Results tagged “Scrabble”

A middle finger raised to my ISP and a little date adjustment and away I go with the news that would've been posted last night.  I should probably raise my other middle finger to Apple, since that seems to be what everyone else is doing.  The iPad was just supposed to be another device used to simplify our lives and make Apple a lot of money in the process.  Instead, there are people smashing it with baseball bats, blending it, and putting it through a rather strenuous and some would say unnecessary stress test.  I wonder, did the Nintendo DS have to go through all this?  The Sony PSP?  Even the Nokia N-Gage, for all it was hated, wasn't destroyed so publicly and so thoroughly.  And in Japan, I bet no one ever decided to buy an Xbox 360, destroy it, and upload the video to YouTube.

There's also been "the first ever ritual reboxing of an Apple product", where a blogger decided that the iPad isn't necessary for his daily life.  What makes him an awesome person is that he did not smash his iPad or crush it or throw it out.  He calmly reboxed it, even polished up the screen, and went to return it.  He was even willing to swallow the restocking fee.  I sincerely hope that the people at his local Apple store weren't complete asses to him when he returned it.

(As a side note, the search for the Canadian lingerie product known as the iPad continues.  I'll have to go to the local sex shop and see what they have available.)

A symptom of my ISP problems yesterday is that, while I can report the rumour that EA is trying to woo the former Infinity Ward executives, we all know by now that it's true and has already happened.  Respawn Entertainment is their new company, and currently consists of two people.  Themselves.  They have a website that pretty much only says they're hiring, and their office is currently anywhere they can find a couple chairs, as they pretty much stated in their interview with Eurogamer.  I should fire an E-mail their way, just to see what happens.  I'd be far from eligible and if they respond, I'll have to admit that I'm not really interested or qualified, I just wanted to see what would happen.  Besides, I have other plans for the near future.  Activision has plans for their future, too: they've countersued Mr. West and Mr. Zampella.

Another update to some previously reported news: in Europe, Amazon has given a PS3 customer a partial refund over the Other OS debacle.  Due to how European law is written (and as far as I can understand), if Sony decides to remove some features in their PS3, the onus is on the retailer to make things right with the customer, despite the retailer having no control over what Sony does.  Meanwhile, George Hotz (the hacker who said he was going to restore Other OS into 3.21) has done what he said he would.  And no surprise here: 3.21 has bricked more fat PS3s.

This past week has been a shitty week.  First, a friend from New Jersey sent in a news article talking about the upcoming change to the rules of Scrabble.  Then one of my co-workers told me about it the very next day.  Then they had the nerve to mention it on the radio later that day.  What the rule change means is that players will now be able to use proper nouns in a Scrabble game.  As if Scrabble players needed to be reminded Beyonce exists.  Mattel was quick to point out that the traditional sets would continue to be sold, and that the new rule would only apply to a new variation they'd be marketing.  As for my opinion, well, here it is.

It's worth 81 points for those of you who care about that.  I would've presented a much stronger opinion, but it wasn't allowed in the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, 4th Edition.

One of my favourite comedians posted this Tweet last month.  Well, he may just get his wish, just not for the problem he wanted solved.  An alternate reality game is supposedly going to bring gamers all around the world together to solve all the major problems of today.  World hunger, poverty, disease, they're all there.  I want to say something sarcastic right now, but part of me wants this to work.  More power to this.  After all, if a gamer can suddenly decide to break the longest standing video game record of all time, and then succeed in his three day marathon attempt, who knows what we're capable of?

Cheating, is apparently what we're capable of, at least in Korea.  Yes, a video game scandal is being compared to the White Sox scandal, the biggest sports scandal of all time.  Anyway last but not least, in Australia... hey, nothing new to report from Australia regarding gaming this week.  Sweet.

This week, the Geek News Roundup is being posted earlier, for I have something I need to post.  Skip ahead to the last four paragraphs if you're impatient.  But first, the news.

There is a fourth state of matter beyond that which is known to most men.  It is a state of matter as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.  It... okay, it just falls apart the further I get.  But anyway, plasma is being used to disinfect human skin and kill germs.  Personally, I feel cleaner if I use actual soap and water, but if this kind of thing takes off into personal use, then maybe it'll help stem the spread of stuff like the Swine Flu.  The Swine Flu is now the Swine Few.  There are a few distinct variations in the flu, and that is causing some people a great deal of worry.  Hey, if I get the piggy flu, I'll just stay in bed for a week with my video games.  And while scientists are having trouble with the flu, other scientists are making progress in fighting certain kinds of cancer.

