August 17, 2004

Distractions  

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been spending all my time playing online Boggle instead. I'm not sure whether boggling is more or less virtuous than blogging, but at least these days it seems more addictive. (Asides: is addiction necessarily unvirtuous? And is unvirtuous a legitimate Boggle word? And, does Will Baude really score in the 400's at Scrabble, or is he just playing Nabokov, or both?)

I've also been making some modifications to the site, including the long overdue installation of MT-Blacklist after a failed spam policy. I'm also in the process of setting up MTClosecomments, so older posts will no longer accept your witty repostes and all that vitriol. Sorry, but it looks to be the most effective way of avoiding comment spam, which almost feels like a civic responsibility these days. Finally, I will be moving to a new server sometime over the next week or so, so there may be some downtime whenever I get around to that.

Comments
Sweth  {August 17, 2004}

What's so weird about 400-point Scrabble games?

(And no, addiction is not inherently unvirtuous.)

Sweth  {August 18, 2004}

Perhaps this man's saga (and his assessment of his "addiction to helping" at the end) might shed some light on whether addictions can be virtuous.

paul  {August 18, 2004}

well, we can't all play like Sweth, can we?

Seriously, I can't remember ever scoring that high, although I've never really paid that much attention to score. Mostly these days the only person I play is my grandmother, who jets off to Reno ad Las Vegas every year for tournaments. She's a pretty tough opponent and a cruel defensive player, but somehow I keep going back for more...

apostropher  {August 18, 2004}

I've broken 400 a few times in 2-person games. It's all about hitting the right triple score word.

Will Baude  {August 18, 2004}

And/or enough bingos.

paul  {August 19, 2004}

yeah, I suppose your 3 bingos were 150 pts right there, which makes 400 seem a lot closer. But 3 bingos in one game is pretty impressive by itself...

Nicholas Tam  {August 20, 2004}

At the competitive level, 400 is a slightly-above-average winning score. Scores under 330 are almost always losses except on the tightest of boards, and scores over 420 or so are mostly wins. Typically 400 can be reached with one bingo and some lucrative plays. If you think about it, it only takes an average of 25-28 points a turn to pull off, and 400+ scores are nothing to write home about for a tournament player. The top players regularly aim for an average of 30-35 points a turn.

500 is a different story - in hundreds of games I've probably done it around fifteen times at most, and it takes about three bingos and luck firmly on your side. 600 happens to a few select players once or twice in their lives, even the experts, and virtually requires a bingo or two to hit two triples at once. 700 has only been reached a few times in the history of the game. (My personal best in a tournament is only 546, though I hit 587 once in a casual game.)

paul  {August 22, 2004}

OK... so I've played 4 games of Scrabble this wknd, and while I didn't break 400 (or make it to three bingos in any one game), I guess 400 isn't so astronomical as I was thinking.

Thanks to Nicholas for the history...


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