Ever Seen a Scrabble Game With No Words?
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- Welcome to Episode 4 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.
When two of Scrabble's most accomplished and creative players in Marlon Hill and Ben Schoenbrun sit down to play, you expect brilliant words and amazing plays to accumulate on the board.
But somehow, these two Scrabble masters finished a game in 2010 with no words, no points...nothing. Watch this video to find out how!
For more Scrabble content from me, follow 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
Remarkable that Marlon was only one point away from the maximum possible score in a game with no words created.
goes to show just how good he is at the game !
@@Juhamakiviita2.0 this is purely luck thoug
@@Asmondel r/woooosh
@@Asmondel that's the joke, lol
@@The_Foreman r/itswooooshwith4os r/itswooooshwithouttheh
Of course my 20 year-old self's nonsense is the thing that goes viral...
Great video of course.
Isn't that just how history works?
you entertained thousands of non-scrabble players
Nice hair now bro
Awesome game!
Ben the legend for quite some time now, and will continue being the legend.
Hilariously, at the World Championship a few weeks ago, I had a chance for ANOTHER 6-pass! This time I had a bingo on my rack (DETINUE) and my opponent exchanged 4 then 3 then 2. I decided to just play my bingo even though my opponent was very likely (90%+) to bingo back. I figured I'd be about 55% to win after DETINUE. I talked it over with a bunch of the best players at the tournament and passing is about 55% to win as well assuming my opponent kept 5 one-pointers on his last exchange (It's unlikely he had a blank after 3 straight exchanges, but not impossible.) I decided I'd rather just play the game of scrabble having just won a championship and feeling a lot more confident in my ability to at least be a coin flip against most players.
What happens? My opponent bingoes with REL(E)VANT and proceeds to molly-wop me into the next dimension of course! If I passed I would've won -8 to -10. GAH!!!
thats rough
We need a sequel video here!!! Thanks for commenting.
Hi Ben!!!
This popped into my recommended feed completely unprompted, and I'm glad it did. I have zero context for anything discussed here and it was still perfectly understandable and interesting.
I really appreciate this comment so much, inspires me to keep going! Thank you for watching!
@@wanderer15 came to say the same. Your diction is good, and your presentation is on point.
@@wanderer15 Agree with the comment, this video is really good :)
@@wanderer15 Same thing happened to me! I did not know I needed this channel in my life until I did. Thanks!
same
This reminds me of that one Caribbean soccer game where Grenada was trying to score in either goal while Barbados defended both goals. A unique set of circumstances resulted in completely unintended but perfectly logical player behavior.
That was just really really stupid rules that the competition organisers had come up with. It annoys me massively when officials come up with idiotic rules that encourage people to play a certain way to maximise their chance of winning, then when they see what happens the officials disqualify them for playing 'not in the spirit of the game' or something similar.
Could you provide some context so I can look it up?
@@widmo206 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_4%E2%80%932_Grenada
Though as the article says, unusually in this case Barbados were not disciplined in any way as FIFA recognised that they were just playing optimally given the terrible rule.
@@mattc3581 Thanks!
Honestly, I'm speechless.
I have no words
Neither did the players in this game! ;)
@@wanderer15 r/thatsthejoke
Would have been even more epic if Ben has actually got two single point tiles and confidently displayed his -7, only to find out that Marlon somehow beat him anyway by getting a blank.
Sounds like a scene from a Bond movie titled "Scrabble Royale".
I can't help but love the fact that this entire abusurd sequence of events hinged on the fact that a Scrabble master of all people didn't know how to spell a relatively common word like Vegetate
Or it could have been a bluff to make something like this happen. Like the guy said, he had a better chance of winning a coin flip than winning in the normal way.
common for who? This is the first time in months, if not years, I've ever seen it used
@@ViddyOJamesthe root is common
@@ViddyOJamesnever heard discussion on vegetation? Eaten a vegetable? referred to someone or something as vegetating?
@@KatherynneF Even granting your brain-dead premise, listening to words gives no information on their spelling.
