F U N E X?

Okay, not really a word game, but funny.

A skit from Morecambe and Wise, in which they are Swedes trying to teach people to speak English only by saying letters of the alphabet.

So F U N E X is "Have you any eggs?"

1st Annual National Scrabble Day Scrabble Tournament For Alzheimers

1st Annual National Scrabble Day Scrabble Tournament For Alzheimers was held at the Cheyenne Depot today. (April 13 is National Scrabble Day.)

More details tomorrow when I should have photos to post.

Take your blood pressure medication

Spent most of yesterday in the hospital, where my mother was admitted. Her doctor had changed her blood pressure medication a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't doing the job. Unfortunately her doctor was out of town and a home therapist said we should take her to the Emergency Room.

Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.

Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.

She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance...  she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....

The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.

Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.

Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...

Never get involved in a land war in Asia

and never agree to transcribe 20 hours of meetings from an Australian business meeting.

That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again.

Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.

Busy busy busy

I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off...metaphorically speaking.

Actually I've been sitting around buy my brain has been spinning - 2 clients, lots of writing, deadlines.

Working hard on my Scrabble tourney coming up in April. Will post more details of that shortly.

1st National Scrabble Day Tournament in Cheyenne, WY

April 13 was the birthday of the guy who invented Scrabble, so in 2009 the media - not the folks who actually sell the game! - decided to claim April 13 as National Scrabble Day.

The first annual National Scrabble Day tournament will take place on this day in the Cheyenne Depot.

I'm still finalizing ideas for how it is to be run, since it's only a one day event.

All proceeds will go to the Alzheimer's Association.

OMG!

Never realized I hadn't posted in over 2 weeks!

Sorry, folks

Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.

Posting resumes Thursday

I know I've been saying this periodically but this will be the last time I say it...I'm visiting relatives and although they have Wi fi I don't have a private room to work.

I'll be home Thursaday and will get back into the swing of things then.

New Year's Resolution

Things have been so hectic lately that I haven't been able to do any work on my Spelling Bee studying. Nor have I been able to do any Scrabble word studying (the two are actually different - spelling bee words are typically over 9 letters long, while Scrabble words can't be)

I have been playing Scrabble online of course and writing down all the words I've been using, but even there I've had to miss several days.

Well, I've got plans to have very much more structured days come January 1, and then, watch my smoke!.

Dictionary Defs: AGGADA

According to the Dictionary., AGGADA means AGGADAH. It and its potential plurals AGGADAHS, AGGADOT and AGGADOTH, means HAGGADAH.

And AGGADIC means HAGGADIC.

HAGGADAH is a Biblical scolar.

Posts resume this Wednesday

I'm a freelance writer and I am way behind on a job I have to do, so I won't be posting here until Wednesday..

Thanks for your patience!

Writing out every word in the Scrabble dictionary!

In preparation for the 2012 Spelling Bee, I'd started writing out every word in the Webster's Dictionary.

Now that I'm preparing for the 2013 Spelling Bee - which is taking place in July - 2 months earlier! - I'm doing the same thing  - but starting out with the Scrabble Dictionary, because I'm also trying to get ready for a Scrabble tournament on Memorial Day.

Learning words out of the Scrabble Dictionary won't do me any good if I make it to the oral rounds - when every word seemed to have 15 letters, and the words in the Scrabble Dictionary are 8 words long at most... but it MAY help me get to the oral rounds, which is my goal for this year.

Just can't get past +23 games

I'm really starting to think that the WordBiz computer has it in for me. I can NOT get more than 23 games over .500.

Doesn't matter who I play - I play a couple of games and get all the power tiles and win easily, then I play a couple of games where my opponent gets all the power tiles and I get nothing. VERY ANNOYING.

I know that can somewhat replicate the real game experience...but it happens too often to be a coincidence, in my opinion.

Also when I get 4 or 5 Is in one hand, and turn all the Is in, I invariably get them back within two or three turns.

Still, it doesn't annoy me too much because I am actually playing for more than one reason ... regardless o f my score I'm able to highlight several "used words" in my Dictionary, pursuing my ambition to use every single word. It may take me 5 years, it may take me ten, but I will do it!

Here's hoping a Scrabble Display will increae interest in Scrabble

Earlier this year I had talked to my local library's Exhibition Coordinator to see if I could put on a display of Scrabble ephemera. She finally got back to me and said the display was a go. Not only can I have the month of May for the exhibit...but also a couple of weeks of April.

So I'm hoping to get in a few ads for the May tournament as well as show off the Scrabble stuff.

All of a sudden the thousand bucks I spent on Ebay for various Scrabble stuff no longer seems wasted.

Though if it generates no new people to my Scrabble club, it will be a failure.

Oh, well, I've got 6 months to prepare for it. We'll see what we can do.

I've started mah jong

I had read about the game mah jong in the Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 30 years ago! but had never payed it.

Well, there's a few old women here in Cheyenne who play it (well, 10 years older than me!) and I've started playing. They bet on the game...each one puts in a quarter a piece. If you play 5 games, you can win, or lose, a dollar...

