"...plays the self-descriptive 'POO' for 10 points." Will's coming out of the gate throwing shade 😂

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

It was a solid play from that rack - the five vowels were poo, not the decision!

@desecratedPriest

7 ай бұрын

Why would he play poo instead of oops?

@wanderer15

7 ай бұрын

@@desecratedPriest the S is too valuable to use for just a couple extra points - because it can be used to pluralize almost any noun or verb, players at this level tend to keep it until they can use it for a significant number of extra points than they could get otherwise.

@joshuatopp2039

6 ай бұрын

@@desecratedPriestnever use the s first try, always hook

Finding a quote from yourself while doing research is crazy 😭

@RandyDaGamer

Ай бұрын

Indeed

@TheBcoolGuy

5 күн бұрын

vulvar potato

these videos have made me want to play Scrabble so bad, I've never played it before but this series makes it look so incredibly fun

@thunder7433

8 ай бұрын

there’s online play, give it a shot, I’ve played a few matches and even though the people are a lot better than me it’s really fun

@Firefly256

8 ай бұрын

Give it a shot, if you don’t like playing competitively just memorize the 127 two-letter-words and you’re good to go I’ve played Scrabble for 5 years only memorizing the 2s and it’s very enjoyable (you’ll subconsciously memorize 3s as you play). It’s only recently that I started memorizing more

@mythicsword8169

8 ай бұрын

​@Firefly256 these videos convinced me to play scrabble myself and even though I'm bad I finally got my first bingo yesterday. Same as the others said I just memorized the two letter words (although I'm not perfect yet) and have been having a lot of fun.

@Dry_Bones_Stan_

8 ай бұрын

@@robertveith6383 ?? do you want me to capitalize and punctuate? this is KZread not Harvard dude

@Dry_Bones_Stan_

8 ай бұрын

I mean I think my original comment was clear enough, I don't see why you see the need to nitpick a random comment on a Scrabble video

I love it when he talks about their racks. Was dying at "trip has a horrendous rack"

Understanding that ZIN is better than JIN is possibly the most impressive play to me in this game, given that it defies leave / bingoing heuristics and JIN sets up the case (D)JIN hook. Later, the confidence to not take the guaranteed victory and instead play the perfect endgame is extremely impressive as well.

So one minor thing in theses Nigel videos, that I always find funny, is the Standing boards that list where people are from with specific Cities for the US but if your from outside the US they just shrug and put the Country. It makes it look like Nigel is either just a wise hermit roaming all of Malaysia or that he just sits upon the throne of Malaysia as its undisputed king for being such a good SCRABBLE player.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Ha, fair point! Justice for non-US residents!

Nigel forgoing bingos could be compiled into its own video, he does that so much more than other top players, and especially EAT here was an example where I don't think it would even occur to other players not to play the bingo. Maybe you could cover the World Championship final against Jesse Day where he famously forewent a bingo near the end of the game.

The double hook hits me everytime. Elite understanding of the game state, so impressive every time.

another absolute banger of a video. I specifically wanna commend your use of colors. I feel like you already do a great job of explaining the nuanced plays without it getting too confusing, but your use of colors really made every moment crystal clear; like coloring words in either purple or yellow to show who played them in a fast forward was so cool to see. keep up the great work!

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Thanks! It's taken some iteration to get to this point, and I'm always thinking about how the visual presentation of the game could help aid understanding.

@haikumagician4363

6 ай бұрын

​@@wanderer15i was coming to say the same thing! The presentation is the only thing that's made me watch all your scrabble videos.

