What Happens When Nigel Misspells a Word?
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- Опубліковано 25 тра 2024
- Welcome to Episode 27 of Scrabble History, a series where I break down some of the most incredible plays, epic rivalries, and amazing moments in Scrabble's rich competitive history.
In 2010, Nigel Richards won his second North American Scrabble Championship, his first of what would be a staggering 4 in a row and 5 in 6 years. There's no question that in addition to his many brilliancies, he makes fewer mistakes than anyone else. But sometimes, even his mistakes go unnoticed until it's too late...
Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:
/ wanderer15
I also have a weekly show on the official Scrabble Twitch channel (Tuesdays 3-5 PM ET):
/ scrabble
Play Scrabble at playscrabble.com! - Ігри
His mistake being even more optimal than any legal word makes it so much funnier
it's like an artificial intelligence violating ethics protocols to better optimize a task.
@@Gumper30 oh God, let's hope nobody ever asks Nigel to assemble paperclips
This convinces me that it wasn't a mistake and Nigel knew for certain that Mike will too hastily pull a tile
@@prysrek8858 The cost-benefit analysis indicates the risk would not be worth it.
even when Nigel phonies, he does it optimally.
"The board after vibrator is significantly more difficult to score on" was not a phrase I thought I would hear today.
Well when you put it like that…
Makes it hard to focus...
@@Herra_KI've heard you can use them to cheat
@@TheGuyCalledX only works for chess and you have to be well prepared.
@@wanderer15no that’s how you put it 😂
I love when Nigel makes an end game move and the computer says it's not the best, announcers just assume the computer is wrong...
...and it usually is!
(You might have this notion from my video on Nigel) - since about a year or so, there actually is an open-source flawless endgame solver! Commentators will typically still use the imperfect engine Quackle (because the perfect solver, Macondo, doesn't have a GUI yet), but computers _can_ now play as well as Nigel in the endgame 😀
@@AlexDings I'd love to see it! Hard to imagine...lol!
I don't even play competitively. I enjoy playing against my mom, sister and brother (1 PhD, 5 or 6 master's degrees) mostly because as a college dropout (journalist) I can usually beat them...
Likely ruined now as I'd have to actually learn all the 2 and 3 letter words...
My dad is the one who should have played competitively (RIP). He spent 18 months in the VA hospital reading whatever he could. Knew very obscure word origins because he read the dictionary. Did Jumbles in his head, just writing down the combined solution. Bet Jumble is popular among Scrabble players (do they still put out Jumbles?) A Saturday (Sunday?) NYT crossword guy.
@@whitelfner4582Lol, that’s a great story. It’s awesome how he learned in the state he was in.
@@AlexDings Is the endgame solver able to solve endgames quickly enough on modest hardware that it could be used live by commentators? Cause if so, I definitely hope they start incorporating it soonish.
@@EebstertheGreat On a regular laptop or something, it still takes more than a few minutes for complex endgames (and those are of course the interesting ones). So in that way, I guess computers STILL aren't up to par with Nigel, come to think about it 😅 But if I was in the position of broadcasting games, I'd definitely at least try to use it
If I would ever play Nigel, and he would misspell a word, I would just assume I've spelled it wrong all my life.
love him or hate him, not a single computer on earth could have spotted the brilliant move HIARNETS
why would anyone hate him?
@@soosh9852 Too good; can't compete.
I bet it happened because the IA are adjacent in that order in Therians, he may have just scooted them over together on the board without realizing.
We really take it for granted how these tournaments archive all their games, such that even almost 15 years later you're able to recreate these games and perform extensive analysis on them, like at 5:28. I'm sure there are even more fantastic games that were just never preserved and are now forever lost. Great video, Will. One could say you are the Landorus-Therian of textbook editors
The thing is, they typically don't! The vast majority of tournament games is lost, and we have records of less than half of Nigel's games. I unsuccessfully tried to unearth this game when researching Nigel. The game is not on the main archive site for tournament games. Will might just have gotten it from Mike.
