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A comment on Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not speaking Spanish. Parent comment

Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by 0cf8612b2e1e on Thursday December 12, 2024 @07:45PM (#42404948)
Do professional scrabble players use fake words as a strategy? I assumed that (minus the weirdo savant playing in a foreign language), everyone at the professional level has an extensive vocabulary for which it would be difficult to bluff.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by vunderba on Thursday December 12, 2024 @08:00PM (#42405030)
It's not super common but if I was playing against somebody who didn't speak the lingua franca I'd probably throw out a couple phonies to test the waters.

The CSW is the official English word list used internationally (outside of the US/Thailand/Canada because we just HAD to be different) and contains over a quarter of a million words. Unless you're at the UPPER OF UPPER ECHELONS, there's a chance a crafty player could slip a phony in by hooking an "S" on the board or some other subtle stem - especially with the pressure of time controls.

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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by numeri on Thursday December 12, 2024 @10:42PM (#42405755)
There was at least one case of someone trying this against Nigel in French, and he got them.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by borski on Friday December 13, 2024 @10:08AM (#42409080)
Nigel would catch it.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by numeri on Thursday December 12, 2024 @10:40PM (#42405741)
Yes, from what I understand – and they also make mistakes.
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Re:Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not spea... by michaelt on Friday December 13, 2024 @06:13AM (#42407606)
Scrabble players at world champion level operate at the very edge of what is or isn't a word.

Everyone knows words like "fork", "vogue" and "alligator" but only scrabble players know whether or not "forkier", "defork", "voguier", "voguiest", "alligatored" and "alligate" are real words.

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