One of the things that make me most excited about the advancement of Scrabble AIs is the potential to better evaluate all these unintuitive, brilliant-looking plays by Nigel (and others too, but Nigel seems to have a special penchant for them). And yet in a way, I hope engines never get there so that we can keep our sense of wonder when looking at these ideas. Another fantastic game, thanks for sharing Will

@slowfreq

8 ай бұрын

Knowing how computers have influenced the chess world, I think it would be nice for computers to never catch up to humans. It takes a lot of the wonder out of these problems when you can press a button and instantly know the answer to everything.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Both of these viewpoints seem valid to me, and I feel like it's a win-win - either we preserve some of the unsolvable mystique of Scrabble, or we learn amazing new things about how to play the game better and better.

@henryt9281

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15 Ronaldo (pen), Ronaldo (pen)

@LibertyMonk

8 ай бұрын

​@@slowfreqI'm seeing some evocation of When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer in that, and all the same refutations apply. Sure, the Engine will spit out an answer and some odds, but for now, they're really bad at explaining things. So, at worst, they're mostly an idiot pointing out things that make no sense, and we have to figure out why our assumptions are wrong. There's still wonder,and IMO it's improved by knowing a little bit more. Not to mention that anyone who isn't a pro can safely ignore the Engine like we do in chess, and just play the game.

@Idiomatick

5 ай бұрын

@@slowfreq people thought computers were going to kill chess in the 90s. The early 2020's was the biggest year for chess by huge margins.

GothamScrabble is becoming more and more real

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

This is my transformation arc

@bbateson

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15 you're a helluva lot less annoying than Levy. Keep it up!

@bbateson

8 ай бұрын

Did a genuine lol at the Jay-Z flash, btw

@DJFracus

8 ай бұрын

not enough yelling for the tiktok zoomers and clickbait to be Levy

@dwaynekeenum1916

8 ай бұрын

@@DJFracusu sound slow

Trip seems just as interesting to me. Nigel knows the words, as his French victories show, but being able to compete in crossword is a completely different level in some ways - you have to know the words AND definitions

Could you make a video regarding how engines work in Scrabble and how they calculate the best possible move? Cause what I find confusing is, how they 'deal with' unseen tiles. In chess, it makes sense for me at least, cause they know which moves are possible, but that isn't really the case for Scrabble (I think). So, a video regarding how this works would be great!

@romajimamulo

8 ай бұрын

Being someone who's coded an AI for a card game, it probably works similarly to that. Basically, you just randomly pick what tiles the opponent could have and what the order drawn next is, simulate that game, and repeat. The percent chances are based on "in x% of simulated games, this happened"

@AlexDings

8 ай бұрын

I plan to do a video essay on this - probably more suited for a long video (think 30-40 minutes) than Will's typical length. What @romajimamulo said is correct though. The issue at the moment is that the way engines predict the next moves in those simulations is very crude, so they won't, for example, realize that the opponent needs to adapt after seeing a move like IN.

@mythicsword8169

8 ай бұрын

​@@AlexDingsI'd love to see that. I've been doing my own research for a possible school project and scrabble engines are definitely hard to userstand.

@morrisgreenberg5223

8 ай бұрын

​@@AlexDingsagreed, though it will usually get the IN response correct here given how dead the board is. The bigger misevaluation it would make in this game most likely is not having Trip play defensively on other turns in order to score (e.g., playing ZINE after ZIN turn)

@MartinPuskin

8 ай бұрын

@@AlexDingsI am currently creating a comprehensive dictionary for Scrabble in Estonian (we have many dictionaries, all of which have some vocabulary that others omit) in order to program the game and an AI in Estonian. Such a video would be VERY appreciated.

One last comment... can we appreciate that the National Crossword Association has an amazing logo

The one second photo clip of Jay-Z when you mention Nigel’s JZ makes me wish I could give this video 1,000 automatic thumbs up clicks. You’re great, Will. 😂

@AlexDings

8 ай бұрын

_Who wanna bet us that we don't touch letters_

@r.mcdonnell8614

8 ай бұрын

I love little editing jokes like that and this was one of my favorites ever

@thegodofpez

8 ай бұрын

@@r.mcdonnell8614 They’re just so fun!

