Hey, Scrabble friends.

I'm gonna be using a new blogger account for Korea blogging and general stuff. I'll leave the livejournal open in case I want to post strictly-Scrabble stuff, but otherwise you can check me out at blacksilk3000.blogspot.com

Later.

Okay, after much (=hardly any) deliberation, it seems to me that this should be the place to consolidate my scattered internet presence, in time for it to become yet another foreign teacher blog... but not quite. I do have new poems, and other stuff I feel like getting out, and I suppose I might occasionally take an interest in the Scrabble world. :)

I seem to be headed for Gwangju, Korea, where I have a job that will start as soon as I get the damn replacement diploma from Davis, and thereafter the teaching visa. It should mean mid-October. So far, everyone is being great about the delay. But I'm so antsy I could fill a couple dozen farms.

Over on CGP, Joe Bihlmeyer inquires about the strength of GINS as a leave, and Paul Sidorsky responds:

Ah yes, that's a common trap. G is for Garbage. Dump it at the
earliest opportunity, unless you can score well and there are lots of
hooks and the bag isn't consonant heavy. Generally speaking, never keep the G as part of a fish or exchange unless you need a bingo to win and you have multiple spots to hook it.

If you hit a playable bingo it's great, but as Joe implies, if you miss your bingo the G seriously inhibits your ability to score and balance your rack. Even with the IN.

I very much disagree. -ING is generally a very good combination. On an opening exchange, [GIN] outperforms IN by a wide margin. [GINS], [GEINS], and [AGINS] are also dominant leaves on an opening exchange (meaning that they clearly outperform any of their subsets), as is true of many other well-balanced leaves containing ING.

It's true that G has terrible synergy with most scoring consonants, but this very fact is substantially offset by ING leaves, both because of the bingos they form with many tiles and because, being longer leaves, they are less likely to draw such tiles (especially two or more).

Paul's claim that "the G seriously inhibits your ability to score and balance your rack" is particularly confusing. Yes, this is true of the G more generally, but the good ING leaves are already well-balanced. They have slightly more consonants than vowels, no duplicates, and no awful synergies. And they are longish, which is better as a rule. Only a few combinations are both bingo-prone and lead reliably to nice intermediate plays, like CEH, but e.g. even CEGHIN and CGHIN are often better than CEHIN.

Naturally, if you're saving a very bingo-prone rack, you should consider the nature of the bingo lines. Does the board have lots of 8 lines, 2x2s, decent 9 spots? Or does it have mostly 7 lines ending in a tile other than G or starting in a vowel? Some boards will substantially reduce the value of [GIN] or [GINS]; others will enhance them. On balance, though, they are strong leaves.

Finally, for an aspiring novice who isn't yet confident about enough bingos, I'd absolutely suggest valuing ING leaves, with the caveats a) that they don't sacrifice too many points on the present turn, b) that when they fail to draw an obvious -ING bingo, they at least take the time to look for other bingos, and c) that, more generally, they don't get locked into a mindset where there is only one way to play the rack.

Current Music: Over the Rhine, "The Darkest Night of the Year"

Ok. I've delayed the pre-endgame post so long that this lyrics meme will have to break in my page. I skipped a handful, so sue me.

Via anendlessnight and the scrabbling community:

RULES:
* Put your music player on Shuffle or Random.
* Write a couple of lines from the first 10 songs it plays. Don't be a dick and skip any.
* Sit back and let everyone guess.
* Once a song is guessed correctly, cross it out.
* Have FUN, damnit!

(1) just another sentry kept awake / watching over Silverlake

(2) so we go from year to year / with secrets we've been keeping / though you say you're not a Templar man

(3) don’t look for me in confession booth /with my paints and my pens and my dry vermouth

(4) she's a PhD in "I told you so" / you've a knighthood in "I'm not listening"

(5) But I watched them walk through the bottom land / and I wished I played in a rock and roll band

(6) I tell her I lived in Kildare once / and I manage not to say, “I was young then”

(7) The smell of moutain laurels fills the air with sweet perfume [This is a recent cover.]

(8) We fought in Boise about the hotel / we fought in Utah about the Mormons / and we fought in Omaha – I can’t remember why – / but we fought in Iowa about the corn

(9) I hate Nathan Bedford Forrest / he’s the featured artist in the Devil’s chorus

(10) You were the story I tried to tell /
you were the savior that tripped and fell /
beautiful dancing infidel

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: 5 different covers of "Don't Fear the Reaper"