In space this week, more evidence of life on Mars has been discovered, and it's looking more and more like a certain red planet was once full of life.  Small, microscopic life, but it still counts.  Also, if you're planning a trip to Saturn any time soon, you might be in time to see a spectacular light show.  What is called the aurora borealis to those living in Alaska can also be seen on everyone's favourite ringed planet.

Microsoft sucks this week.  It looks like they don't want anyone drinking the COFEE anymore, they've issued takedown notices to many sites hosting the software.  Silly Microsoft, people will find other ways to distribute it.  Sarah Palin sucks this week.  She claims that her family used to play Scrabble a lot.  Yeah... no.  Take it from a Scrabble fanatic: I don't know how you play Scrabble in Alaska, but in the rest of the English speaking world, you don't want to hoard the Q, you want to get rid of it and hoard the Ss.  RPGs suck this week, according to Pixel Poppers.  Apparently, as an RPG gamer, I automatically suck at hard puzzles.  Hey Angela, thanks for helping me acquire a copy of Picross for the DS.  I've been enjoying it quite a bit, especially the level 10 (hardest) puzzles.

How's this for interesting?  A book called "The CIA Manual Of Trickery And Deception" is available on Amazon.com.  But wait a minute, one of these authors has already written quite a bit about the CIA, and all of a sudden, he comes across an old spy manual and decides to sell it?  It's not like it just fell into his lap, he had to go digging for it.  But anyway, as for my own writing, Adventures in Canadian Gaming will resume in December, after the end of NaNoWriMo (I am currently at 48455 words, which means I have 1545 words left to go), provided I am still alive.

In an earlier column, I mentioned Canada's Worst Driver, and made flippant, almost self-mocking comments about my own death by motorist.  It was totally and completely a joke to me.  I even mentioned the corner I figured it would happen on.  Well, at approximately 5:13pm on November 5th, five days after I posted that entry, a motorist driving a dark truck didn't even look in my direction when he was stopped at a stop sign on the corner of Campbell and 1st in my home town of Revelstoke, Canada, exactly one block away from my predicted scene of death.  I was on foot, and I hesitated because not only did I not know what he was going to do and didn't have eye contact, but he also had stopped in the middle of the crosswalk.  I didn't have to stop for him.  It was my right of way to continue walking.  If I had, he would've plowed ahead and mowed me down.  I would most likely have died on the scene or on the way to the hospital.  I hope the extra five seconds he saved driving to the bar was worth it.

On last Monday's episode of Canada's Worst Driver (rerun Fridays, when I watch it), one of the bad driver nominees who was going through the driver rehab course got a phone call.  Crystal Farao's brother-in-law, Thomas Stagno, was killed when a bad driver failed to yield for him.  The driver, Tom Marion, was charged.  Failure to yield carries a $150 fine in Canada.  It might've been worse for the driver who almost struck me, but for Thomas Stagno, that's all his life was worth.  $150.

I had someone's life in my wallet earlier today.  Could've been mine.

Before video games came along, card and board games were king.  Simple games like Monopoly and Poker were invented and families had hours of fun playing them.  Fast forward to today, and it's like you can't be bothered to bring out your chess set or your go board or even a simple deck of cards.  Maybe you live alone, or no one else likes to play against you anymore because you always win (or you always lose and you complain bitterly because of it).  So it seems the logical step to digitize these popular board and card games so that you can play against the computer or against someone over the Internet.  Of course, this means you have to buy a game you probably already own, but it's worth it.  Or is it?

There have been versions of Scrabble released before, including multiple versions and variations for the PC, the most recent of which, Scrabble Journey, features varied boards with differing requirements on each of them.  There's even been a game show that ran on NBC, hosted by Chuck Woolery (who later went on to host another word game, Lingo on GSN). Scrabble as a game has proven so popular that other companies and websites have come up with their own versions, the most notable of which is called Literati, and is featured on Yahoo Games.

Both SCRABBLE and LITERATI are in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 4th Edition, and are worth 14 points and 8 points respectively.*

So why buy the DS version?  Well, portability for one.  For another, the touch screen is as close as you can get to using a mouse, unless you play the PC or Mac versions, and helps immensely during games when there's a time limit involved.  And for a third thing, Training Mode will help you grow as a player without having to write out all the good words on flash cards to memorize them.  Soon, you'll be using two and three letter words like a pro.

