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Super Scrabble Players Have Unusual Brains
An anonymous reader writes "Being a competitive Scrabble player apparently warps your brain, in a good way, according to researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada. At the high level of the game, players quickly judge whether words, or possible words are real based in large part on their visual stimuli — not an inherent knowledge of the word or its meaning. 'These findings indicate that Scrabble players are less reliant on the meaning of words to judge whether or not they are real, and more flexible at word recognition using orthographic information. ... Competitive Scrabble players are visual word recognition experts and their skill pushes the bounds of what we previously considered the end-point of development of the word recognition system.'"
Does being a competitive Scrabble player warp your brain, or are those with warped brains more likely to become competitive Scrabble players?
Having read "Word Freaks - : Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players" you can see how the author starts with a writer's perspective on words, and through his attempts to become a competitive player he alters his brain. Towards the end of the book he is seeing anagrams everywhere and words become separated from their meanings...
"Jaxqiz" (n): An unlikely word that is only useful for playing scrabble with.
They've learned to use their GPUs!
It's been a long time since I've had to see words as individual letters to understand them, even if they were unfamiliar.
People can look at a situation and come to the right "conclusion" all the time. Its not at all miraculous that people can take one look at a math problem or equation and just instinctively know the right answer. This isn't fantastic or special at all. It is simply a function of specialization and repetition. Why would this be special in the case of words versus numbers or anything else? When people can "teach" AI to do the same thing, I'll be impressed.... otherwise... meh... The summary pretty much reads that "People are really good at doing things people can do". Yeah, no shit.
And some of the people on the tv show where where unusual as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoA1yer-CWI
not an inherent knowledge of the word or its meaning.
I don't think this is a good thing. Words are only important because of their meanings. People who put more importance on how the words are spelled then on their meaning are actually at a disadvantage. Words serve no purpose beyond communicating a meaning. I wonder how many of them are compete poets. Yes, I am sure they can rhyme and the like with no problems but can they put meaning beyond that of the words with resorting to anagrams and the like. How many can write novels or even technical manuals??
On interesting thing is it does prove that words are definite pasterns to them.
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I flagged your YouTube advertisement as inappropriate content ("mass advertisement"). You do realize that in a forum like this you're probably doing yourself more harm than good, right? Now I and everyone else here will know that MyCleanPC is run by spamming scumbags and we'll be sure to tell our friends and family never to use it. Thanks for the heads-up.
How is recognizing a valid word without knowing anything about it useful, outside of Scrabble and similar contrivances? I watched Word Wars some years ago about competition Scrabble players, and let me tell you, these are not smart people. They are people who have dumped all of their lives and meager talents into memorizing all the "valid" seven character patterns in English. They don't know meanings, they are not particularly literate, they just know what pattern of characters is valid and what pattern isn't. I don't think this is particularly praiseworthy, and to try to look at it physiologically as a special positive aspect seems to me to be in denial of who these people really are what limited abilities they truly have.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Is being a competitive scrabble player causing the brain to warp? Or is having this 'warped' brain a general advantage to becoming a competitive scrabble player?
I always knew kdawson was a troll. But when did he lose his job as a Slashdot editor?
In other news, university researchers were found to be far above average in securing taxpayer-funded grant money, and in booking expenses-paid junkets to academic conferences in faraway resort towns.
I recently wrote an application to find the best location to play a word for scrabble thinking it would be an easy task, boy was I wrong. Sure, finding the highest scoring word for the letters on your rack was straightforward, tricky, but straightforward (the key is to think of the board and your letters as an organization of tiles rather than words). But then I wanted it to compete with an existing application like Quackle and I started to realize how difficult it would be.
Pro's are constantly analyzing the board and thinking about their opponent's next turn as well as their own next turn. On every possible turn they think about stuff like not leaving words that can be hooked with an 's', not leaving a rack with duplicate letters or a rack with too many vowels or consonants, not leaving words open to be played next to premium locations, when to play or keep Q's and blanks, how to be the first one out, and a bunch of even more complicated stuff. Oh, and don't forget that they still have to find all the words that can be made from their letters and the open locations on the board. Memorizing the better part of 180,000 words seems like the easy part.
The fact that pro's can do all of that in their head is pretty amazing. I have no problem saying that the top scrabble players are equal in their ability to chess grandmasters.
Apparently being a super Scrabble player renders a person unable to reproduce.
Or was it "unlikely"?
