percent. He mentions the same number in his book Word Nerd. “The community mostly agrees it’s around 15 percent luck,” said John Williams, the former head of the National Scrabble Association. ![]() The professional Scrabble world is well aware of how important luck is to the game. If we want to make Scrabble scoring more indicative of skill, we’ve been looking at the wrong part of the game for years. The tests also show, however, that traditional tile scoring isn’t more fair than random tile values. His values don’t reduce the element of luck in Scrabble. Recently, I conducted my own tests to see if Lewis’ values really make Scrabble more fair. John Chew, then the co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association, titled a two-part, 2,600-word diatribe in response to Lewis’ suggestion, “Catastrophic Outrage.” As you can imagine, traditionalists like Cleary were dismissive of Lewis’ suggestion. The suggestion was picked up by the BBC, the Huffington Post, and TIME, among others. Therefore, it’s luckier to draw a “Z” than a “Q.” Lewis argued that the traditional values associated with each letter diminish the role of skill in the game, and recommended changing them to make Scrabble scores more indicative of skill. ![]() His study showed that there are “lucky” tiles in Scrabble: A “Q” is harder to place on a board than a “Z,” and yet both are worth 10 points. candidate at the University of California, San Diego, it isn’t a sensible one. It’s a sweet sentiment, but according to a 2014 statistical program written by Joshua Lewis, then a Ph.D. When I asked her if she’s ever disappointed to draw certain tiles, she looked surprised, even hurt. Cleary, a 68-year-old retired financial consultant, has been playing every week for 20 years since founding the Princeton Scrabble Club in 1998. You can find Lynda Woods Cleary playing Scrabble every Tuesday at a Panera in Princeton, NJ.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |