Scrabble - Classic or Dud?

sweet!

I can't seem to post photos anymore on ILX, so you'll have to trust me here...Highest single play ever, I'm pretty sure: "mesquite" across a triple-triple, with the 'q' falling on the double-letter, 311 points (261 for the play + bonus). I laid down "quite" initially--the 'u' was already down--which would have been worth 72, noticed 'mes' still on the rack; "'mesquite,' that sounds familiar..." It was my third play of the game: I started with "cutties," then "tux" for 26, so I had 411 points after three plays. Followed with "wailers," and I started thinking of an 800-point game. Finished with 735.

Pogo, computer, etc.

I can post photos again, so here was my "mesquite" play from two months ago.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/mesquite.jpg

Also, I took Scrabble as my category for a Zoom trivia group tonight. My questions:

1. What are two most valuable tiles in terms of point value?
2. What are the two most valuable tiles strategically?
3. Which three consonants are the most common tiles (name one)?
4. What is a triple-triple?
5. Within 100 points either way, what is the highest game score ever in tournament play?
6. Within 10 years either way, when was the game invented?
7. What is the 7-letter word that uses the ‘q’ and all five vowels?
8. What is the meaning of either ‘qi’ or ‘za’?
9. Name one of the two famous game companies that rejected Scrabble?
10. In the film Rosemary’s Baby, what does Rosemary learn when she spills out all the Scrabble tiles and starts anagramming?

Obviously, some of those are giveaways. My categories for the last three--movies, post-war presidents, and the Beatles--produced average scores of 2 or 3 out 10, even though I thought most of the questions were basic. So I'm feeling pressure to up those scores. Meanwhile, I routinely score 2 or 3 out of 10 on categories like Italian cooking or inventions. I live in a different universe, evidently.

365 points on one play ("quizzers")--she out-mesquited me.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/chatham-scrabble-word-score-quizzers-1.5915155

The fuck.

ha that is great, I love that the app enables some official validation

Not only did she draw two z's and a q, but also the necessary u, plus some other nice vowels and an s. Her word play was excellent, but her tile draw was off the charts and over the moon.

I think best of all, it's not some obscure word that no one has ever heard of.

Classic until somebody starts trying to tell me I can't have Antinazi cos they want it to need a hyphen.
Gorlumme what a complete load of tosh. plenitude of irrational convolution, like.

After almost 20 years and approximately ___________ games of online Scrabble (too embarrassed to fill that in), first time I ever played "gumshoe."

https://phildellio.tripod.com/gumshoe.jpg

Scrabble Go accepts the word "grrrl".

Just thought you should know.

This has happened to me before, and it's pretty much the best evidence I can think of that you play way, way too much Scrabble: you're looking at f-l-o-w-e-r-s on your rack, and your first thought is "Is that a word? Someone or something that flows?"

There is a great story in Gwen Raverat's "Period Piece," her memoir of growing up in the Darwin household, where they're playing anagrams and Charles Darwin wanders through, looks at the board and goes "Moth-er? There's no such word as "moth-er."

Sounds about right. You just start to see words differently, automatically breaking them down into recognizable building blocks, and four-letter-verb + "ers" are the easiest bingos to spot, hence "flow-ers."