#DeleteChrome
I've got to wonder why they let people put () in their names like that, for that alone I commend this troll for actually making me think for a minute about what the hell is going on here.
that musicians hear sound differently. Duh.
xzq...winner
couldn't help myself
I've got to wonder why they let people put () in their names like that, for that alone I commend this troll for actually making me think for a minute about what the hell is going on here.
stupid people are not very observant. they don't pay attention. stupid people make posts about how they thought the title said something different and other stupid people mod them up for it. stupid people get fooled very easily by the most trivial of things. stupid people would actually need to pause to think about this troll's name if it occurs to them to notice it at all.
just about the only things stupid people are very good at doing are breeding, and blaming other people for their failures in life. most of modern politics revolves around these two things, directly or indirectly just because stupid people exist in such large numbers. thanks to the public indoctrination/schooling system even people who aren't stupid have lost their ability to easily and readily think, it is no longer the most natural thing in the world to them, they view it as work to be avoided whenever possible.
this explains the vast majority of tech support calls when all the answers they need are written for a 3rd-grade reading level in several different documents available to them but they'd rather wait on hold for 30 minutes to get some handholding because they are helplessly dependent on other people to provide answers for them.
they probably let people put parantheses in their names because this is one of the few sites not specifically designed for stupid people, although lots of them are trying very hard to change that. i have no idea why we as a society would ever want to make idiocy comfortable and managable especially since burdening someone who is not an idiot is just about the only way to do that. all the liberals who whine endlessly about "social justice" seem to have overlooked how much this happens. but helping the hell out of people who are not really helpless to spare them the 5 minutes of research it takes to get a clue about something seems to be big business for all the wrong reasons.
We've all heard of the research showing that London taxi drivers have one part of their brain enlarged by their work.
More recently, research shows that this comes at the cost of reducing their memory for other things:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2011/0609/1224298636027.html
Becoming a super-specialist in a very narrow field, such as a Scrabble master, might have the same effect.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
You know what all the stupidest people have in common? They think everyone else is stupid.
Even worse is that slashdot puts rel="nofollow" on the links, meaning that it doesn't really even help their search ranking.
You know what all the stupidest people have in common? They think everyone else is stupid.
if you really cannot grasp that there is a difference between "everyone" and "the average" then you have no business talking about stupidity.
but i get it. i get it better than you would prefer. you are like so many petty people. you want the quick one-liner victory that you don't have to work for. so you find what you think is a slam-dunk "win" and you assume that you are so smart and I am so stupid that you noticed a fatal flaw that I didn't see. if you really think the average person is an intellectual who loves to go the extra mile to learn new things and would rather enjoy finding his own answers to seeking handholding by a stranger, make your argument.
funny thing is, I don't see you doing that.
Selection bias. This is what happens when you let humanities people pretend to do science.
1) Memorize every 2, 3 and 4 letter word, especially those that use x, q and z.
2) Memorize all prefixes and suffixes.
3) Onomatopoeias are acceptable. (brr, brrr, kapow, whoosh, ooh, aah, etc) Basically most any "word" you will find used to verbally illustrate physical action in a comic book.
4) Familiarize yourself with words that contain a high number of vowels and consonants along with those that contain either no vowels or consonants. (aalii, cwrths, etc.)
The above basic tips will come in handy, and can usually net at least 3-4 bingos per game, if not more. However, the above tips can be used for virtually any word game. The next list is a more indepth metaguide to controlling the outcome of a scrabble/literati based game.
In scrabble, count tiles. Same principle as counting cards. In other variants, this may not be possible if the letter pool is randomized. If the tile pool is fixed and you count the stack, it's not cheating, it's called using statistical probability to your advantage.
Any chance you get, clog the board by playing a word that creates more words in 2 directions or more. For instance, in scrabble, using the X (8) points on a triple letter score (played in both directions) will net a minimum base score of 52 points. An example of this would be a combination of AX, XU, AT. Naturally, Z's and Q's net a minimum of 64 points. It's basically a free bingo to abuse at whim.
Depending on the complexity of the variant at hand, try to maintain a minimum average of at least 20-35 points per play. This is hands-down, THE quickest way to build up a decent score, so don't rely on bingos to pull you through the finish line. They're just icing on the cake.
Do not bother memorizing definitions of a particular word, but rather the fact that it is a word. If someone is hounding for a definition of an obscure or unusual word, tell them to consult a dictionary; That's why we have them. Any word game should have the use of a dictionary included by default, whether manual or automatic. Memorizing each individual definition is pointless, as it merely takes up otherwise valuable brainspace. Would you waste time memorizing each page of in a metropolitan phone book on the basis that someone could possibly ask you to recite the content of extraneous information? I didn't think so.