@ts4gv

7 ай бұрын

haha word game man put celebrity haha

Hey Will, great video as always! Random thought while watching, are there ever *themed* matches between high level players? Something like "adjectives only" or "any foods get double points"? It seems like it might be cool to see which strategies emerge and promote actual knowledge of the meaning of the words being played. Bringing back the *language* element of the language game at the top level, if you will. I'm sure something like this already exists though

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Actually, I’ve never heard of this sort of thing. Maybe a bad sign for us as tournament players to be *that* disconnected from actual word meanings. But maybe also an opportunity to do something fun and different! (There are often extra prizes for “best theme word” like a holiday word for a tournament held on a certain holiday, etc)

Will, been a silent fan for a while but I just have to say I love this series and all your videos. You can tell when a video is made by an expert versus a fan and this series is a showcase of that. Fantastic job and your brilliance shows.

What a wild game! It's a great example of differences between Nigel's judgment and computer analysis. I looked at the IN move with all the three major engines we have right now (at 4 ply depth each time) and the results were all over the place: - Quackle thinks it's best and gives it 59% to win - Elise has it at just 45% but gives the edge to JIN in the same spot at 49% - Macondo hatest it and gives it just 40%, compared to 52% for ZIN - although it must be noted I had to use the newer TWL20 lexicon here with some additional words But this shows how much is still left to do in terms of computer analysis. It's a typical spot where the engines just have no proper model for how an opponent will react to such a move. If and when we get a really strong, machine-learning-based engine, this will be one of the games I'll run through it. Not just because of IN but also all the other moves.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

The inclusion of VIN probably tips the scales for it to be too risky/too useful to Trip to shed Vs and score a ton. It might be a play uniquely suited for TWL06!

@morrisgreenberg5223

8 ай бұрын

I've discussed some things with Cesar about how these sorts of racks can be analyzed from an engine's perspective. The two things that will likely improve it is (1) improve the static play ranker to account for board dynamics and number of tiles in the bag in some way, and (2) make the opponent response choice stochastic instead of deterministic in a sim, and response plays that perform better get upweighted as the sim goes along (so instead of simulating, say, 10000 random racks, you simulate 100 random racks 100 times allowing for different responses in each of the 100 trials)

@AlexDings

8 ай бұрын

@@morrisgreenberg5223 Thanks, I was aware of the first idea (that should be one of the things machine learning will improve) but not of the second, and that actually sounds brilliant. Hope to see it implemented sooner or later.

Wow. I didn't know Scrabble had this level of reasoning! So impressive!

ive only watched 2 videos of scrabble ever and this channel made me realize how deep scrabble really is

@wanderer15

2 ай бұрын

Thank you for giving my videos a try

By far the coolest thing about scrabble to me is it not being completely solved, the idea that you can use computers to try and better understand what players are doing, but still have to defer to their agency/intellect in the end is amazing

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Scrabble has a lot of untapped territory revolving around making inferences into your opponent's specific holdings after each play they make, as well as board dynamics (openness/closedness) and some other stuff. Either the game retains its mystique, or computers figure out some of this and we end up learning amazing new things about the game. Win-win!

@Splax77

2 ай бұрын

Scrabble will never be completely solved because it's fundamentally a game of randomness and incomplete information - the often compared Chess has no randomness and both players have complete information about the state of every piece at all times. The best bots will never be able to beat humans 100% of the time and I think that makes the game much more interesting at the top level

These videos are so awesome! Love that you added the timeline!

Great video. I appreciate the subtle touches like the Chess brilliant symbol, Jay-Z, and the word definitions

In addition to the graphics and story itself, the video title deserves some praise. Great stuff.

lovely stuff as always Will

Awesome video as always. Keep it up

Great video my man, keep it up!

I'm in that bizarre place where I want to leave a nice comment because the video is great, but Nigel's play has left me speechless. Haha. What a fantasic talent!!

Thanks for the Timeline! Very helpful.

