The LONGEST Bingos In Scrabble History
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- Опубліковано 15 жов 2024
- Welcome to Episode 22 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.
Playing bingos is a key part of tournament Scrabble strategy, since playing all 7 of your tiles earns a whopping 50 extra bonus points. But the vast majority of bingos are 7 and 8 letter words, since players are limited to 7 letters on their rack at a time. Playing 9 and 10 letter words is extremely rare. But in this video, you'll see something even rarer: some of the most impressive 11 and 12 letter bingos ever played in English-language tournament Scrabble history!
Thanks to Nick Ballard for his compilation of long-word plays:
/ @nickballard1701
Thanks also to Erickson Smith for data on 10 million AI vs AI games.
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!
This is absolutely insane. Highest scoring bingos next?
Then highest scoring non-bingos after that!
Seconding this! I'd love to see highest scoring bingos
This is a great idea.
8:24 Rest assured the person who pulls this off will be IM(MORTAL)IZING themselves in Scrabble history!
Imagine it is that word
@@SafwanHayaat wouldn't be worth it, not even a bingo
@@junemck.5531 it would be in this case
what about S(LAUGH)TERHO(USE)S
Thanks for the shoutout, Will! Perhaps most astounding, when I played RE(PLANT)ATION, I was a lowly sub-1100 rated player. More than 10 years later, I’m still sub-1500 and haven’t replicated or surpassed that 12-lettter find in a tourney game.
worth noting that only one disconnected 11+ letter bingo has ever happened in tournament play and it was Nigel Richards' pernoctated
I was eyeing up the sister(h)o(ods) play and imagining how satisfying that must have been to put down.
@@glenm99(EL)ECTROCU(TE) too, crossing the bridge between 2 sides of the board, that's satisfying
Avery Mojica (RIP) once bingoed on me in an online game with PRENOMINATES as a 12 through I believe 3 (!) sets of disconnected tiles. I can probably still find it on ISC
@firefly256 @@glenm99 edited comment to say in tournament play, both those club moves are amazing too
I turned my friend's STAnDING into UNDERSTAnDINGLy for a 203-point 15-letter bingo. It was on Scrabble Go - competitive, but not tournament play - and whenever the preserved screenshot crops up on FB memories I like to remind him of it.
This is a great video - fun to try to find them as you narrate. I think VAINGLORYING is probably the toughest to spot!
That is an incredibly impressive move that any Scrabble player should be hugely proud of. Nice one!
In 1991, in a competitive home game between me and my friend who were both tournament-level players, he triple-tripled with "CONGRESS" starting on 1A, and on the very next play, I extended with "CONGRESSPER(S)O(N)S" starting on 1I. That was over 30 years ago, and I still have never played any word more than 9 letters since then.
Incredible play!
Once I played LIMAC(O)N and (U)N(SALARIED) in a scrabble go game
@@KeyholeGod I once played A(Z)I(M)U(T)H OTB against my brothers
What do the parentheses mean?
@@bowlofwhiskey They typically denote letters already on the board.
Something I found interesting is that because I knew I was looking for super long extension plays, a lot of these weren't that difficult to find. Finding these in a real game is a whole different beast though, you never consider that you could in a one-in-a-million situation in the moment!
i think theres also a bias with which plays are made. Even (most) top pros cant memorize every 11-letter word and focus on the more common 7- and 8-letter bingos, so the 11-letter ones that actually happen, are because those words are pretty common. Impressive nonetheless, i cant say i could figure out most of them
in the screenshot of all of the 11+ ones, electrocute and sisterhoods are disconnected 11s
Exactly. Having the vision/creativity to even look for a play like this given how absurdly rare they are is half the battle.
I extended QUEST to QUESTIONABLE in a club game. I have a picture of the board.
that's questionable (joking)!
"Vainglorying" is absolutely incredible. My spellchecker doesn't believe it's a word. Very few dictionaries include the verb sense of "vainglory," pretty much just the OED form my research. It must have come from the Collins Corpus, so I guess "vainglorying" is in the CSW, and he must have remembered the 9-letter word "vainglory" as a noun _and a verb_ and saw the extension on board.