Lmao the lando t of scrabble
LMAO did not expect a smogon reference in the comments of a competitive scrabble video
I did some kind of deep dive into the archived 2010 championship site - the links were all dead, but by changing them to mirror other years where the links were still alive, I surprisingly was able to access the annotated games from that year.
lando therian lol
H I A R N E T S
Would be fun to write this on a blackboard at Uni or something to find who the scrabble nerds are
Once, Mike played HA?RIEST, hit the clock and said "ninety, R", playing 'most resembling Harry'. But...I didn't see it on time, plus he won the game.
@@paulepstein7421 potteriest
What would be even more insane is if he had done it on purpose, knowing that his opponent would just assume that he doesn’t make mistakes.
“Dark Nigel” would be truly a sight to behold
@@wanderer15 we need someone to convince him to let the demons out for a tournament, just to see how horrifying it would be to witness
@@swedneck We probably already have and there were no surviving witnesses
Adding the orange for possible plays and green for optimal makes the videos so much more readable thank you!
And here I thought we might see the infamous B(Y)AGEE phoney. Maybe you should use that in your next video. That one was even funnier because not only did it stay on the board, his opponent later hooked it with an S, leading to Nigel challenging of course.
Oh that’s a bit of a dick move to get away with a word, then to call out your opponent for hooking it
@@Jaxck77 not really, the first time it was because nigel was trying to play B(H)AGEE and put them in the wrong column, if BYAGEES* isn't a word then why not challenge
@@Jaxck77 It's completely legal and acceptable
@@Jaxck77 Not even remotely. That's how the game is played. If it goes unchallenged, that's on the opponent.
It's also on the opponent to know that trying to play off of it will likely be challenged, if the person that played the invalid word is even aware it was invalid. Playing fakes is just part of the game.
Even if it was a word the opponent played that not knowing if it was a noun
nigel trying to prove he's not a robot:
WHY AM I SO ADDICTED TO NIGEL VIDEOS
I’m addicted to making them!
As someone who has never played Scrabble, I have no idea how you made it so hype and intense...
Great job, Will! A few observations I'd like to share, being new to this forum. I thought long and hard when I had ACEEILS, and you are correct about my brain-freeze blending it with CELOSIA and CELESTA. Nigel put me on hold quite a while before challenging. I recall thinking had I simply played CAKE (14F, 16) for a 257-213 lead, keeping EILS on a very closed board may have been best, but then thought, "If CELESIA is good and I fail to play it, 14 years from now, Will Anderson's audience will all chime in, in unison, with: 'BWAAAHHAAHAHAHAA!'" :) .... Again, you were correct about my seeing Nigel's powerful rack and knowing he had many options. (I think it may have been AENRST?, making the AI-IA transposition less noticeable on both our parts.) The following year at NSC, I saw Nigel at Table #1 before Round 1 started. He looked at me, mussed his hair, and delightfully offered, "How do you like my HI-AR-NETS?" :) With a smile I replied, "It's okay, Nigel. I know how intimidated you must have felt." :) BTW, in the then 32-year history of the event, that was the first time a sexagenarian occupied first place at a NSC (David Gibson, Chris Cree, and Robin Pollack-Daniels have done so since), and I suspect Nigel may later become the first septuagenarian to do so. Love the game, love the memories, and...enjoy every turn!
The fact that nigel doesn't play phonies honestly is amazing. Even in losing endgames he doesn't attempt to trick people to save the game or reduce point spread, he just plays the most optimal "fair" way.
Actually, that isn't quite true. In one of my games against Nigel at the Capgemini tournament in Bangalore, he tried phoneying with LENNE (instead of the valid RENNE) to steal a lost endgame, but I did challenge it off and won 414-400.
@@anandbharadwaj4250 Wait this man ain't lying he has a positive winrate over Nigel, too!
You that dense? This entire video is about Nigel playing a phony.
i have heard of a few cases where Nigel played a phony intentionally, I wouldn't say it's unfair though, just a risk that Nigel often decides not to take.
Nigel is a huge phony player
If people start using "Hiarnets" as a joke term to mean "an accidental mistake that leads to good fortune" and it starts to spread and get popular enough in the language, could it one day actually be a legal word spawned from this exact scenario, I wonder?
hiarnets is the plural. the singular is hiarnet
Crazy. And what's even more amazing is that Nigel *still* should have lost even after his play went unchallenged.
