Play Scrabble Online!

Now don't get all froggier than thou on me.

had SYNERGY in wwf but couldnt place it :(

sounds like you didn't

I've basically kicked isc.ro--haven't been on for close to two years. Now fighting Pogo addiction. I set the bar for a good game there at 500 points; the computer never bingos (although it is programmed to play a somewhat smart end-game), and if you match a blank on the board, you can "steal" the blank back. I probably explained this upthread somewhere. I've had numerous funny/weird bingos, but can't think of them right now.

lol 2002: "Holy shit, you can play Scrabble on the internet!"

was playing a rando in wwf, think I won the very 2 first games ever played vs this person, then she proceeded to win the next 40 straight O_O

I just won the last 2 tho so watchout

I can be such a poor sport online, I would've cursed her out after about 10 straight (why I only play computers now).

heh a different rando (with a avatar pic of him in a buffalo bills sweatshirt, smiling broadly w/ his wife and cats beside him) did curse me out and accused me of cheating recently and resigned in a huff when I played 'azotes'

truthfully I like the challenge if ppl cheat, tho I never do, don't see the fun in that

no pride, no soul brother

If you suspect I'm cheating, you can resign in a huff; if you're convinced I'm cheating, make it a minute-and-a-huff.

very little is more satisfying than trailing almost all game, to an opponent who beats me at like a 5:1 ratio, & making a penultimate move that traps them & my knowing they know they cant win :)

Those are great. I just finished a game where I was trailing most of it, had to make some vowel-dump rack management moves late, but finished with GUIDANCE for 107 and the win.

"Biggie" is okay (as in, "no biggie"). "Biggied"--I biggied that motherfucker--is not.

Funny to think back to a time when playing scrabble online warranted an exclamation mark.

I've been binging for a couple of weeks on Pogo--going to try my best to stop for a while. I'd kept away for a year before that. I tend to fall back into it when I'm feeling a lot of stress at work. It's got to be the most idiotic addiction in the world.

After four or five years away, I stupidly started playing on the Internet Scrabble Club again. Stupid because of how addictive it is with me. When it comes to online scrabble, I’m what’s referred to, in a Scorsese film, as a degenerate gambler.

It’s much harder now to get your rating up than it used to be. I went through seven or eight accounts before--I’d quit for a while, then come back with a new username--and I would always manage to get my rating up to 1,500 before leaving. I can’t do that now, even though I’m better than I used to be. I’ll get a little over 1,400, then I’ll drop back. The other players are just too good.

You still get the occasional fraud. I won’t quit a game, no matter how badly I’m behind. I’ve quit once in 800+ games. It was against this player who was clearly using some kind of program. In a three- or four-minute game, this guy (or woman) was laying bingos left and right—four in the first 90 seconds. Making bingos is to be expected; if I get good letters and an open board, it’s not that unusual for me to make two or three in a short game. But it’s also the kind of bingos that’s a giveaway. Almost all of mine fall into one of three categories: “-ers” words (e.g., “jumpers”), “-ier” words (e.g., “mintier”), or “-ing” words. The first one this guy made was “agitable.” Okay, fine--those are common letters, that’d be one you could memorize easily. There were a couple more unusual ones after that. He changed letters at one point, I played, and then he instantaneously laid down “judoists” over a triple-triple for almost 200 points. “Judoists”? It’s a legitimate word--we were playing automatic validation--but give me a break. The human mind just doesn’t pick that word out in a split-second (least of all a player with a ~1,200 rating). So I left the game.

Tried mallese--what everyone speaks in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless--on Pogo. Didn't fly.

My favourite ever Scrabble moment was when I turned FELINES into WIFELINESS

Specifically to play a friend--who in the end wasn't able to set up an account--I stupidly went back on isc.ro for a few weeks. The level of a play is ridiculous now. 10 years ago, I went through four or five accounts, always bringing my rating to 1500 before starting a new one. About five years ago I returned, and I couldn't get the rating over 1400. I've got to be 50% better than I was 10 years ago (hundreds and hundreds of games on Pogo), but I'm bailing again at 1307. I'm constantly playing people with ratings of 1100 or 1200 who a) have peak ratings of 1500/1600/1700 a few years ago, and b) lay bingos left and right. If you get caught up in it like I do, it's just too nerve-wracking.

I was playing someone a few days ago, rating of ~1150. I was up about 50 points, I had a play, and she had seven letters left. I looked at her letters and they were very un-bingo like: the 'q' was in there, also an 'm'; she had a blank, but it looked like a total jumble. Just to be sure, I played something at the bottom of the board so my last letter was part of the bingo lane--she'd now have to build on my letter.

In about one second flat--she obviously had her word and needed one extra letter from me--she lays "quagmire" across a triple-triple for 203 points. That's what you get from an 1150 player on there now.

Just Pogo, but played "executed" across a triple-triple for 262 points, which I think is the most I've ever had for a single play.

Crazily, the https://isc.ro/ site mentioned upthread still exists and I've created a new account!

Unchanged from 2002 from what I can see...

Definitely still there. See my post three up--haven't been back since.

Cool. what's your account id? I'm ScrabOX3.

I just got a notice yesterday on my Scrabble app yesterday that come June all ratings are getting wiped clean and a new system will be in place

anybody know what this is about?

kudos clemenza!

GG: verlander. I said I wouldn't go back, and I've managed not to, but I'm okay with having a game with someone specific if you can pick a time. (I know this sounds ridiculous, but I have a real addiction problem.)