It is indeed Collins-only. I once attempted UNTEAR(FULL)Y through my opponent's FULL, not knowing for sure if it was good - it was challenged and it wasn't, sadly. Maybe Wellington just went for it not knowing for sure...
@@wanderer15 It's not only Collins-only, it isn't even present in the Collins dictionary, just their gajillion-world English corpus. Back before official word lists were made for longer words, this probably wouldn't be legal, since consulting the actual dictionary would show "vainglory" only as a noun.
There's some brilliant plays on that 11 letter bingo list but there's only one word that I've never heard of, and of course it's Nigel's "pernoctated".
Proud to say I found astrobiology pretty quickly, though of course it's much easier if you know you're looking for a 12-letter word. Also I'm a big space nerd.
Loved this! Regarding ENQUIREE - I think a video about the best or most memorable phoneys would also be really cool.
Mack Meller has lots of amazing videos about the craziest phony word plays:
ua-cam.com/video/os8DAsfXJ7s/v-deo.html
Earlier this evening, a bunch of us played duplicate Scrabble online, with Chris Hawkins of the UK handling all the admin work. On move 20, the rack was AINORTT, and two players found (PENE)TRATION! Chris mentioned that you had just released a video about long words! What a coincidence!
Very nice. Now do the list of all shortest bingos
7 letter words are the shortest possible bingos and they happen all the time
@@XTLmaker what about players playing BINGO
this could be an april fools video
i know this is a joke but i am wondering whats the longest word someones made while only placing down 1 or 2 tiles
@@smoceany9478I would bet extending a bingo by -S or -ED or one of the two-letter prefixes (RE-, IM-, ...) so easily it's 10 or 11?
Whoosh@@XTLmaker
Will I recently discovered your channel and ohh boy I’m learning scrabble at very fast rate
I came 4th in my university tournament I am proud of myself all thanks to you 🎉
Love hearing this - great job!
Great video. Another idea I would be interested in seeing would be the best phony word plays in scrabble history.
Mack Meller has a lot of videos on this topic, playlist here:
ua-cam.com/video/os8DAsfXJ7s/v-deo.html
Got jumpscared by myself at 0:08 lol
Thank you for this video!
Sorry about that, and glad you enjoyed!
So many beautiful finds, but my MVP (Nigel aside), goes to Ken Clark for UNIM(MUNI)ZED. These are all amazing feats, but this play really seals the deal for me. Well played, Mr. Clark.
Yeah, that one is pretty awesome
Coming back to this after an idea I had, and remembering a couple people joking about how they'd be the first to have a 16 letter bingo. While obviously this wouldn't be possible... in english! I noticed that spanish scrabble has ch, ll, and rr tiles. Theoretically, a 16 letter bingo could be possible in spanish scrabble (or even more if there's a 17 letter word with like ll AND rr in it?), although it would still be only 15 tiles. Only 16 letter spanish word I could find with ll in it is "maravillosamente". I'm sure there's at least a couple more. Thanks for the videos Will.
The same day that this video was uploaded, during an online Duplicate Scrabble game that I was hosting for eleven players, two of the players (Ellie Mackin and Nicolas Moyart) spotted an eleven letter bonus from the rack AINORTT, extending PENE to make PENETRATION for 65!!
My inexplicable powers continue to increase
Thank you for making Scrabble history way more accessible and digestible for everyone, Will :D
I've set myself up for some long bingos in online games, but they were mostly played against much weaker opponents. Some of the easier setup words are RATIONS and CATIONS, which can make 14LWs like DEMONSTRATIONS, and 100s of words endings in -IFICATIONS. I've also tried -LOGICAL, but the things that go in front of it are too limited and hard to fish.
The longest non-setup word I remember playing was ESCHATOLOGY through my opponent's CHAT. I didn't even expect it to be a real word, since it's part of the name of a video game in Japanese (Atelier Escha & Logy; "and" is "to" in Japanese), and they are well-known for making up fake English words - e.g., things like "revengeance" and "heartful" are not real words!
Also, online games are quite different from over-the-board games, since you can try words on the board without revealing your tiles to your opponent. And if you play with the void challenge rule, you can literally throw everything at it to see what sticks.