I think this type of thing happens in chess to, where the best players in the game will hang a piece, and even with plenty of time to think about each move, the opponent, who is also an expert, will miss it. Generally what happens after the game is the opponent that missed he could just win a piece says "I didn't expect my opponent (well-renowned Grandmaster X) would simply just hang a piece"
no that really doesn't happen in professional chess at anything except maybe bullet time controls, one of the key skills that is always touted of strong chess players is not "trusting" their opponents and verifying everything for themselves, please stop making things up.
@@soosh9852 well I didn't "make things up", I know it's happened at least once, but I'll accept that it doesn't happen at longer time controls. I would just add that it seems like blitz chess is what you usually see on youtube.
When Nigel misspells a word, the dictionary is changed.
this sounds like a chuck norris joke
Fantastic as always, I'd like to shout out the quality of the graphics in these videos. High quality and beautifully legible, no unnecessary fluff or guff.
Really appreciate that, thank you
Impossible. Nigel is human? He's imperfect?
I wouldn't even challenge "tnetennba" if the goat played it
I don’t even play scrabble, these videos are just amazing
Thank you!
I wonder how much “BAERDNETS” would score in that position
But that would leave the A hook open, which was the biggest advantage of HIARNETS over HAIRNETS
I clicked on this video because I had no idea who on earth Nigel was and the fact that he was referred to by just his first name was quite funny. Definitely glad I clicked.
That's pretty funny. Have you learned more of Nigel since?
@@ambiguousduck2333 Indeed, although it was just through watching more videos on this channel. I thought this video was great so I watched some others!
Thank you for giving my videos a try!
Here for the same reason. Let’s dig into the Nigel iceberg
Wake up babe, new Nigel video!
I've only ever played scrabble a few times, I never expected this amount of strategy in top level scrabble
i love watching in-depth commentary for things which are way beyond my understanding
I just got into scrabble and have never won a game yet against my grandparents I’m gonna watch more I like the way you explain the game!
best thumbnail in the history of scrabble
plays "celesia" which is not a word
"right yeah"
then Nigel makes a very sharp play and does phooey for 25
"I guess that counts as a word" *looks at video to see board to see PFUI*
"how can these people be serious.."
Can you make a video on how Scrabble Novices (like me) who got interested in playing but don’t really know where to start or how to prepare for a first event, I.e. what words you must know by that point (like that cheat sheet of words I didn’t know existed until now). You have pulled so many people into having an interest in Scrabble, and you have the knowledge to get us all into playing the right way. We just need the right guide to get us there
Yes, this is something I'd like to do for sure. (And I'm so glad to hear that you're inspired to get started with OTB play!)
At 1:16 you said 16 points for Mike Baron's second move when it was worth 26.
On the screen it says +26 and his score goes up by the same so don't worry about the point totals
Oops, not sure how I didn’t catch this, thanks. At least the numbers were correct on screen!
I had no idea this board game had a competitive scene. Interesting video, thanks.
Since Nigel is not human he probably did it on purpose
The crazy thing that we can infer from this is that Nigel intentionally found two bingos so that he could play the optimal word without being challenged. My bet is he found the words and planned out how he would switch them in a hurry like he's flustered that he's almost "lost the game." This would make the opponent think he was going for HAIRNETS as the optimal play so he could tag on the end of them. But all Nigel did was open up the A so he could play QUALE without losing tiles. What a genuis. ;)
.... I didn't realize that Scrabble got this strategic.
i loved this video and tensed up till the end
i dont even know how to play scrabble
Every community needs a Will Anderson, aGameScout, Pannenkoek2012, etc.
These are my favorite channels.
This is really high praise, thanks. Love aGameScout - will have to check out Pannenkoek!
@@wanderer15 you should start with "watch for rolling rocks .5 a presses"
Your mind will be blown
@@wanderer15 not gonna check out will anderson
Even his mistakes are amazing!
ngiel the GOAT 💪💪
even when phonying he can't lose. this is insane LOL
I can't believe he let Nigel off the hook!
"a V in a very defensive spot" I'm 2 minutes in and learning things I didn't know were things
This is like the Magnus effect, where Magnus Carlsen blunders a piece and the other players assume he knows what he’s doing and don’t take it.