And yet, famous professional Scrabble players like Joel Wapnick have their own methods to memorize words and they've won official tournaments at the world level.  So the question becomes, what use is the software, when there are plenty of other methods to become good at the game?  Why should you buy the DS version if you'll benefit more by developing your own method of becoming a good tournament player?

The answer is: if you're training to be a tournament player, you have better options than this software.  Other than Training Mode, all this software really offers is the game itself.  Software like Scrabble Journey is good because it offers something different from the ordinary Scrabble game, and Scrabble Rack Attack takes the tiles from the original game, and uses them in a completely different way.  Scrabble on the DS, however, only offers the touch screen as an advantage over other console versions.

DS, by the way, is not in the OSPD4.


As for how the software itself runs, it's alright, but it probably could've been better.  At least there's no bugs.  Young gamers like me will have no trouble seeing the board on the tiny touch screen, but older gamers and gamers with sight impairments would have to use the magnification feature.  Unfortunately, only a portion of the magnified board can be shown on the screen; this hinders the development of a player's strategy.

Difficulty levels are very borked.  While there are supposedly six difficulty levels in the game, affecting the vocabulary of the AI, difficulty can be skewed depending on tile distribution, as it would in a normal Scrabble game.  The problem is that the AI will choose to either play all the tiles at once, or if it can't, it'll play the best scoring small word.  Intelligent strategies seem to be lost on it.  I played a level 4 AI one time and was smoked as the AI played bingo after bingo and accumulated over 400 points to my paltry 200.  Then I played the exact same AI in the next game without adjusting the difficulty level and smoked it, scoring over 450 to its paltry 150.  Instead of managing bonuses, holding certain tiles back to save for later and trading problem tiles like most human players would, the AI was just playing for points.  I should at least be thankful that the AI will only play real words, and won't try to sneak something by me like OMG RACECAR BLING BLING!

OMG, RACECAR and BLING aren't in the OSPD4.

The DS cartridge also includes Scrabble Slam, the card game based on Scrabble where the object is to place cards upon a four letter word, one at a time, to change it into other words (for instance, RACE becomes RACK, then LACK, LUCK, BUCK, etc.).  As before, there are six difficulty levels you can program into the software's AI, but in the case of Slam, if you're quick enough, you can run circles around the AI, and win each and every game, no matter what, because even at the most difficult level, level 6, the AI plays slowly, like a blindfolded, handcuffed, arthritic old man.  With rickets.  And Parkinson's Disease.  And who has lost all his fingers due to frostbite and/or gangrene.

RICKETS is in the OSPD4, worth 13 points; GANGRENE is in the OSPD4, worth 10 points; FROSTBITE is too long for the OSPD4, would be a legal play anyway, and is worth 14 points.

Chances are, though, that if you have friends who also enjoy Scrabble, one or more of you will already have a physical copy of the game, and would be more than willing to set it up and have a game or two with you.  It's also a lot more fun to play in real life, because if you're playing the AI, or playing someone on the Internet, you wouldn't get to participate in any fun arguments over vocabulary.  At a recent Scrabble Night I attended, I argued that NE is a word because it's the masculine form of NEÉ, while the other person argued back that you wouldn't use NE because it's the woman who changes her name when she's married and so you wouldn't have a use for the masculine form, therefore it's not a word.  Later on, another player proposed MILF as a word (it's an acronym, and therefore not a legal play).  Unfortunately, this sort of fun is missing from an electronic version.

FUN, of course, being worth 6 points.


This software, unfortunately, is largely useless to anyone but the most casual of players who don't already own either the physical game, or another version of the software for a different system.  There are probably enough versions of Scrabble out there that we don't need any more copies of the game floating around in bargain bins across the continent.  EA probably makes enough money from their sports titles that they don't have to scrabble for more money by porting board games to every single device with the capability of executing game software.  And it's not like they have a monopoly on board games either.  Other companies are at fault too, and I wish they would get a clue: we don't need a million versions of a game we already own.


*It will be assumed for the purposes of scoring that blanks aren't used to make the words; all scores listed do not include bonuses, for it is unlikely but possible within the rules of the game to play eight and nine letter words without landing on a single bonus square.