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Scrabble Needs a New Scoring System
innocent_white_lamb writes "A researcher says that some letters are over valued and some are under-valued in Scrabble, due to recent changes to the lists of allowable words. Z and X are now much easier to play and should be worth less, while U, M and G should be worth more than they are now. Joshua Lewis wrote a program to re-calculate the value of each letter to better reflect the current usage. The co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association says that he often hears criticism of Scrabble's scoring system, but any change would bring about 'catastrophic outrage'. A spokesman for Mattel says that they have no plans to change the game."
What are they gonna do, send them a letter?
Why not just version the Rules? Original, 2012, etc? MTG has new decks come out, new rules come out,old cards removed new added... they did fine (relatively).
The language changes... so should the rules.
Mattel has come out with a statement today denouncing logic, reason, and fairness.
Scrabble is Hasbro IP.
Hasbro and Mattel are two *ENTIRELY* separate companies. Rivals, in fact.
Saying that Mattel has no plans to change the game is like saying that Microsoft has no plans to change the iPhone.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It is a game, the iportant thing is that everyone is playing by the same rules. Sure, if you were to develop scrabble today, it might be nice to adjust the values of the letters to reduce the element of chance in the game, but now there is insufficient reason to go and change it. It woudl still have been ok if every letter had the same value.
This was brought up during an NPR interview the earlier this week and I agreed with the mentioned counterpoint. While it makes logical sense for a rework of the scoring system, it's effectively flattening it and removing some of the strategy around the unpredictability of the game.
Regardless, Mattel has already gone on record (I believe) stating it will keep the scoring as is.
Considering the second-last sentence in the summary just mentioned the "North American Scrabble Players Association" right before Mattel, I trust you can understand my confusion. The article clarifies the point by noting that Mattel make Scrabble in Europe.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
is Upwords. Scrabble can get adversarial with the rules on challenging a word. Upwords lets you challenge a word without fear of losing your turn. Also, you can play just fine with a more limited vocabulary due to the nature of play. If you are playing with kids or just want a more amicable game, try it.
Many games have these, 'bonus' and 'penalty', and Scrabble appears to be one of them.
It is part of the game and Mattel has no reason to change their rules.
If you don't like it, go get yourself some wood putty and a sharpie and make the letters whatever value you damned well please.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What is that, some kind of ripoff of Words With Friends?
Then it seems like you eliminate possible strategies. What's wrong with leaving a bit of strategy to the game where decisions you make are based by biases the rules create?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's just a proposal, not a requirement.
Even Joshua Lewis, inventor of the new system believes the traditional valuations can make the game more exciting.
"You're really lucky if you pick an X because it's over-valued and unlucky if you pick a V. So if they were to re-do the values of the tiles that would reduce the level of luck.
"That might be desirable in tournaments but it might not be as good in casual play where you want the less skilled players to have a shot periodically at beating the more highly skilled players."
Source: The "British Media"
I've developed an open source package called Valett for determining letter valuations in word games based on statistical analyses of corpora. In addition to calculating the frequency of each letter in a corpus, Valett calculates the frequency by word length and the incoming and outgoing entropy for each letter's transition probabilities. One can then weight these properties of the corpus based on the structure of the game and arrive at a suggested value for each letter..
News flash: EVERY OTHER GAME has scores that are roughly, but not exactly, aligned with their probability. It's part if the game. Baskets in basketball have 3 values: 1, 2, and 3 points, for the entire court and all circumstances. A dartboard has dozens of scores possible with nearly NO relation to the probability of hitting one. It's what makes the game what it is and it's what leads to different strategies.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Really? 'catastrophic outrage'? People really need to get a grip. It's like calling someone a Nazi for minor offenses.
Indeed. What kind of person would over-react like that to something as simple as a change in the rules of a game?
Give them random values! Simply have a list of all of the letters, roll some die, write the numbers down next to the letters, and badabing badaboom.
The G
I can see the point made by people wanting to change the scoring. The initial letter/point associations were made based on the number of tiles in the bag and the frequency of use at the time. The "official" rules have changed by virtue of the allowable words. With new acceptable words added the letter frequency changed as well.
If new words are added (or subtracted ) , to keep the game the same, then eventually the letter scoring would also need to change if the desire was to keep the game from changing. Changes were made for non-English versions, with different distribution of letters and point values:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions
So if English has changed since 1938 it's not outrageous to suggest a new distribution/scoring mix. Desire to keep the game "the same" is also understandable, but that would require using a 1938 dictionary and not allowing new words. ( Nope, can't used "quark" )
His methodology could be enhanced. Letters C and V should be bumped up as well since the fact that they cannot be made into 2 letter words often makes them less useful and harder to play.
...seriously? That's the sort of tenuous, grasping-at-straws discussion hijack the rest of us would come up with when we think we're JOKING about Stupid America's gun fetish.
Q: How many NRA members does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: More guns.
A perfectly balanced game is not a game. It's a function.
There's little value in making scrabble more abstract. Good on Mattel.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
...Microsoft has no plans to change the iPhone.
It would be wise for Mattel to change the values because then Scrabble enthusiasts everywhere would have a reason to buy another Scrabble board/chips. It would make for a nice cash grab and they have this research as a nifty excuse for doing so. My parents play Scrabble a lot (they're retired) and their set is at least thirty years old -- it's been around as long as I can remember. Even if they didn't upgrade, someone in the family would be quick to get one for them as a x-mas/b-day present.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Yes, it is, it's used in English magazines, newspapers, and orally. You just used it. Usage is what makes a word a word. I suppose instead of saying glacier, you say "a big piece of ice thingy". Even your abigail would know that.
My favorite rule is blank replacement. If you have the letter a blank was played as, you get to swap it on the board and take the blank into your rack.
The guy who developed the game tinkered with the ratio from the get-go: he put in too few "S" tiles to reduce one obvious tactic (playing a word across another by adding an S to it and making it plural, like taking COP and playing SKATE such that you get the points for both COPS and SKATE).
The corpus is all well and good, but real points are scored on Scrabble strategy. Two-letter words are absolutely crucial in Scrabble, since they let you easily double-count each tile you lay down. If you have APE on the field, and I lay down TIN next to it, I can count not just TIN but also AN, PI, and EN.
This is made even more profitable by the addition of (bogus, at least to me) words like QI and ZA (a way of spelling "chi" as in Chinese medicine and a slang word for "pizza" that they somehow decided was mainstream enough). If you leave me [triple letter score]AT on the field, and I have Q and I, I get to count SIXTY POINTS for that Q (plus the I and the AT). (QAT is also pretty damn bogus.)
You can tweak the words according to the corpus, but all it will do to real Scrabble players is to tweak the game, not fundamentally alter it. It's not really a game of practical vocabulary, and never has been, not if you're planning to score well. It's a game of tactics (generally well understood) and an official dictionary with words that often bear only a dim connection to reality.
Just introduce new words to rebalance.
I propose kwyjibo.