ESCHATOLOGY is gorgeous. Good points re: online play as well.
Your content and editing skills keep getting better and better! Amazing video!
Many happy returns, Maria. From Chinedu Okwelogu, your Ekulu Primary School classmate and Onitsha Road Flats neighbour in Enugu.
This makes me feel really good about my (VAR)IATIONS in the bottom division many years ago.
While there haven't been any 13+ letter bingos in a tournament, I wonder if that's still true when you consider non-bingo plays. Similarly, I'm curious how many 11 and 12 letter non-bingo plays have been made in tournaments.
To this end, it would actually be really interesting to see a breakdown of the relative frequency plays of all word lengths have, perhaps with each length also separated out depending on if the word was made with extensions, hooks, and crosses, etc.
I've heard of 14L non-bingo word in tourneys before
There's definitely more examples of 13+ letter plays that were not bingos, especially ones that players built up over a couple turns. Maybe another video topic sometime...
Would love to see this @@wanderer15
This Will Anderson guy makes good videos… I’m glad I’m subscribed
I dont play scrabble, but i love these videos. Good job making entertaining videos, Will.
4:25 yes you knew I'd be curious, but did you think I'd be so curious to ask to see some of those AI-vs-AI games where there was a 13+ letter bingo? Those numbers suggest that they happened multiple times (five 15-letter bingos? We have to see those, right?)
An average of 5 per game per player - in the full data set, there were exactly 10 fifteen-letter plays. I should definitely get my hands on those board positions!
thanks for vainglorying these plays
This shows once again that the North American list just isn't vocabularied enough
Haha!
Fantastic video. Thanks Will. Another memorable move by Sherwin Rodrigues in a game in 2019 was an incredible 10- letter play. His rack was ADEELST. Not sure if there was a place for the obvious bingos coz he didn't go for either. He spotted I-DEAL-I-T-I-ES through 3 disconnected 'I's. Genius stuff👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
He is an amazing player for sure!
I found a few of these, however, knowing that there is a long bingo there helps massively.
Yes, having the vision/creativity to even consider plays like this is part of what makes them all so special!
The incredible thing about (P)ERNOCTA(TED) is that it doesn't just extend a 4 letter word, it weaves together two separate pieces. I'd be interested to see more examples of high-scoring plays like this - bingos or not - that spanned 2+ existing segments. I see SISTER(H)O(ODS) and (EL)ECTROCU(TE) on the list at 2:43 for instance.
Totally agree re: the disconnected nature of the play. Sometimes it’s tough to dig up those old board positions - hopefully now when someone makes a play like this, they’ll send me the position immediately so I can make a video about it :)
I feel smart because I did manage to spot the plays of Electricity and Astrobiology before they were revealed.
I read about (QUINTES)SENTIAL in a scrabble strategy book I had growing up, glad I remembered it!
Yay, thank you Will
Vocabularied is a great word for scrabble too!
Your videos on Scrabble are absolutely brilliant and concise.
Keep going sir.
as someone who knows nothing about scrabble these vids are so entertaining and easy to follow i love them
I was waiting for a video like this ! Thank you Will Anderson for this amazing video
I got down the 13 letter non-bingo of (HOSPITAL)ITIES in a tournament on woogles one time. Probably wasn't my best play but I had played HOSPITAL as a bingo a turn or two earlier and the opportunity to play a 13 letter word doesn't happen all that often
Great play!
I was just wondering earlier today what the longest played bingos were, and then you upload this! Thank you 😊
Two things:
1) I can't help but notice that Nigel Richards' (P)ERNOCTA(TED) is the only disconnected 11 or 12-letter bingo played in a tournament game. The rest were mere extensions. Another testament to Nigel Richards' inhuman Scrabble skill.
2) Have there ever been any 13-15 letter non-bingos plays in tournament or club games?
1) Absolutely true. I'd also say that PERNOCTATED is perhaps the most obscure word on the list as well.
2) Definitely! I didn't touch on them here, but there's many of these out there that I could see discussing in a future video.