Great video as always!! Best content on KZread right now!!!

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Too kind, thank you!

I get so happy when I spot something they can do, but then it's usually "but Nigel of course, does something more optimal instead ... " Love these videos

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Believe me, I get the same feeling a lot of the time watching him!

I'm not a native english speaker, and i love the instances like:" there is no way he missed gagler". I've never heard of this word in my life.

Great video as always, still hoping to see a video about your career. What got you interested into scrabble, how you won your first tournament and what convinced you to start a youtube channel.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

All great ideas!

i cant wait to see this video

Another video from Will Anderson! Yay!

Got recommended this one very interesting breakdown on someone/thing I’ve never heard about before.

Great video, and nicely done with the Jay-Z insert 👌🏻😂

Silly as it sounds, the Michael Jordan analogy is appropriate. Nigel is simply on another level. Thanks for making these videos Will, your content is fantastic.

This is so good

Another great video!

My stem brain always struggled with word based games we played as a family. Recently discovered your channel and really want to give Scrabble another try now I know it's not about being a literary genius

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Very common misconception and certainly an understandable one, this being a word game, after all. Glad you're thinking of trying again!

It's weird to see a 100% winning move be suboptimal, but I suppose that's because spread matters. That's such an interesting aspect of Scrabble strategy, that your moves still matter even when the outcome of the game is certain. In most games you kind of have to treat all wins equally or else you get really weird incentives, but Scrabble doesn't seem to have this issue.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

In matchplay tournament formats, it ceases to matter as much, since you can just specify that players play odd number of games (and hope they don't have a tie game!). It is true that, as you suggest, using spread as tiebreaker could introduce some weird incentives, especially late in tournaments when players may need to win or lose by certain amounts, and be matched up against players who need only to win or lose by any amount. But I've never heard of shenanigans happening.

Editing is top tier 🔥

So you are slowly teaching me to play spooky words that go through words and I'm not sure I like it, lol.

The comical stary with POO then RETRIAL. i am dying laughing!! 😂

Very cool, keep it up, subscribed

Trip deserves some credit though for taking the opportunity to play poo and vulva in the same game. Mastermind

@maxm6931

6 ай бұрын

You missed that wee featured as well.

1:20 love how when Trip has too many vowels his rack spells OOOPS

This is the Scrabble version of walking up slowly and down smashing

I really enjoy these videos about Nigel, but I also want to see videos about other top Scrabble players. What are other players known for, what are interesting games and plays they've had in the past? I know there are a few on your channel, but it feels like the majority are about Nigel, and he's one of the only people mentioned in the titles or shown in thumbnails usually.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Fair point! There’s lots of great players I have yet to feature. I do find Nigel fascinating and hugely entertaining to watch, though, and viewers definitely seem to agree.

I know he's a pretty private guy but he hasn't been at a tournament in a while. I hope he comes back again.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

He's been active locally, so I think he'll be back on the scene before too long.

Another banger video

I'd like to see some history on the man, the legend, Mark Nyman at some point!

All the talk about hooks and bingos, and I’m just like…”vulvas…lol…giggity”

Nigel is like an adult playing in a competition for preschoolers. It's just not fair.

Nice touch not mentioning the word Trip chooses to use his two v’s for

Amazing

amazing

There’s Nigel and then there’s everyone else.

1:23 HAHAHA that insult is just so out of place and mean that I was like HUH? 🤣

Though Nigel is incredibly good, your videos help me to see how someone can be that good. Well, at least most of how good he is is well conveyed in your videos, the computational ability to calculate so quickly would be regarded as "superhuman" if not for the fact that Nigel (as well as others who have computer-brain) is human.

You know, I never imagined that it was even possible to play Scrabble at a level where knowing every damn possible word in the English language and recognizing every possibile opportunity to play them was a prerequisite to even compete. It almost pisses me off that that level of memorization and pattern recognition is used to master a board game.