If your letters suck, don't be afraid to throw some (or all) of them back. Just keep in mind to remember your chances of drawing the same (or different) letters. This method will sometimes make the difference between a 10-15 point play or a bingo.
Whenever you get the chance, try to either hit two word scores simultaneously (8 letters), or have a word score tile go both ways (single letter prefix or suffix).
Build up a cutthroat, bloodthirsty strategy by playing competitively against yourself. This method of training is good as it also allows you to freely think from a completely objective standpoint, and will help you to build up a decent wordlist memorization by working at your own pace. If you play competitively against yourself, you should easily be able to hit a final score of 800.
If the variant is scrabble, and the score is above 500-600 (depending on your own personal preference) write it down on the scrabble lid as a badge of honor.
I wonder watching that old TV/television game show version show these too!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
*WHOOOSH!*
If you think he missed a joke, you have to be a dumbass. Only dumbasses are so stupid. Dumbasses are so dumb, they think getting at the heart of why the joke was made and why it occurred to that person to make it, is the same thing as failing to get the joke.
I mean no offense to black people or any other race or ethnic group. But you, sir, are a fucking nigger. Good day.
Anyone who speaks a real language (i.e., most European languages other than English) is "flexible at word recognition using orthographic information", because those languages are actually based on a set of rules, not a bunch of random words and expressions whose meanings and pronunciations have to be memorized (as is the case with most short English words).
Longer English words (which Scrabble players are particularly interested in) are often derived from Latin / Greek / Arab / Old German / etc., so they too tend to follow those rules.
Maybe the real news here is how speaking exclusively English cripples your ability to process language in a structured way.
The real question is: is your in-law aware of their resemblance to the the gardener, the mailman and the poolboy?
I am sure they have the same brain as everyone else. Strictly speaking, my computer would not really be different if it was just programmed differently than other computers of the same brand. It seem fair to here point out that the organic brain probably keep evolving in a natural way (growing and changing) as opposed to how the common computer does with its fixed hardware and programming.
I write this, in the hope that the mystery, or the beliefs, about how the human brain works does not have people casually engaging with ideas or authorities that are abusive and in ways could be said to be crimes against humanity, when so called professionals does not seriously consider what you say and mean, and otherwise engage in dehumanising people with a variety of diagnoses that really has nothing to do with ones welfare.
Super Scrabble Players Have Unusual Brains?
And Super Chess Players have usual brains? Of course I haven't read TFA, but really?
Come on, what is your reasonable basis for memorizing as "taking valuable brain space" ? You ought to be a machine, and have no grasp about the functionning of human brains.
The more you learn, the more you can make connexions with previous knowledge, as can be seen in the ecclectic interests of geniuses (and *decent* politicians). That is why neurons have thousands of axons.
Memorizing the whole phone book sure is pointless, except if you want to strenghten you memory capacity for unrelated bits of info. More usefull in real life would be some poems, or, if you have time, the Maha Bharata (one of the oldest surviving text of manking, used to be comitted to memory ... about 8'000 pages long).
But, hey, please do as you think is best, but dont come complaining that you cannot remember the name of your grand-childrens when you'll be 85 (in all likelihood, more than 3 letter-long) ... One of my relatives, presently 97, blind & morphine-fed, still remembers the name, activity & whereabouts of her 80-or-so family.
I am kicking myself for posting this but....right now one of the tags on this story is the work "cromulant". That's spelled "cromulent", people!
So they follow the rules and not the results. Considering English breaks its own rules, I call scrabble a hoax.
What's not well appreciated yet is that the human brain is mostly visual, and so is human thought. It's also the most powerful way to organize memory. The primacy of "The Word," of language-type coding, diverts us from this reality. Yet linguistic meaning is based on image schemas which are predominantly visuo-spatial. However, there is some evidence that in humans some aspects of linguistic thought have been brought into rough parity with the visuo-spatial in terms of dedicated support in the brain.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Might be related to the skill that makes people good spellers. I know how to spell thousands of words whose meaning I am shaky at best on. And have always wondered whether that makes them part of my "vocabulary" or not.
It's good to see the fake-slashdot editor keeping up the tradition of posting dupes though. However, there are far too few spelling and grammar mistakes for it to be authentic.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The player's name wouldn't happen to be Abby Normal... would it?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Expert Tic-Tac-Toe players are very good at recognizing Xs and Os.
Bingo.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.