Even among the longest plays, Nigel's PERNOCTATED still stands out. Every other 11 and 12 letter play from tournament games, and all but two of those from club games, were extending a 4 or 5 letter word already on the board, which made them a lot easier to spot. Even as an amateur player I'm pretty sure that, with CITY on the board and an inviting space in front of it, I could have found ELECTRICITY, and I might have stood a chance of getting one or two of the others too. But spotting a 3 letter word in one position and a single letter elsewhere, and figuring that there's an 11 letter word which connects them, is something else completely. (EL)ECTROCU(TE) and SISTER(H)O(ODS) are the only other players linking two previously unconnected spots.
Also, almost all the others are fairly common words which the player almost certainly knew anyway, rather than learning them specifically for Scrabble purposes (except possibly VAINGLORYING and ASTROGEOLOGISTS). PERNOCTATED is really the only one which makes you think "If he knows that, he must have learned all the 11 letter words just for the tiny chance that he might one day be able to play one."
I'm so proud of myself that I managed to spot both ELECTRICITY and TRANQUILISED. I can't say for sure I'd have found either of those since I have the advantage of knowing an 11/12 is about to be played, but still.
I've actually played an 11 in a WWF game, I extended the word SHED to REPLENISHED. I'm pretty sure I'll never do something like that again.
That's a tremendous play - nice one!
I have a friend who claims to have played (CHIC)KENSHIT, which is amazing. I think it’s a no-brained to disallow slurs, but non-slur profanity was wrongly excluded
my lone goal for the remainder of my scrabble career is to make a play of at least 13 letters regardless of how many turns i waste doing it
I eagerly look forward to editing the resulting video
Vocabularied being the biggest bingo ever played in tournament scrabble is incredible. Why do puns like that always seem to occur in these videos
I could scarcely believe that myself!
Love the alien bit. Great content as always. Thank you
Great video Will! I love your new style of videos, but I also miss your longer form content, specifically the bonus round series. Maybe you could create a second channel where you upload those more raw types of videos? Just a thought, keep it up!
Thank you! Those videos certainly take a little less time to do... so maybe I should mix more of them in for my own sanity! :)
Heh. I was at that tournament where Chris Cree played ANNUALIZING. I don’t remember much from my past tournaments, but I remember that. I believe it was at a Texas State championship.
The other day I spotted an opportunity for the word, disenfranchised, to span the board I was playing on. The word to play off of was Ranch, and there were the perfect spaces on either side.
It was quickly squashed, though.
memorizing all 16 letter words to get an edge against the pros
Yes I've been waiting for a video to cover this!
3:58 it's interesting how the AI simulations have more 8 letter words per game than 7 letter words
To bingo with a 7-letter word, you need to extend an existing word (like with an S). To bingo with an 8-letter word, you can play through any letter already on the board, which can be anywhere within your word.
And playing 6 tiles at a time is not that common compared to getting a bingo.
Division 1 play tends to see more 8s than 7s due to wide open boards. Lower level play generally has fewer long plays and more stacking, which means more more 7s and fewer 8s
My longest play was sadly not a bingo, turning my mom's opening play of HOLE into FINGERHOLE on a triple word... but I can claim a 9-letter bingo of QUIESC(EN)T which, as someone who only plays online and against family, I think was pretty good!
That's a play even champion Scrabble players would be extremely proud of. Nice one!
Amazing! Now the question is, how often in tournament play do these positions occur and players don't see them? Surely rare, but once in 6000 games must happen often enough.
Probably about the same as in the AI vs AI games (which is what the rates shown were)
Wow wasn't expecting Emory and Oglethorpe in a Scrabble vid!
Amazingly you’re the first to comment on them. Two of my favorite characters.
POV me when I'm using scrabble word finder under the table to cheat
No bingos involved but once I played a game where UNREFINISHED was on the board after the original FINISH was extended several times.
I'm pretty sure the algorithm those bots were using would prioritize longer words, if there was an additional bonus for using 9 letter words or longer. Some of these bingos felt low in score, given the rarity and length of the word. Bots will rather use various hooks into their play, and capitalize multiple words over the bonus tiles. If each letter starting at the 9th, gave another 50 points. Things would get interesting quick.
Agreed. There's plenty of situations where 9 letter words are available, but a 7 or 8 letter word still scores more or is strategically superior. I could easily see an argument to increase the bonuses for those extra-long plays.