Hi, Will, (I'm AWFUL at scrabble, so I must be wrong, but the end game sequences are super interesting to me) at 9:29, could trip not have used a ze or zo on the double letter to block Nigel's azine hook play?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Very astute observation! The difference is that the dictionary used in this game was the North American one, and ZE and ZO are valid only in the worldwide Collins dictionary (though I expect ZE to eventually make it in stateside). In fact, with more As available, something like OAF and ZA would have been a good score as well as a decent block attempt, but with only one A remaining, it wasn’t all that likely that Trip had such a move available. I made another video about the dictionary situation in Scrabble a couple weeks ago if you’re curious why we have different dictionaries for different parts of the world.

Will just casually ignoring the fact that he got third.

letter tier list

I forgot that the word in existed

Nice quote. That must be fun to discover your quote in an article, and not even remember having said it. Does it jump off the page as like "Well, yeah, that's what I would've said"?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

It does, yeah. It was a decade ago and I’ve learned a lot since then about Scrabble and Nigel both, but it still reflects my feelings.

@NicholasproclaimerofMessiah

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15 Nice.

5:48 this was way funnier to me than it should have been

In!

Where do you play scrabble online?

5:48 very sneaky. He does indeed have Jay-Z

That's like 92% accuracy.

I don’t quite understand the “he would play POOP instead of POO if he had another P” thing. If he had a bunch of vowels, then POO would be better than POOP because it saves 1 consonant in case he draws a lot of consonants right?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

If you take an example case like opening rack AEIOOPP, I think POOP for 16 leaving AEI is definitely better than POO for 10 leaving AEIP. As nice as it is to have balance in your leave, it doesn't feel to me like a 6-point gap. And the worse you get from there, the likelier you would be to see an exchange instead of either POO or POOP. For example, something like IIPPOOU should be an exchange rather than either. It's true that POO and POOP will be close on a rack like EIOOPPS where keeping the P is going to preserve really good balance, so maybe I should soften my stance from "Trip's 4 tiles can't possibly be the P" to "Trip's 4 tiles are much less likely than random to be the P."

I thought you weren't allowed to play the same word on the board twice? Did I make that up or is that only in some versions.

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Must be a house rule. There’s some funny examples of rare words appearing twice in the same tournament game.

I would love to see games of Nigel playing amateurs in languages that he doesn't know. That would be such an interesting handicap

Poo is self descriptive?! Damn dude you slammin on this man

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

His letters were poo! His choice to play POO was actually strong.

Can anyone link me a video series on an introductory to playing scrabble? Wills videos have really got me interested

I am only watching you for NIgel videos; other than that, I dip (barring learning about x or y word)

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Thank you for your honesty! I'm eager to hear more reasoning behind this stance. Videos without Nigel are boring?

@soundrogue4472

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15It's not that you're boring; I just don't usually care for the subject at hand/ only watch a few things from content creators, content wise. When it comes to people like Nigel; it's just fun learning about the bizarre titan among their peers. I'm not someone who cares for Scrabble content wise in the first place. Most content creators I only watch them for a few things they focus on in their field. Until I find another topic/ thing in said activity interesting I don't really stick around. An example being; Overly Sarcastic Productions I only watch them for their trope talks/ other writing stuff. Not that they're a bad channel but I'm just one of the small camps of people who care more about the subject than the content creator (most of the time)

scrabble should have a grow in popularity like chess had in 2020, i think it's so fun and competitive but non of my friends wants to play it thinking it's boring lol 😅

What kind of computer algorithm do you use in tournament for predicting the best moves?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

The current standard is a program called Quackle. It's extremely strong, but likely not quite as strong as the very best human players.

@rhandhom1

8 ай бұрын

​@wanderer15 Is it free for the public or is it only found in the Scrabble motherboard?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

@@rhandhom1totally free, found here: people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/ If you download it, you'll need to add the default Scrabble board in the settings (this was done carefully to avoid any issues with copyright/trademark)

@rhandhom1

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15 How do I add the board?