That's amazing clemenza

My highest play is WANGLERS for 167

The play I'm most proud of though is when I bingo'd with FELINES and then turned it into WIFELINESS a few turns later

*Ctrl-F* ah I posted about that already, well, I was very proud

Re: the notice, it was tl;dr, but basically EA's stepping out of Scrabble and new version (Scrabble GO) from Scopely (which includes in-app purchases?) takes over in June.

My highest is CYANIDES for 158. You all are monsters.

In App Store now, but requires iOS 10+. Hello, darkness, my old iPad 3.

The old EA app was okay. Replicated the board game with reasonable faithfulness. I am sweetly sad that it is going away.

Scrabble Go is a garish mess, with loads of mini-games and mini-challenges and pointless levels and a baroque metasystem of gems / money / points / badges / leagues / tickets. Meant to be both opaque and addictive a la Candy Crush etc. It also very much incentivizes connecting to your Facebook friends or whatever, as opposed to playing as an anonymous guest.

There is still a decent game underneath all this colorful filigree, and I've had one or two opponents who did all right against me. But I'm at like a 98% win rate so I wanna hang back until it gets enough refugees from the old EA app who can actually play strategically.

ha xp

REQUESTS, 212

So I read up on the Scopely reboot and of course it fucking sucks and like everything else simple and good in the world has to be made ugly and complicated and thoroughly monetized

It looks like Candy Crush or some shit with all kinds of lights and pastel buttons and avatars, w/ ads and "social component" and interruptive "mini-games" and incentivized gold fucking tokens and leveling up etc.

WHY

FGTI: I remember your felines-into-wifeliness post, that's impressive. I'm guessing only 5-10% of my bingos incorporate a letter already down (and I don't think I've ever laid one incorporating two or more letters). My best play in an actual non-computer game was "quilters" on ISC; over 200, but not as high as other plays mentioned above.

Just so as not to be a grumpy gus, the one thing I do like is its equivalent of the speed mode (duels).

In EA Scrab you had to wait 24 hours before "nudging" an opponent. Then if another 24 hours went by you could "force forfeit" them. So a game could go on for a week or so, and so I'd have like 8 games going at once, which is not ideal. I do like the opportunity to sit down and concentrate with sufficient pushback from the other side.

24 hours?!? I used to play 3-minutes games on ISC.

There was a timed play option (2 or 5 minutes per move) on the EA app.

Scrabble Go duels are much faster, like 30 seconds? Also various times solo games.

the 24-hour nudge thing never bothered me because I keep as many as fifteen or twenty games going at once...I'm rarely waiting to play

anyway I'm hoping after they get ppl hooked on this they will offer up a no-frills game to buy

Very important correction: "executed" was for 212 points, not 262. Pogo displayed 162 for the word--correct--then I added 100 in my mind for the bingo, rather than 50. (The 'c' was already down on one double-letter square, one of the vowels was a blank, and the 't' was on the other double-letter square.)

Three minutes I can handle--30 seconds, that's crazy talk. (When I went back in the fall, the three-minute games had gotten a little too nerve-racking.)

On EA I had 525 for best game, a 1635 ELO rating, best word was LEAVINGS for 158. 58% win percentage, which seems about right. If pitted against a broad range of serious (but not obsessed) Scrabblers I think that's about how well I'd do.

In Scrabble Go it's, sheesh, 690 "Scrabble Score" (whatever that means), best word 113, best game 465.

Nothing is comparable about these numbers because it's different conditions, a different dictionary, and a radically different competitor pool.

Anyone ever played the Quackle computer? It's ridiculous. I'll have to play 25 games before I win one.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/

http://people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/doc/blockdiagram.png

On isc.ro all night, till six this morning, mostly losing. It's entirely Grandpont Genie's fault. And if not him, then China, Nancy Pelosi, and the World Health Organization.

One of the best things about the ISC, though I don't use it often, is that you can watch highly-rated games in progress, often one of their computers against a famous Scrabble player. (Yes--within this parallel universe, there are famous players.) Here's a screenshot I took of a game probably still going on between Joel Sherman and Zurix, an ISC computer. Sherman's won the National Championship a few times, I believe (and is well known for various eccentricities). He's playing the blue tiles.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/joel.jpg

As soon as I finish here, I'm going to go inhume some zatak.

good news

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/24/scrabble-forced-redesign-neon-app-purists-criticized-futuristic/

seems like this kind of thing never happens!

I've often said that people who complain about political correctness are far more tiresome than the thing itself. So I try never not to, especially when I almost always find alleged offenders to have sound reasoning behind whatever has been changed.

Scrabble has had problems over the years. Most of the words that got dropped along the way (they may still be allowed in tournament play, not sure) I'm totally fine with--many are deeply offensive.

Pogo recently redesigned their site--uglier, as all redesigns are--and they also seem to have really tightened their dictionary. Some of the words--fine before the redesign--that have been dropped.

"fag" and "fag(g)ot"--both have normal meanings, but they're so loaded now, I'm fine with this.
"tit" and "ass"--actual animals, getting sillier. (Makes me think of Aaron Spelling, for some reason.)
"bitches"--to me, that can totally mean "to complain"; I get it, but I don't get it.
"slave"--again, I get it, but one can be a slave to one's job, right? This has regularly used, non-loaded meaning.

Am I wrong to balk at some of these changes? Too much the Scrabble player? It's a dumb online game site--not the end of the world, obviously.

"try never not to"--drop that "never"

i'm disturbed by all of these and i'm a fag irl

That would always be my overriding guide: if these words still offend, then sure, take them out. I hear people say "stop bitching" all the time, but if it's a legitimate problem, fine.

Happy to report that "vibrator" is still okay.

Gone: "horniest."