'rabble (results)

[Cordelia]

Matt, sorry for putting this out while you have a Scrabble-themed game going, but I imagine a single-submission won't interfere much!


Each player submits one word. Highest score wins. Easy.


Words can not exceed 7 letters; normal Scrabble rules on valid words apply (if you send an invalid one, I'll warn you). With your word submission, send in a list of the unique letters in your word, ordered from "most common" to [b]"least common"l/b] letter.

In effect, you are trying to control the value of the letters in your word. By indicating a letter is "most common," you are controlling its frequency in the Scrabble bag. The frequency of a letter is a total across all players. The exact value of your contribution is 1 frequency point for the "least common" letter and +1 for each more common letter in your word (up to 7 for a seven-letter word with no repeating letters).

The first five most frequent letters are worth 1 point. Each subsequent five letters is worth an additional point. The six least common letters, however, are worth 7 points. All letter ties are worth the lesser value. All player ties are in favor of the player with more "common" letters. I originally had a nice and complicated system for scoring letters, but have greatly simplified it.

I'm leaving it at that right now. If this is successful, I'll consider some variations next time. PM your words and ordered letter lists. Feel free to send in a different word before I cut off submissions.

[Jack_Ian]

Not sure if I understand this, perhaps you could explain it by example.
Imagine Mary sends in the word "abandon" saying letter frequency is "dbona".
And Joe sends in "abscess" saying letter frequency is "abces".
Who would win?

[MatthewV]

Interesting!

[Cordelia]

If they're the only players, the {letter (frequencies): resulting letter values} would be
b(4+4): 1
a(1+5): 1
d(5): 1
c(3): 1
o(3): 1
e(2): 2
n(2): 2
s(1): 2
abandon = 9
abscess = 11
The player who played "abscess" would win.

[MatthewV]

So we are trying to come up with a seven (or less) lettered word that uses letters other players didn't use.

[Cordelia]

There are a couple of other elements going on, like inflating the value of certain letters, use of multiple letters, but strictly speaking, yes.

If you used a word with 7 unique letters, your most common letter would still be worth less than a lot of other letters in the Scrabble bag. I assume that I'll learn more about the game after I compile the results, though.

[Amb]

I would personally love to see all the entrants put in two entries...

[Cordelia]

If I don't get 10 people, I'll consider it.

[Jack_Ian]

Another option could be to allow as many words as you like but with a maximum of 7 letters in total used (eg. fly + tryst).

[Zag]

So I could say that my "least frequent" letter is actually one I use multiple times, when I have others I only use once?

[Cordelia]

It's not YOUR least frequent letter. It's indicating how frequent the letter is in the Scrabble bag.

[Zag]

Well, I'm clueless, but /sent.

[Cordelia]

Thematically, you are influencing your letters' frequencies for the English language. A consequence of which is that the makers of Scrabble will change the value of letters in their game.

I really need to hire a Rules Writer. Who wants to be my official writer? I pay in peanut shells...

[lexprod]

Basically you submit a word, then exert a small amount of control over how those letters in that word is scored.

Say you submitted DICTIONARY (obviously too long to be a legal play). Then you submit the letters as ADICTONYR. Since A is your most common letter, it gets 9 "commonness" points due to being the most common of 9. R only gets 1 commonness point.

Once all players' commonness points for each letter is combined, letters with the lowest commonness will get more points, as if the alphabet's distribution were totally different. So you try to make words that you think will have letters that end up "rare."

[Cordelia]

I'll close entries on Tuesday, for anyone who had intentions of changing their submissions.

[Cordelia]

lexprod: banana (ban)
MatthewV: prickly (ilrycpk)
Amb: gazelle (alegz)
Jack_Ian: sexless (elsx)
jesternl: exigent (entixg)
Scurra: jerking (girkejn)
Zag: falafel (ealf)
groza528: waxwork (aorxkw)

The frequencies:

[Zag]

Well, I guessed right with F, but I was hoping that L would be a letter that most people would avoid for being too common.

Grats, Groza!

[MatthewV]

So I would have won if I had done ILRKYCP?
I am glad that I got three letters nobody else used. I figured most people would try to use JXQZ and not focus on FHYWMCPBK.

[Amb]

For the record I attempted to play a blank in the hopes it would score 7. Cordelia rejected my cunning plan.

I so nearly sent Equinox.

[Jack_Ian]

I purposely picked "s" & "e" thinking that most people would avoid them.
Congrats Groza!

[jesternl]

thanks, that was fun!
I was going the old reverse psychology route, thinking that people would avoid using an X, because 'everyone else will use one'. That didn't quite work out

[groza528]

Thanks cordy; that was fun Though I admit I got a bit confused on the order at first, whether common or rare letters got more points.

[Amb]

Knowing this information now, what would happen if we all submitted an extra word, with a ranking order again?

And this time, our entries would mix in with the previously submitted round.

[groza528]

You'd send EQUINOX, MatthewV would ask if he could send the same word but change the order, and I'd complain that the game has already been won and there's no need for a rematch.

And if you didn't send EQUINOX then the SAME six letters would end up not being used because everyone would assume they'd get overused.

[Amb]

No actually I wouldn't ... or would I ?

Party Pooper.

I'd still love to know what would happen. What if you assume that no word can be reused, and submissions must not contain any letter that you used in your first submission. (Which would kill EQUINOX automatically for me)

[Cordelia]

I'd thought of many different ways something like this could be manipulated, though "adding" on to the previous game might not be the right thing to do exactly.

That said, if someone would eventually like to take an alteration and run with it, I'm open to that too.