5:28 STOCKFISH FOR SCRABBLE

He probably just tried to spell 'Nigel' and got confused

Me the entire time: hope he plays kwyjibo

I'm hooking every day, but you don't see me win any scrabble games with it

In = Brilliant Move.

5:49 *Nigel Richards turns into a random guy (I don't know who he is)

🔥

Meanwhile me: I know some of these words!

for the move you talked about in 5:04 , could not Payne also play "Gin" with drawing G, and "Tin" ?

@wanderer15

5 ай бұрын

Yes, definitely. But the G is worth two points and the T only one, so these plays aren't nearly as dangerous as almost all of the other potential hooks to IN, which Nigel either possesses or have already been played elsewhere on the board.

I used to think Scrabble was an easy game until I saw this video.

Fun fact: Will Anderson’s lifetime record against Nigel Richards is 5-2, making him one of only two people that have played Nigel at least 6 times and won more than they lost.

@wanderer15

7 ай бұрын

Very simple explanation - extreme, lopsided tile draws in my favor! I've won one more game against him not tracked by cross-tables when I traveled to Malaysia to compete in the Alchemist Cup, so my full record is 6-2. I eagerly await getting to play him more and inevitably dropping back to earth.

@5:50 , you say Nigel's best scoring play would yield 27, but what about using the blank with ZOO for 31?

@wanderer15

5 ай бұрын

Fair point - typically, the blank isn’t used for score increases of just a few points, as it’s so powerful for playing all of your letters at once for the 50 point bonus. I should have said “highest scoring without using the blank.”

lol! I wonder who the thumbnail at the start is meant to be parodying

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Gotta get some use out of those joke thumbnails!

how good are engines in scrabble? are they far and away better than any human, like chess, or are they still worse than the masters, or somewhere in between?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

They’re very, very strong - simply knowing and finding every word is a great start. I would say that the strongest human players like Nigel are still stronger than any current engine, but that’s likely to change at some point.

"trip does have a horrendous rack" 5:28 I'm sorry

ah yes, the nigel timeline

Stupid newbie question, but how do the players know which letters are still in the bag? I understand they can see what has been played, but how does Nigel know his opponent isn't already holding the Z and the J ?

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Not a stupid question. The tiles Z and J are in a very small group of which there are only one in the set, so if you have them, you know by definition your opponent does not. (The full set of them is KJQXZ.) However, all the other tiles have more than one in the set. So what players do is actually cross off the letters that are played on a little sheet to keep track - we call it “tracking.” Using the increasingly precise information about what letters have yet to be played is one of the richest sources of fun, complex Scrabble “puzzles!”

@smallbeginning2

8 ай бұрын

@@wanderer15 ok so they can't see what letters are in the bag Vs which ones their partner has on the rack? So it's a game of probability unless you are holding them?

@smallbeginning2

8 ай бұрын

And do they use a bag in professional games?

@smallbeginning2

8 ай бұрын

And also , if a person like me is used to absolutely whipping everyone they play against in everyday life, (in fact it's the only game I can beat my chess master husband at 😂) just by having an above average vocabulary, trying to be strategic with the triple word scores and high scoring letters, and aiming for at least one bingo per game; what, besides watching KZread videos such as yours, can a person do to actively improve their game?

I was wondering why Trip didn't play something like OOF and ZO. Realized ZO is not valid for NWL :P

Wow! IN is a legal word? I really need to go back to my two letter flash cards...

@zyehboi5835

8 ай бұрын

what in the world 😭

@paulpinecone2464

7 ай бұрын

@@zyehboi5835 You keep using that word. I do not think it means that we are the Knights Who Say IN!

Trip just casually playing poo and vulva

@wanderer15

8 ай бұрын

Both solid plays! You gotta do what you gotta do...