I don't even play scrabble but this is so cool from a game theoretic perspective
I did not have any idea Scrabble contained this many mind games, and I like it even more now.
I hate how me being in a uni board game club and this channel has turned Scrabble into an area control game rather than me just spelling big word
I went through that with Ultimate Frisbee. Low-mid level causal play is this crazy chaos pack scramble style I really enjoy. High level play is formations and a lot of 1-on-1. Barely the same game at all. Wonder if there's a word for this phenomenon.
@@MaxMckayful most games are like this, not sure if theres a word for this exact phenomenon but "optimization" is pretty close. games at low-to-mid level competition is almost always decided by mechanics/skill, but at the highest level, the gaps diminish to such a degree that it forces strategy to be the deciding factor. This will inevitably lead to a continuous cycle of "meta" strategies, then "anti-stratting" then re-developing "meta" strategies.
@@MaxMckayful the word you are looking for is "meta" where a game becomes essentially solved
@@MaxMckayful most competetive shooter video games eventually just turns into chess in the highest levels of play. at low-mid level play you can win simply by being more accurate and having faster reaction times than your opponents (also called mechanical skill); but at pro-level having near-perfect mechanical skill is not only common, but _expected_ from every player. at that level a match is won not by running in and dueling your opponents but by strategically controling areas of the playing field
I wish that my teacher would have told us about the exchange tiles rule; as a kid I sat through an entire game of scrabble without being able to make any words.
I think it's fascinating that both players had totally reasonable strategies, even if they may have been based on a misspelling. I can imagine any number of circumstances where a game would end like this, but it's almost unbelievable that it happened between two players who both genuinely thought it maximized their chances of winning
Ew
cute profile pic
@@fiona9891 thank you :3
@@fiona9891 oh I couldn't see what yours was before bc it was small but I've seen it now and I like it too c:
I recognise that glaceon!!!
Ive never watched scrabble, consumed scrabble content or wanted to play scrabble. I guess a scrabble video about not playing scrabble is a perfect reccomendation. Thanks for making it it is really intresting.
Lmao same
After the "you're not getting an I" comment I was waiting for the plot twist of Ben playing DIRT to bait Marlon into VEGITATE* only to challenge it off because he was bluffing about getting the spelling mixed up...
Btw German Scrabble doesn't have this rule, we need consecutive *passed turns* to end a game (no exchanges, no phoneys). I kinda prefer that, I feel like scenarios like this make the rule more of a bug than a feature. But it certainly makes for a funny story!
if you say "you're not getting an I" and play an I then I think he knows what you're planning...
@@RubyPiec lol good point
Dirt is a word though...
I think the north american rule makes more sense than the german rule, since with the german rule, the two players could just keep playing invalid bingos to try to force the other player to go first.....
So what would happen if the 6th 0 scoring move was a 2 letter blank-blank play? Would the 2nd player just take off the score of their 5 remaining tiles?
You know, that's a great question. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's never happened, but now I'm curious to know what the rule would be on it as well!
i would guess you draw the two squares as usual after playing AND THEN the game ends, rather than mid turn. if there are no squares left to draw, then youd just use the 5 remaining as expected
They adjusted this rule recently, I think if you make a valid 0-point play, the game continues. Can't wait until that actually happens in a game, but it may never.
@@badmanjones179 You could never make a 0 point play with two blanks, at a point in the game where the bag is empty, because the board would be populated with at least 88 tiles already. One of the two blanks you play would have to hook to a tile with a point value.
You could do this with a one-blank play though, hooking to the other blank.
@@terracottapie The 0 point play would be in the beginning of the game as the first move, just like in this game I suppose
I have no idea how I got recommended this but I have to say you did a great job of explaining the specific intricacies of the match to someone who is very casually familiar with the game. This was, and I mean this in the best way, the most anime game of scrabble I think could be possible.
Amazingly, something similar transpired a few days ago at the Mumbai Nationals in the premier division. The game ended -8 -17 I think.
