The plot is even thicker than this. I was at this tournament. Early that same morning, Jesse Day entered the playing area holding a tray of coffees. One of said coffees was intended for the director of the event, a good friend of Jesse's. This nice gesture quickly turned into its own disaster, as Jesse placed the tray of coffees right next to the new version of the Tournament Rules. A tablecloth covered a small gap between two tables, and the tray tipped over, spilling fresh coffee all over the newly revised rulebook. The decision was made to trash said rulebook, and as a result, the director did not have access to it later that day, when it was needed. Jesse not only got away with the Scrabble equivalent of fraud, but he also sabotaged the evidence that would incriminate him, all because of a kind gesture gone wrong. Karma is an interesting beast.
Agree, the meta game conversation was very interesting. I’m familiar with inferential play, but hadn’t deeply considered how you can use inferential play to mislead your opponent and induce suboptimal play. Of course the catch is, in order to do this, you yourself have to make a suboptimal play, and it becomes a question of trying to weigh the marginal advantage you may gain if your gambit works compared against the equity you’re losing in the process. Cool stuff.
This is super fascinating, absurd or unprecedented rules situations are really interesting to me, would love to see more content like this. I agree with the call Judy made re- scoring it without the O. I think you brought up a great question though about whether you should be allowed to retrieve the tile if it goes somewhere you aren’t supposed to go (i.e, your opponent’s side of the table), and what happens with the clock when that occurs. Given that I think your opponent should have the opportunity to flip their rack, I think the clock should be stopped to retrieve the tile, but that does provide an advantage to the player who’s essentially made an “unforced error” because they’re low on time and scrambling. It’s tricky.
I hadnt thought about this kind of thing happening before. If the tile falls closer to your opponent like say, under their chair, are they obligated to get it back to you as soon as they can? Feels like there’s so much grey area in situations like that. Also, what happens if you do misreport your score like you did here and it’s not fixed right away for whatever reason, what happens if that causes your opponent to make a play they otherwise wouldn’t have and loses them the game?
I do think the clock is supposed to be stopped, the tiles returned to the rack, and the clock restarted, which would have set me back, given that I was already hovering over the board with the tiles I wanted to play. Misreporting your score is a minor infraction, and if 3 minor infractions are committed throughout the game, and they are reported by the opponent, a director can give your opponent an extra minute or take an extra minute off of you. So if this is the only score you misreport, there is no penalty. There are end-of-game time scrambles where the scores of multiple plays are misreported, and everything needs to be recounted once the clock is stopped. Recounts can occur at the end of the game and sometimes what both players have as the result is reversed once the game is over. So the scenario you say can occur, and it's kind of unfortunate, but you can always stop the clock if you think a score was miscounted, so that's a resource that can be used to avoid problems.
[Will Anderson voice] “In this episode of scrabble history, Josh said, ‘It’s scrabblin’ time’ and then scrabbled his O tile all over the board.”
the O tile was bribed to throw the game
The plot is even thicker than this. I was at this tournament. Early that same morning, Jesse Day entered the playing area holding a tray of coffees. One of said coffees was intended for the director of the event, a good friend of Jesse's. This nice gesture quickly turned into its own disaster, as Jesse placed the tray of coffees right next to the new version of the Tournament Rules. A tablecloth covered a small gap between two tables, and the tray tipped over, spilling fresh coffee all over the newly revised rulebook. The decision was made to trash said rulebook, and as a result, the director did not have access to it later that day, when it was needed. Jesse not only got away with the Scrabble equivalent of fraud, but he also sabotaged the evidence that would incriminate him, all because of a kind gesture gone wrong. Karma is an interesting beast.
I was so enthralled by the start of this video that I wasn’t prepared for the story that followed
this
this
i was not expecting this this was so funny 😭😭😭😭😭😭
I dont play scrabble but I love a good meta game discussion. good video. shows what its like to be a scrabble jedi
I'm hoping to make a more digestible video about this sort of meta soon, I just find it hard to express my thoughts since it's so... meta
Agree, the meta game conversation was very interesting. I’m familiar with inferential play, but hadn’t deeply considered how you can use inferential play to mislead your opponent and induce suboptimal play. Of course the catch is, in order to do this, you yourself have to make a suboptimal play, and it becomes a question of trying to weigh the marginal advantage you may gain if your gambit works compared against the equity you’re losing in the process. Cool stuff.
This is super fascinating, absurd or unprecedented rules situations are really interesting to me, would love to see more content like this. I agree with the call Judy made re- scoring it without the O.
I think you brought up a great question though about whether you should be allowed to retrieve the tile if it goes somewhere you aren’t supposed to go (i.e, your opponent’s side of the table), and what happens with the clock when that occurs. Given that I think your opponent should have the opportunity to flip their rack, I think the clock should be stopped to retrieve the tile, but that does provide an advantage to the player who’s essentially made an “unforced error” because they’re low on time and scrambling. It’s tricky.
I hadnt thought about this kind of thing happening before. If the tile falls closer to your opponent like say, under their chair, are they obligated to get it back to you as soon as they can? Feels like there’s so much grey area in situations like that. Also, what happens if you do misreport your score like you did here and it’s not fixed right away for whatever reason, what happens if that causes your opponent to make a play they otherwise wouldn’t have and loses them the game?
I do think the clock is supposed to be stopped, the tiles returned to the rack, and the clock restarted, which would have set me back, given that I was already hovering over the board with the tiles I wanted to play. Misreporting your score is a minor infraction, and if 3 minor infractions are committed throughout the game, and they are reported by the opponent, a director can give your opponent an extra minute or take an extra minute off of you. So if this is the only score you misreport, there is no penalty. There are end-of-game time scrambles where the scores of multiple plays are misreported, and everything needs to be recounted once the clock is stopped. Recounts can occur at the end of the game and sometimes what both players have as the result is reversed once the game is over. So the scenario you say can occur, and it's kind of unfortunate, but you can always stop the clock if you think a score was miscounted, so that's a resource that can be used to avoid problems.
Why not put the other o from the rack up there? Are you not allowed to pick up the tile if it drops?
Once I've hit the clock, my turn is over. But perhaps I could have tried this the first time...