Play Scrabble Online!

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."

And if you can figure out the logic that says "horniest" is offensive and "vibrator" isn't, you're way ahead of me.

Gone: "boob."

I thought at first they were trying to grapple with a serious issue. They're not--they're eliminating anything and everything that someone might object to so they don't have to grapple with it. (Who except a nine-year old boy would find prurient meaning in "boob"?)

Gone: "hornier."

You can still look for an open 't' and "thornier."

As I do every few years, went back to isc.ro for a month. One of the accounts I started two years ago was still active. Started out just above 1300, went up and down and dropped below 1200 at one point, slowly got back above 1300 and I think that's enough. (You get two ratings now: one for games of 4 minutes or longer, and a "blitz" rating for 3 minutes or less. There are a whole bunch of people who play 1-minute games now. I tried a few--insane.) Even at this level, I always felt overmatched. I regularly lost games where I had a big lead and then the other player dropped a bingo and other big plays right near the end. And you knew it was coming. They're like vultures; it's like they don't even want to win unless they come back from 100 points down. And the bingos...lost one game on "shylocks." (Yes: the other end of the spectrum from Pogo when it comes to offensive language.) Being a sore loser, I never responded when someone who'd just trounced me gave me a "good game." I hate that stuff.

"Sequoias" on a triple-triple for 203 points (625 for the game).

Oops--maybe a mod can remove that url.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/sequoias.jpg

Someone sent this to me today--amazing and hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWD1WdIvT6Y

lol pretty good. when i was about 12 i worked out that 'xylopyrographic' if played over three triples would get you over 1000 points but didn't get so many extra points from extending existing words - and xylopyrographic isn't in the official scrabble dictionary.

(though xylopyrography is)

looking 4 scrabble opponents!

Are you on isc.ro?

no, i should be tho - that's what my homey [REDACTED] plays on mostly. i use the dumb scrabble phone app.

Too bad...can't help you there.

PATRONNE or gtfo

Steve - there was nothing on the board, it was my opening rack!

i can't think of a valid bingo for PANTONE but maybe you can.

negative.

i'm a negative creep, and i'm stoned.

disappointed also to learn that MANEATER is not valid. cuz of woke. (cuz of hyphenated tbh)