What if Nigel did that on purpose to convince us that he is a mere human instead of a scrabble god?
that's halirious
challenge. halirious is not a word.
Playing against Nigel Richards must be stressful enough to make anyone tear their hiar out.
I’ve played him 8 times (I’ll do a video about the games sometime) and it definitely takes practice to relax and play your best.
Wtf bro? Suddenly I'm interested in scrable and idk why! Really enjoying your videos...
Thanks for giving my content a try!
Purposefully misspelling is something crazy
Nigel doesn't misspell a word. He stares it down until it becomes the new spelling.
6:27 start of misspelled word
6:40 misspelled word
this game in particular reminds me of barry bonds, his reputation alone is a tool almost as powerful as his word knowledge and strategical skills.
how many times has an opponent challenged one of nigel's plays? it has to be way less than any other top player, right? makes me wonder if he'd win even more games if he phonied more
Yes, he is seemingly totally uninterested in exploiting his incredible word knowledge advantage. When he says he doesn’t care whether he wins or loses, he truly means it - his sole goal seems to be playing well.
When he misspells, a new word is created.
I dont know why youtube decided im interested in scrabble but im glad it did
Thanks for the video
First question: why do I even watch a scrabble video?
Second question: why do I enjoy it that fking much?
Appreciate you giving it a chance!
it was definitely intentional and actually a really smart play! (im joking, its definitely not worth it)
so this is how it feels to watch a chess video as a normal person
Nigel should play more phonies. People would have a very hard time challenging him on long words and it would get people to start challenging his legit words.
often times its just not worth the risk, but he has done it a few times before
There is no question he would win even more games doing this. However, he has stated before that he doesn’t care whether he wins or loses - and I actually believe him. His total lack of interest in any type of exploitative play (intentional phony words, suboptimal endgame sequences that force opponents into a much more difficult line than the mathematically optimal sequence) backs up his claim - as does as his complete lack of nerves in high-pressure situations or negativity when getting unlucky.
@@wanderer15 Sounds like a good topic for a video
The dictionary corrects itself, of course.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was a deliberate play and Nigel casually acting normal so it goes through
He's got so bored of the regular ole dictionary that he's inventing his own words. IT'S FINEEEEE...
bro this guy nigel is chosen by god
I haven't played the game since i was a kid and now I just happen to stumble on this video. I know the conclusion is that all of them are just human beings but the way this is played i blowing my mind xD incredible skill.
Thanks for giving my video a watch!
He was just playing on hard mode where you have to win by psychological domination.
Incerdible! I'm surpirsed it wasn't noticed. It changed the dircetion of the endgame.
I think _jus_ (when it means meat juices) is often anglicized "zhoo" (rhyme moo). That's how I typically hear it on U.S. cooking videos mentioning _au jus_ and the primary pronunciation in dictionaries I use (Merriam Webster, Collins). The pronunciation when it means law/justice (e.g. _jus soli_) is different.
Also if it helps: AY-luh (*ala*) and KEE-luh (*chela*).
Great content as always 👍
Thanks, noted!
Is this a competition on how to pronounce foreign words more wrongly? Kinda ridiculous to be so prescriptive about words that native speakers pronounce wrong anyway
@@louisraphael1727 French words often acquire an "Anglicized" pronunciation when they're adopted into English, because English has a different sound inventory (e.g. English lacks the French _u_ and _r_ sounds). Sometimes you'll hear the French pronunciation instead and that's fine - dictionaries typically note both.
I hadn't meant to tell him he _has_ to use the Anglicized pronunciation, but just letting him know what it is and that it's not uncommon, in case he chooses to.
It shouldn't be "comforting" to see someone make a mistake.
Plot twist: Nigel indeed did it on purpose, winning the metagame too!
Task failed successfully
When he misspells a word, it is added to the Oxford Dictionary
hes doing tricks on it 😭
Please add to Scrabble History Playlist - I only see 25 episodes there - so is this Episode 26 or 27? If the latter, which one is 26?
Fixed, I think!