Lol
@Choas_Lord_512 did he really make that up? I can't be bothered to check it
@@limitlesscord7319 No, ignore such trolls.
I need a Scrabble anime so bad... like a Scrabble tournament arc with moments like this would actually go crazy
that game is like a bongcloud draw
Actually, that’s a pretty great comparison
Quick drawing incidents in chess are a lot more common and mostly about external factors like being exhausted or the game not mattering to the tournament outcome
wow, never realised that bluffing and making up words could be a valid strategy in professional scrabble LMAO. this is wild i love it.
It's funny he got vegetate wrong since it feels like a relatively common word (related to vegetable)
We don't know he did.
Before watching, I predict this will be a fascinating combination of game theory, and luck!
I literally felt Ben's pain when he drew that Q!
2 things.
1. I can’t believe a just wanted a full video on scrabble history.
2. I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it!
Well done video.
dude this is amazing. I haven't even played scrabble in years and now I'm hooked to this series and I wanna start playing competitively again
I didn't know competitive scrabble was a thing, but this is hilarious to know this ever happened
Hoooooooly heck! I just looked at the title and went "there's no way...maybe the players were playing a legit game and then at some point, all the tiles got swept off and no one remembered what the board looked like"... But no! It was all just calling out phonies and exchanging tiles until it came down to what was on both peeps' racks, amazing. ;u;
this is my favorite series you do my love of history and learning about scrabble for the first time really makes these videos interesting
I almost wound up in one of these- without the benefit of a phony by anyone- but on the turn that would have ended it I drew into a bingo (after having to change 1 from AADENRS twice, finally the E for ENDEARS). Had I drawn another useless one-pointer I would have won (-8) - (-11). I also have a 14-11 win (opp opened XU, I played UH under it and we got stuck.)
John Hart here. Great minds think alike, Dan. I won an empty-board game once by a score of -7 to -8 (passed 3 times with 'AEILORT' while opponent had a D after 3 exchanges) and an XU-UH game that ended with just those 2 words on the board (before DUH was added to the lexicon).
I love this type of content! You could be the GothamChess of Scrabble😂
Wow, that is high praise. I look up to Levy quite a bit so this made me really happy!
@@wanderer15 and the wirtual of scrabble
love these obscure history videos! keep em coming
this is truly a 300IQ game of all time
Wow. I despise playing Scrabble, yet I now recognize it for a marvelous battle of the minds. Thank you for your videos !
This reminds me of an old-fashioned western duel (whether they actually existed as shown in the movies, I don't know) where both opponents stand there trying to outwit eath other, neither of them firing a shot, until the sheriff comes to break them up.
Not only have we scored more than those two scrabble masters combined, even more impressively we have scored more than them individually!
As someone who knows next to nothing about the rules of scrabble it’s super helpful hearing you explain how these things happen
Scrabble, Boggle, Chess were among my favourite board games as a kid. Problem was not one person I knew was interested in them, I literally spent most of childhood time playing those games against myself :x
Wirtual man, this is nuts. Scrabble is truly a masterpiece.
I know that Andy Saunders and Terry Kang Rau had some sort of six turns of zero game. Terry had lost a challenge on the fifth turn of zero and Andy, who had the lead, simply said: "Trade zero (or "pass.") And the game was over. I don't remember how far along in the game it was but I think the game had barely begun.
Perhaps you don't remember when NASPA changed the rules for a while, where the 6-turn zero-score rule was eliminated at the start of the game, when no tiles were on the board. (They reversed this rule a couple years later.) This led to a very similar situation in a game between Veronica Thompson and myself at an Orlando nationals.
Veronica had a rack with a blank that didn't make a bingo. I had a rack that would bingo through most of the letters in her rack. She started with a phony bingo try, which I challenged off. Then I passed. She tried again with another plausible try, and I again challenged, followed by another pass. Because the 6-turn zero-score rule was not in effect for this event, this could have gone on indefinitely. (I'm not sure what we would have done. I suppose eventually, Veronica would run out of time after playing 200 phonies.) Anyway, on her third turn, she finally made a valid non-bingo play, and I then bingoed, after which a normal game unfolded.