I have contemptuousness for 15. I'm waiting for the expansions to this board game so we can see even longer words!
Thanks for your reply to my comment. These videos are great. Maybe there will be even more bingos once the new NASPA lexicon takes effect Feb,, 29
I once played un(question)ably in an OTB game against a friend. Unfortunately, this 14-letter play was not a bingo and didn't even score all that well.
I wonder if these very long bingos would be more common if one of the two AIs was restricted to knowing words up to 7/8/9 letters long. My reason for asking is because I imagine that human players rarely play to avoid giving their opponents such long bingo setups.
Are 13+ letter non-bingoes more common?
I made the play of HOSPITAL(ITIES), a 13 letter non bingo, in Mondaily a few months ago, which is a tournament held on Woogles, a website for competitive scrabble. I didn't win tho
Yes, though still extremely uncommon. Definitely warrants a follow-up video at some point.
Would love to see someone go to a tournament for the sole purpose of playing a 13 letter bingo
How do you open the game with OLOGY in the 8th column, creating an opportunity to TW a 12-letter bingo. That's gotta be a blunder, right?
I can see thinking you have to hit the double letter score with the Y, as it's 6 points more than playing the same word from the other DLS, and 12 letter bingos are so rare that I suspect defending against it never occurred to her
Yes, it's hard to tell without knowing the other two letters for sure, but even with such a great prefix for long words, the odds of your opponent having a 7-letter extension are microscopic, let alone a human player actually spotting one!
Hey Will, could you do the highest tournament scoring moves next? Big fan of your channel!
Definitely will get to this one at some point (and thanks!)
Love the channel. These videos really help me fall asleep for bed.
Thanks, I think? :)
Ok you got me hooked on Scrabble I need tips on how to be good now
Thanks for watching my videos!
For tips, you could try my Better Know a Letter series about each individual letter:
ua-cam.com/play/PLm9WVrRb2Lz11DKX3x-sYI3t3iO-tQpmp.html
I once extended METEOR to METEOROLOGIC, and later in the game extended it again to METEOROLOGICAL. When I did the second extension I had the LY to form METEOROLOGICALLY, but that's 16 letters and it didn't fit on the board.
Is the 10 million AI vs AI dataset available? I tried to search for it several times but fail to find information about that. Would like to see those AI games if possible.
I don't think it's publicly accessible - but if you had any specific questions, I could probably help get answers.
@@wanderer15 Did you consider selecting some of the AI vs AI games and make a series out of it? There mush be some very interesting games in the data set like super long bingos, brilliant setups and end game ideas etc.
Josh the interviewer, mistreating César. Good stuff.
Oof poor Cynthia getting styled on
2:32 UNIM(MUNI)IZED (Was this a typo or an unintended phony thanks to an extra tile on the board?)
Definitely a typo that should have read UNIM(MUNI)ZED! Good catch.
Did Chris Cree win the game in which annualizing was banned? That's like anime villain backstory moment
Also can you do biggest point phony plays? Would be cool to see that.
I actually am not sure of the outcome - I'll have to ask.
High scoring phonies is a great idea! Though @Mack Meller might have covered it - he has a series of awesome videos about great phony plays.
Great video. Might be cool to see the craziest phonies in a different video.
Mack Meller has a lot of great videos on phonies:
ua-cam.com/video/os8DAsfXJ7s/v-deo.html
I found it amazing that a computer with perfect word knowledge would play just one bingo per game on average (4:12 time stamp on video) is this correct?
About 2.2 per game, you have to add the 7 letter bingo and 8 letter bingo numbers.
Yes, as VogonPoet says, the count is 0.975 seven-letter bingos per game and 1.235 8s per game, summing to 2.21 bingos of 7 or 8 letters per game. (For reference, this is exactly my own average of bingos per game - I rarely play 9 letter words or longer and I also rarely miss bingos of 7 or 8 letters.)
Are there any non-bingo words longer than 12 letters that have been played in tournament games?
I'm sure there have. I once saw WHELMING get extended to OVER(WHELMING) then (OVERWHELMING)LY in a tournament
Definitely - perhaps a topic for another video!