I don't have the time to play it two days a week, but after I get enough experience at the game (maybe two more weeks) I'll drop it down to every Saturday. (Right now they also play on Mondays.)

It's interesting..but if there's a chance of winning even a dollar...I'm there.  ;)

1995 total words used from Scrabble Dictionary

When I play Scrabble on WordBiz, I write down the date of each game, and all the words I use, in a notebook I use for the purpose. I also highlight each word used in blue in my Dictionary. I also transfer all the new words I use into an Excel spreadsheet.

Up until about 4 weeks ago, whenever I wanted to input new words into the Excel spreadsheet, I'd have to type in the words for every day, then sort them alphabetically and delete the duplicates.

4 weeks ago I got smart. Now, when I go through the Dictionary to see if I've used a word or not, I also highlight any new words in my notebook. That way, when I transfer those words into an Excel spreadsheet, I only have to type in a couple words per game - usually no more than 6. That takes a heckuva less time than my previous method.

My excel spreadsheet has a column for words, and a column for the date when I first used each word.

I normally sort it alphabetically by word, but I envision  in future sorting it by date also. It's sometimes fun to see how a word progresses. For example a few days ago I spelled HARE, and a couple of turns later, spelled a word off of it, turning it into HAREM.

Sometimes, I have to admit, I do this even though it gets me fewer points than if I were to spell a word somewhere else. My goal after all is to use every word in the Scrabble Dictionary, so I've got to grab words when I can. Actually winning the game is secondary!

High-tech Scrabble board lets the world watch your games online

From DVice:  High-tech Scrabble board lets the world watch your games online

Scrabble is usually a pretty intimate game, played by bookish people who want to show off their command of English vocabulary. But if you're a competitor at the Prague Mind Sports Festival Scrabble Championship, the Scrabble world wants to study every word you lay down right as it happens.
To make that happen, Mind Sports International has come up with the world's most advanced Scrabble board, which uploads every move directly to the Internet.
The $32,000 board is stuffed with electronics, and uses special letter tiles embedded with RFID tags. Sensors under each square on the board read the tags, and score words instantly as they're put down. The information is then uploaded in real time to a website for fans following the game.
That's all very cool, but I see lots of potential for abuse here. I wonder how hard it would be for a competitor to rig up his own RFID scanner that can read what tiles his opponent is holding? It also seems like it might not be too hard to rig up a computer that could read the board, then suggest the best word to lay down based on what letters are in your rack.
Even with the finest players locked in battle there are bound to be dull stretches in the action, so the Mind Sports board is also equipped with an LED lighting system to liven things up. What's not clear is how the light show is going to be translated to the online version streaming from the board. If you're eager to find out, tune in when the Prague tournament opens on December 1.

 

It's in the tiles...

Well, a few days ago I'd been cock-a-hoop over being more than 20 games over .500, and having reached the 600 rating plateau.

Well, I'm still 20 games over .500, but I've lost several games in a row and am actually at a 495 rating as I type.

And it's all because of the tiles. It used to be I'd get all the good tiles - the power letters, etc., and my opponent wouldn't. And at these times I'd show no mercy.

Well, I've been on the receiving end of it for several days and it's getting pretty damned annoying!

Fortunately, the second reason I play, apart from trying to win, is to use new words so I can highlight them in my Dictionary, since my goal is to use every single word in the Dictionary, remember. And I've been able to a few new words, anyway!  

Dictionary Defs: AIBLINS

The definition for AIBLINS is ABLINS.

If you recall, ABLINS is the Scottish word for "perhaps."  There are quite a few Scottish words in this dictionary.

I don't know of any Scottish enclave in the US that uses ABLINS instead of perhaps, but I suppose there could be some.


"Ablins they want us to learn Scots as well as English."
"Ablings they want us to learn Scots as well as English."
"Aiblins they want us to learn Scots as well as English."

21 games over .500, rating of 576 at Wordbiz

Just played my first game of the day at Wordbiz.

Challenged a guy who likes to play 15 minute games. Normally this would be okay except I wasted a lot of time searching through my dictionary to highlight in blue the words I'd used....when it's only a 15 minute game I've got to do that at the end of the game, not during.

What happened was, my letters sucked for the first few turns, so I kind of gave up on the game and just concentrated on using new words - remember my goal is to use ever single word in the Scrabble Dictionary 4th edition.

So at the end I had very little time left...but I had gotten a few good words and was leading! I had a U and an I left, my opponent had an L. I was leading and should have won.

My opponent spelled LEWER, which even on my worst day I know is not a word! But instead of challenging it, I just passed, and he won by 6 points. Had I challenged it, I would have been able to spell NU, he would have had to pass, I'd've had to pass, and I would have won.

Just stupid on my part...I just wasn't paying attention.

But, anyway

My rating is now 576. Depending on if I play someone rated slightly higher or lower than myself, the rating goes up or down by 10 points. If I play someone very low, I could lose 20 points if I lose. 

My win loss record is 517-496.

Since the last time I input new words used into my excel database, I had used 1825 words out of the 100,000 in the dictionary (remember I started fresh on 8/28/12 for various reasons). I've used about 30-40 new words in 12 games since then.

So yes, I have a long way to go. But it's fun!