Pluralizing ~ING to ~INGS

We know that there are a number of ways for verbs to end up with ~ING,
● it’s being there in the first place: [to] ding-king-ping-ring-sing-ting-wing-zing
● through conjugation: to judge – judges – judged – judging
● or when the ~ING forms act/function as nouns: AGINGs BEINGs DOINGs GOINGs ICINGs

Note that in the third type, the ~ING variants can be pluralized (by adding an ‘S’ to them), just like nouns generally can. We should be very careful here though, since the majority of verbs cannot act ‘this way’ (that is, taking an S after ‘being ING-ed’).

A sightly monstrosity

What is your biggest one-move score? 200? 250? I rarely make it through the 100-point barrier myself (and when somehow I do, it’s usually barely—not way beyond).

Anyway, have a look at the diagram below.

Outlaws

Reader discretion is advised

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Every once in a while, for one reason or another, we are bound to play an ‘outlaw’ (or at least think about one)—a word that has already been in use but fail to claim its place in our holy book. And about why this outcast is [still] not on the list, we can only guess (if at all). What follows is just what I think about some of those bandits. Some people might find part of this a bit offensive, but it means what it means. Anyway, let’s start with some stories. All true.

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For some players, the realm of the longer words is alluringly challenging—or even hard to resist at times. And this is rarely just about scoring.

So there I was, thinking about setting up for my longest ever: PREREQUIREMENTS. But weighing that the tile-fairy had something else in mind, I settled down with prerequired (not a bingo but a four-mover instead: quire-quired-required-prerequired—cool, eh?). Still very much excited, right after the game I checked. Oops! I thought that if to require→requirement, then to prerequire→prerequirement (just in much the same way as prepayment, pretreatment or prearrangement). Of course this kind of logic is not supposed to always work. OK, my bad. While English being not my arterial language and even though we do have the equivalent of ‘prerequirement’ in our language (were there one in English), I just can’t really expect two different languages being adjacently comparable all the time, can I? Still, it seems only natural to think that this ‘fifteener’ is good (yes, that one is bad too).

[Illegal] vulgar words are like dangerously persistent walking undead—they are many, and they just keep coming. And it’s not because their probabilities of occurrence are high, or even the fact that somehow they are easy to remember, but all the more so because no matter how scrambled the tiles are, people find them easy to spot. Well, some people do.

The spirit prevails

It’s quite understandable why many players do not want to play anyone rated much lower than themselves. It’s high-risk. Rate-wise speaking, the game will drag you down big time if you lose, and give you almost nothing if you win. Sometimes, if the rate-gap between both player is really big (more than five hundreds or, say, a thousand or so), it could still cost you some rate points even if you didn’t lose the game.

Contrariwise, not all players like to play anyone rated much higher than themselves. Well, they have their reasons.

But surely a game is not just about rating (or even winning or losing). So thankfully, there are other kind of players like this Jo something here, for example. This player just saw me in the seek bar, accepted my challenge, and marauded me. Fair and square. Nice going, Jo. 🙂

[Note: I happened to be Red, in all of the games here]

A game with two Q’s

One thing people like about computer (i.e. internet) scrabble is obvious: it does the math. Well, at least most of it, nonetheless. But an algorithm, however sophisticated, is surely not without flaws (errors, bugs, drawbacks, you name it)—from anything as commonplace as power failure or processing problem (at times, that millions-of-operations-per-second chip just acts dumb—other times dumber), to something very uncommon like this game below.

Rales from the Crypt

Why do we play this game? There must be something about the game that we find worth doing or we won’t keep doing it like this (like crazy). As a matter of fact, there’s got to be some reason why people end up doing—or not doing, something.

What reason that might be is just anybody’s guess. It could be something simple (from just for the fun of it to taking anything like the Guinness World Records too bloody seriously), or something deeper (like health or psyche issue, perhaps).

Anyway, here is a game from a shrewd player I know on the internet. Against an opponent no less ‘extraordinary’ (in whatever sense you might find fit) than this friend of mine is.

Looked ordinary enough. But then Blue (my friend, the first player) was in for a surprise..

Hollywood luvs ya!

This article about playable names is especially written for non-English speaking players

Many people, especially those who don’t speak English, find that the most intimidating part of this game is vocabulary. This is ironic, since playing scrabble actually helps us enrich our word bank, not jeopardize it. But that aside, there are indeed many approaches to throw in a chunk of words into our memory. One easy way is by using familiarity—by making use of the things we are familiar with. Like public figures’ names.

We are all familiar with many Hollywood’s characters—factual or fictitious. Now how about having them ever ready to give us a hand 24 hours a day? How come? Many of their names are playable! Check out the following list (focus on those you already know first):

Timothy Dalton
Morgan Freeman
Jack Lord
Don Johnson
Tarzan & Jane
Matt Helm
Martin Landau
Mel Gibson
Tom Hanks
Tommy Lee Jones

Guinness, anyone?

In scrabble, in the whole timespan (careful guys, this ain’t yet a TWL term) of your scrabble life, how many times do you see some highly unusual games, let alone play them yourself? Frankly, I never give it much thought myself. Not before this game. It happened a couple of days ago. Look at the board. See anything strange?