Just had to report that I just got a Giant Bingo and Double "Triple-Word" score of 194 pts with Queering starting on the bottom-left "Triple Word" square and ending on the Center "Triple Word" square (the second E in Queering was provided for me off off "Rupee". Janet in Los Angeles. 6/26/24
I love love love love these videos
3:59 surprised to see that AI play less than one bingo per game on average, they must be very defensive!
They play 0.975 seven-letter bingos per game, but don't forget they also play 1.235 eight-letter bingos per game. My own average for bingos per game is 2.21, and I don't miss too much under 9 letters, so this checks out!
Great vid. In the AI games, I guess each bot is defending against long words? If so, seems that would weaken the assertion that humans are less likely than AI to play long words. Make sense? Thoughts?
In general, defending against long words at any point other than the very ending of the game, when both players have perfect or near-perfect knowledge of their opponent's holdings, just isn't ever going to be the likeliest threat to deal with. Because 7 and 8 letter bingos are so much more common, you'll see AI players defending against those almost exclusively. Every few thousand games, one will surprise the other with some crazy extension play out of left field.
So if I played an AI on a position I set up with tiles I set so I had a really long bingo, the AI is likely to miss it?@@wanderer15
Maybe I would have to fix other parameters (e.g. score) too.
I assume there are different dictionaries for American and English scrabble as with IZE and ISE words
Yes, though it's maddeningly inconsistent as some words go both ways even in the American lexicon.
Would love to see a player enter a tournament for the sole purpose of playing a 13 letter bingo
Another day another banger
Why would cynthia leave a whole suffix open with 7 spaces before. Why wouldnt she start on the left and end on the Y for example to prevent any crazy hooks like that
The extensions were incredibly unlikely, especially against a human player (even a computer engine would rarely have such a play, and most humans would miss it when they do). And because the Y is the highest scoring letter at 4 points, playing it where she did gave her by far the highest score with those letters. Just tough luck for her and amazing move by Joe!
You should play national park scrabble because it has special cards for stuff and I think it would be cool
I have a question, does a player have limited challenges? If so, when the player runs out couldn’t the opponent just put down random tiles that get the most points?
Good question. No limit on challenges, but there are different rules on penalties of losing challenges.
In the rules for casual play, there is no penalty for failing a challenge, so in theory you could challenge every word, but they trust you not to be a jerk. In tournament play, there is always some sort of penalty for a failed challenge, ranging from a few points to losing a turn.
Usually you lose a turn if you challenge wrongly, but sometimes your opponent gains 5 points instead depending on the event.
Always Nigel doing these things hahah
If i had a quarter for every time someone scored a 12+ bingo by prefixing "astro-" to a common field of study, I'd have two quarters, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice
Cesar Del Solar's 11-letter bingo is listed as MIST(REATING) but presumably it should be (MIST)REATING?
Yes, you're right! Oddly, I fixed a couple other errors of this type before publishing but missed that one.
Do you have details about the millions of games played by the computers?
A few - did you have any specific questions?
@@wanderer15 Which computers? Which dictionary? When did this take place and under what conditions? So many questions!
I think a list of the best single letter plays would be cool. Inspired by my wife getting 84 points from using a single Q on me on her 2nd ever game of Scrabble
Fun idea - I'll see what I can dig up
Longest bingo opportunity I've had (that I know of) was I had a woogles game that I plugged into quackle to see what the correct engdame was. When I saw I had a win according to the computer, and that I had made the correct move, I found that while I had seen the correct idea of fishing off a B to set up a spot for HAIRY hitting a double word with the Y on a triple letter, the winning play after this was blocked I missed was the 10 letter bingo extending JAM for JAMAHIRIYA, bingoing out to win. Wish I had saved the game this was so ridiculous.
Hahaha, god, what a play
Can't wait to see a 16 letter word someday!
I think AI can manage that. They are very good at playing tiles outside of the board. He did make a video showing that.
another great video will!
And if you're new to the game and don't know who Chris Cree is, I think he'll be ok. EDIT: Thanks for including my SUPERSTITION. I played that in a club game when I was new to Scrabble. Everyone was impressed when I played it.
It's an extremely impressive play!
It will be the weekend then and we’re going to the lake!