October 28, 2006
EARTH TO SHUT-INS:
830!: How a Massachusetts carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever. (Stefan Fatsis, Oct. 26, 2006, Slate)
On Oct. 12, in the basement of a Unitarian church on the town green in Lexington, Mass., a carpenter named Michael Cresta scored 830 points in a game of Scrabble. His opponent, Wayne Yorra, who works at a supermarket deli counter, totaled 490 points. The two men set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player (830), the most total points in a game (1,320), and the most points on a single turn (365, for Cresta's play of QUIXOTRY).In the community of competitive Scrabble, of which I am a tile-carrying member, the game has been heralded as the anagrammatic equivalent of Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962 or Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series: a remarkable, wildly aberrational event with potential staying power. Cresta's 830 shattered a 13-year-old record, 770 points, which had been threatened only infrequently.
Since virtually all sports involve variable conditions, comparing one performance to another is technically imperfect. Consider the absence of black players in Babe Ruth's day, or the presence of steroids in the Barry Bonds era. On its face, the new Scrabble records seem to avoid such problems. No one's juicing in Scrabble. Points in a game are just points in a game, and Michael Cresta scored 830 of them. On Scrabble's members-only list-serve, Crossword Games-Pro, most players have hailed this harmonic convergence of vowels and consonants as a triumphal moment. But the record-worthiness of the shot heard 'round the Scrabble world is more complicated than it might look.
Unitarian church
Isn't that an oxymoron? Hey, how many points for that word?
Can someone cite me a reference that non-self-referentially uses the word "quixotry"? I'd like to see what other entertaining bloviatry it contains.
Raoul, here is the first non self-referential use of quixotry that a Google search produced.
Too good to believe.
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2005/01/04/sontag/index.html
Posted by: Pontius at October 28, 2006 1:16 PMIsn't the proper term blovitation?
Posted by: oj at October 28, 2006 1:39 PM2005. Okay. Whatever.
Isn't the proper term blovitation?
Should someone who claims that all humor is conservative be asking that question?
But what I don't understand is how canone get a score of 365 on a single word? 365 isn't divisible by 3. DId they change the scoring?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at October 28, 2006 5:37 PMD'Oh! the 50 pt bonus for cleaning your rack. Which I remembered immediately after I hit the "Post" button.
But 315 is. Nevermind.
You get 50 points for using all seven tiles. My math isn't good but isn't 315 dividable by 3?
Speaking of which, when we were kids--I was probably 8 or so--I was playing Scrabble with our grandfather--graduated high school at 13, no college would admit him so he went to prep school and l;earned languages including esperanto, graduated college at 19, 1st in his class at Harvard Law, etc.--he went first and made the word "measles" giving him an insurmountable lead before I played a tile.
Posted by: oj at October 28, 2006 5:43 PMI used to work for this guy:
http://cross-tables.com/results.php?playerid=5337
He was playing competitive "go" when I knew him (in real life he ran a minicomputer hardware/software engineering department). But he got bored with that so he took up Scrabble in the late 80s. As you can see by his stats, he rose rather quickly in the ranks.
Before he ran the engineering department, he made his living counting cards in Vegas until the casinos banned him.
Interesting guy, in a sort Asperger's way.
Posted by: Ted Welter at October 28, 2006 8:52 PM