I’ve never played or been interested in playing Scrabble, but this was an entertaining video, and hilarious rules lawyering. Both men playing a better back and forth than all of tennis.
So Schoenbrun had 2+2/3 times the score of Hill and still lost.
@@elijahfoster2 -16 is -6 times 2+2/3.
-6 * 2.666... = -16
Thank you for explaining everything slowly and clearly. Great video!
OK - I did not expect to be that entertained by a Scrabble commentary.
Good work.
That is some truly fantastic rules lawyering. I love it.
What a brilliant and well told story. Thank you.
I haven't even watched the video, because yes, I've seen a Scrabble board with no words on it before. I lost a game to the computer in this fashion and I can't tell you how stunned I was. 😮
Just found this channel, and just watched all of the history series. Looking forward to wats ahead!
Great video. Immediately noticed Randy Greenspan’s name on a screenshot. RIP. He played RIGATONI TWICE in one game, both natural. RIP King. ❤
Randy was one of the friendliest players in the game. Miss that guy.
@@wanderer15 He was great. I played speed Scrabble with him a few times and he waxed me. One of those ‘never judge a book by its cover” moments.
What an awesome story and what a great explanation
I know nothing about Scrabble but this kept me invested. Cool video!
I do want to say though i enjoy your analysis videos. Ever since playing it with someone who plays this competitively it's changed my perception of this game as "how many big words can you make" to a deep strategy game and i really love your analyses on the games to show possible moves and their thought processes. It's rekindled my love for it as a board game and im seeing it more as a deep strategy game than a word game now. Its also cool that it frequently gets updates to the accepted word list making the game play differently in different time periods
Thank you very much, this felt nice to read & glad you’re enjoying!
i love word games, including scrabble, but i had no idea that high level play contained these kind of gambits. pretty neat.
I love your scrabble videos! I just got into the game and it’s so inspiring
This is the funniest outcome of a game of Scrabble I've ever seen
Idk why this showed up on my page, but I watched it, lol. You're a good storyteller! Good video
What a weird sequence of events! I love learning about oddities like these!
this is so hilarious, great video!
that's when you know they are really good players
Amazing story!
This showed up in my recommendations, and I’m subscribing so I can check back on this channel later. Certainly an interesting and solidly made video.
Could you imagine if Ben also drew the blank? Woulda been crazy.
Just found this channel and its like watching the interdimensional TV on rick and morty. Its just so strange. Scrabble competitions, I knew they existed; but its so serious.
I used to think that competitive scrabble was a bit ridiculous, but this video has opened my eyes: it's completely absurd.
you deserve more subs these vids are bangin
Great video. I also had this randomly appear in my feed for no reason, you’re probably about to get 1M+ views on this one
I've been playing fairly serious club/tourney Scrabble (in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metro area, with little success) since my late teens, but know enough about the game to understand and appreciate it at a high level. It's weird that I never heard about this game before. Thanks, Will. Your channel is awesome.
Thank you and welcome - there’s a lot of strong players out there!
@@wanderer15 I really enjoy your analysis. Some of the great Twin Cities players I've played, (and mostly lost to), include Mr.Jim Kramer, Tim Adamson, Steve Pellinen, the highly under-rated Vince Vandover, Ms. Lisa Odom, Joe Gaspard, and Rob Robinsky.
That's hilarious. Love this exchange!
as someone who casually plays scrabble in my free time, all of this is so impressive! i'm not a native english speaker so all of these words are incredible to me
That's some crazy play!
Ben Schoenbrun is that hypothetical person from logic problems!
He may not be the best scrabble player, or know hot to spell vegetate, but he figured out exactly what his opponent was doing and acted accordingly. These people turned Scrabble into Chess!
Since that time, he’s become one of the best Scrabble players in the country as well!
Cool video, well explained, Super interesting, thank you.
