Scrabble's Best Player Knows No Limits(defector.com)
defector.com
Scrabble's Best Player Knows No Limits
https://defector.com/scrabbles-best-player-knows-no-limits
5 comments
This article talks a lot about Nigel being better than AI. Is that true? It seems that with a quarter million words and a fairly limited search space a bot would pretty easily be able to find the best word for any play. It might get a bit more complicated if you are also planning for future moves but it still seems like a bot should be able to out-play the best humans pretty easily.
Don't get me wrong, Nigel's skills are hugely impressive. But I feel this AI talk was more pandering to the current hype than and actual claim that he was better than a computer solver.
Don't get me wrong, Nigel's skills are hugely impressive. But I feel this AI talk was more pandering to the current hype than and actual claim that he was better than a computer solver.
> He is widely believed to have memorized the entire international-English Scrabble lexicon, more than 280,000 words
Definitely helps.
> Nigel extended ZAP to ZAPATEADOS
My problem is I try to extend the word rather than create new words. So I'd look for zapped, unzapped, zapping, etc. Actually, if I had 'ATEADOS', I would waste my time looking for a 7 letter word ending in S.
> Nigel placed all of his letters between the P and TED, spelling out PERNOCTATED and turning NON into ANON. The play tallied 92 points.
Now that is genuinely impressive.
I wish scrabble had platforms as widely available and free as chess does.
Definitely helps.
> Nigel extended ZAP to ZAPATEADOS
My problem is I try to extend the word rather than create new words. So I'd look for zapped, unzapped, zapping, etc. Actually, if I had 'ATEADOS', I would waste my time looking for a 7 letter word ending in S.
> Nigel placed all of his letters between the P and TED, spelling out PERNOCTATED and turning NON into ANON. The play tallied 92 points.
Now that is genuinely impressive.
I wish scrabble had platforms as widely available and free as chess does.
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