Francophone Scrabble

[Arnaud]

deleted

[Cavesa]

I've noticed an article about him. And I agree I admire his achievement. But still:The point was exactly that: winning that Scrabble, nothing more. That is one of the reasons why I stopped liking the game nearly ten years ago. Many people memorize the dictionaries (at least the lists of allowed 2 and 3 letter words), even though by far not as efficiently.

Last time I played the game, it was with a girl from a highly scrabble loving family. It was already less fun when she insisted on zeroing my points for the round because I counted them wrong (to my disadvantage wrong) the first time. I wasn't cheating, it was an honest mistake. And second part of the problem was that even as someone who was reading a lot (several times more than the girl), was using wider vocabulary in real life, I still had absolutely no chance against someone who knew most of the allowed short words from the dictionary, including a word for a chinese coin and such things. I know it is considered a valid strategy but it felt a lot like cheating.

(Normally, I play games I am bad at as well, actually most attempts of mine when it comes to sports fall into the cathegory, but Scrabble doesn't appeal to me at all these days.)

I'd say the difference between Scrabble and real life vocabulary is quite the same as the difference between learners who only learn wordlists and those who take a much more varied approach. Those only memorising wordlist are surely gonna be great when it comes to Memrise, Anki or school tests.

I wish I had photographic memory.

[aokoye]

Really it seems Scrabble is all about knowing how specific words are spelled which is why I am so terrible at Scrabble in English despite being a voracious reader - English spelling is my nemesis. You don't need to know what the words mean or even how they're pronounced, you just need to be able to know that X letters make up a word that is in the Scrabble dictionary.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed with this guy's ability to learn how to spell so many words and I really liked PRI's article. I'm just not terribly surprised that someone can be good at Scrabble in a language that they don't speak.