Would not have guessed it but exchanging the two 2-point tiles is slightly better odds than keeping both. with ten 1-point tiles and two 2-pointers accounted for, there are 173 total points on the 88 remaining unseen tiles, for an average of 1.966/tile, slightly lower than 2.
Yeah I went that way initially, but actually the average isn't really meaningful in the calculation. (If the Z was worth 10000 points then the average points of tiles in the bag would be huge and this reasoning would say don't swap, but actually it makes no difference, if you draw the Z you probably lose either way and the chance of doing so is still the same.)
Actually there are so many 1 point tiles that you have a decent chance of lowering your tile value and a smaller chance of increasing it (but probably by a lot), so though the average is about the same, you lower more often than increase. Rough odds, I think for both players the chance of lowering their tile value was about 54%, with about 12% chance of it staying the same and about 34% chance of it increasing. Slightly different for each of them, but overall definitely better to swap.
@@mattc3581 yes, point well taken that the distribution is crucial :)
Hey, you played Marlon in that tournament! Great video as always!
I love your commentary style!
Great video Will!
Just found this channel last night. I’m a very very occasional casual scrabble player, but am fascinated by these videos. This was super interesting.
Can I ask what is the community opinion on playing words you know are phony and trying to get them on the board? Is it allowed but frowned upon or considered good strategic play if you can pull it off?
It's definitely much closer to a good bluff in poker, but there are ethical gray areas - for example, when the disparity in skill between two players is very big, it starts to resemble bullying a little bit. At the top level, it's more accepted as a minor (but occasionally extremely impactful) part of the strategic complexity of the game.
@@wanderer15 thanks for your insights. I have subscribed. Just watched your video about tips for finding Bingos it was fantastic!
I love Scrabble, and considered myself a pretty good player (until watching a few of your videos). This was very interesting… was thinking ‘clickbait’ but didn’t appreciate the level of strategy involved here. Very cool
What a strange and ingrown round of Scrabble
UA-cam algorithm is doing you justice. Great video.
Scrabble with no words.
I had to do a double take when I glanced at the thumbnail, at first I didn’t see the “O” in NO.😂
Also, creating custom moves for a fake custom scene is genius! This is gonna be the next block battles!
You're just a great raconteur and analyst sir!
Wow, this game. I just... Wow... I have no words!
This is amazing
Wait, there is ELO for Scrabble? Man you truly do learn something every day
Great video!
Your voice/pacing kind of reminds me of the speedrunner Maximum.
The meta on this is way deeper than I had initially expected.
Great video! Bless the algorithm for showing me this.
Thanks for the kind words & the algo-boosting burgers :)
Josh Sokol has ended a number of games against other experts this way
Question: Are they going to include the negative score in computing for the average scores or not?
I've played Scrabble a time or two, but I've never even heard of some of these rules.
ngl i think it would actually be really funny if competitive scrabble became a real thing! will, your creativity in both creating your own characters for this world, and also your own words, makes you the perfect blend of creativity and genius
I mean it already is a thing. It just hasn't yet seen a meteoric rise in popularity like chess has.
@@andrewmancini46Let's not forget chess came out 15 years before scrabble
Has anyone done the math on the expected value of drawing tiles in Ben's shoes (for the final draw of the game)? Was it correct to draw for lower value tiles or keep the 2 2-value tiles?
If you assume that Marlon has seven one-pointers, the average value of the 88 tiles not accounted for is 1.989. However, it's better to keep the twos: probability of 0.554 of an outright win or 0.621 of a win either outright or by tiebreaker; vs respectively 0.561 and 0.602 if exchanging one tile, or 0.389 and 0.509 if exchanging both.
So many mind games in this one :D
To the video creator: I have very short attention span and I don’t play scrabble (obviously) but your videos are awesome. For once YT recommended me something good lol. Keep going, love your contents!
Thank you for giving my videos a try!
10/10 "There's no words there" meme
I hope this comes up on Tom Scott's Lateral.