@@wanderer15 Thanks - and I realized I had missed #26!
bravo
the only explanation is that he's lived that day over and over a million times and that was the only way he could win
Hadn't considered the Groundhog Day scenario here...nice one
While watching I was kinda hoping this was in fact an intentional blunder for some crazy endgame.
he has intentionally played phonies before.
Second comment: *his misspelling was intentional.* Nigel knew he was blocking bingos with the misspelling. Nigel knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Mike would look away to tile track and allow Nigel to place a different bingo down without Mike checking because no one would check his spelling. I capitalize on Magic the Gathering games by knowing the *way* my opponent plays just as much as I understand *how* they can play and take full advantage where the rules allow. Nigel knew he was taking an insane risk of losing the whole game to guarantee he would not lose, and did it all without cheating (even if that is quite a sneaky strategy to actually follow throw with.) But he also knew that, because he was playing a Scrabble Book Author, he would NEED a strategy that even Mike would never see coming. Mike likely had the finish he had to that tournament because he knew that whole day that Nigel had thoroughly outplayed him in a way that he never dreamed existed. I’d be second-guessing every play, over-tracking every tile arrangement, and throwing off my normal rhythm to account for that gameplay anomaly. Not only did Nigel do it on purpose, Mike knew he did, too. And they respected each other as the ruthless competitors they are.
What happens when both players turn in their scoresheets, showing hairnets on one and hiarnets on the other, and there's a question later about the score?
You don't turn in your scoresheets, and you aren't required to write the words down, just the scores
One of the words in this sentence is misspelled.
Imagine if he changed the word to make Mike assume it would be correct anyways and put IA isntead of AI on purpose to get a better shot at winning
Im semi pro in european junior league, I wish I was that good as them, really impressive
Actually it was a calculated mistake on Nigel's part because he's an almost perfectly polite player who focuses on playing the game rather than playing the player, but there's a mischievous gremlin in all of us and occasionally he sees if he can get away with something.
Nigel harnessing his mischievous gremlin would be amazing to watch (and a nightmare for anyone facing him)
I know this is a small thing but if you have the time to add a graphic correcting something you say in the voiceover, you have the time to re-record that line of the voiceover. (this is about the "*6-way tie" at 0:37)
I've done this many times in the past, but because I don't have a professional audio setup at my home, the audio quality is often noticeably different from one recording session to the other, and the resulting spliced audio sounds jarring and obviously off to my ear.
What did I stumble across!?
Hiarnets hit harder than a rock 💀💀💀
what, is the ruling different for specifically nigel
Ok new rules: Just words allowed people actually use in daily life
chess reference at the sart
My only claim is that I am mentioned in Mike's book.
I feel like if you ever play Nigel, you're gonna be too star-struck to think straight 😂
In world ranking games, Will legitimately has a 4-1 record against Nigel!
@@AlexDings Really? For some reason I thought they had never played.
@@ADeadlierSnake The reason being that Will is too modest to brag about it 🙂
Yes, I’ve played him a total of 8 times now across different organizations and I definitely plan to chronicle those games at some point!
I can't believe PFUI is a word
5:29 Richards wanted the za
Hey Wirtual!
Is there a rule to how long you have to wait to draw tiles to give the opponent an opportunity to challenge?
www.scrabbleplayers.org/rules/player-rules-20170120.pdf
Yes. By rule, the potential challenger is required to have a period of 5 seconds or more to decide to challenge. If tiles are drawn faster than that, the challenger can request that they still be permitted to challenge a word.
@@wanderer15 That makes sense, thank you! I don't play Scrabble, but I've still been loving the videos.
I sure do love pretending to know what any of this means
I believe Nigel had VERBY* challenged off once, though I could be misremembering
Yes I recall a story about this perhaps involving Nathan Benedict? Have to dig deeper
I don't understand the "Retina" stem in the "Hiarnets/Hairnets" context
nigel's letters were r,e,t,i,n,a,s
@@ImNetheN Ahh I see! Thanks!
Yes, Nigel had on his rack arguably the most common 6-letter combination that combines with other letters in 7-letter bingos. RETINA forms a bingo with all of CDEFGHIKLMNPRSTUW in North America, with BJO joining in overseas. For that reason, these words are among the first a tournament player would learn to improve - and Nigel playing a phony with them is/was inconceivable.
You fix the dictionary?