Nigel Plays "IN". The Crowd Goes Wild.
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2023
- Welcome to Episode 13 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.
For somebody who knows and finds words like CHLORODYNE, Nigel Richards certainly has a knack for making incredible plays with some of the simplest words. In this game from the 2013 North American Scrabble Championship with American expert Trip Payne, he makes one of my favorite plays ever: the simple two-letter word IN. The rest of the game is just as electric!
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):
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Play Scrabble at playscrabble.com! - Ігри
"...plays the self-descriptive 'POO' for 10 points." Will's coming out of the gate throwing shade 😂
It was a solid play from that rack - the five vowels were poo, not the decision!
Why would he play poo instead of oops?
@@desecratedPriest the S is too valuable to use for just a couple extra points - because it can be used to pluralize almost any noun or verb, players at this level tend to keep it until they can use it for a significant number of extra points than they could get otherwise.
@@desecratedPriestnever use the s first try, always hook
these videos have made me want to play Scrabble so bad, I've never played it before but this series makes it look so incredibly fun
there’s online play, give it a shot, I’ve played a few matches and even though the people are a lot better than me it’s really fun
Give it a shot, if you don’t like playing competitively just memorize the 127 two-letter-words and you’re good to go
I’ve played Scrabble for 5 years only memorizing the 2s and it’s very enjoyable (you’ll subconsciously memorize 3s as you play). It’s only recently that I started memorizing more
@Firefly256 these videos convinced me to play scrabble myself and even though I'm bad I finally got my first bingo yesterday. Same as the others said I just memorized the two letter words (although I'm not perfect yet) and have been having a lot of fun.
@@robertveith6383 ?? do you want me to capitalize and punctuate?
this is UA-cam not Harvard dude
I mean I think my original comment was clear enough, I don't see why you see the need to nitpick a random comment on a Scrabble video
I love it when he talks about their racks. Was dying at "trip has a horrendous rack"
Finding a quote from yourself while doing research is crazy 😭
Indeed
Understanding that ZIN is better than JIN is possibly the most impressive play to me in this game, given that it defies leave / bingoing heuristics and JIN sets up the case (D)JIN hook. Later, the confidence to not take the guaranteed victory and instead play the perfect endgame is extremely impressive as well.
Nigel forgoing bingos could be compiled into its own video, he does that so much more than other top players, and especially EAT here was an example where I don't think it would even occur to other players not to play the bingo.
Maybe you could cover the World Championship final against Jesse Day where he famously forewent a bingo near the end of the game.
So one minor thing in theses Nigel videos, that I always find funny, is the Standing boards that list where people are from with specific Cities for the US but if your from outside the US they just shrug and put the Country. It makes it look like Nigel is either just a wise hermit roaming all of Malaysia or that he just sits upon the throne of Malaysia as its undisputed king for being such a good SCRABBLE player.
Ha, fair point! Justice for non-US residents!
another absolute banger of a video. I specifically wanna commend your use of colors. I feel like you already do a great job of explaining the nuanced plays without it getting too confusing, but your use of colors really made every moment crystal clear; like coloring words in either purple or yellow to show who played them in a fast forward was so cool to see. keep up the great work!
Thanks! It's taken some iteration to get to this point, and I'm always thinking about how the visual presentation of the game could help aid understanding.
@@wanderer15i was coming to say the same thing! The presentation is the only thing that's made me watch all your scrabble videos.
One of the things that make me most excited about the advancement of Scrabble AIs is the potential to better evaluate all these unintuitive, brilliant-looking plays by Nigel (and others too, but Nigel seems to have a special penchant for them).
And yet in a way, I hope engines never get there so that we can keep our sense of wonder when looking at these ideas.
Another fantastic game, thanks for sharing Will
Knowing how computers have influenced the chess world, I think it would be nice for computers to never catch up to humans. It takes a lot of the wonder out of these problems when you can press a button and instantly know the answer to everything.
Both of these viewpoints seem valid to me, and I feel like it's a win-win - either we preserve some of the unsolvable mystique of Scrabble, or we learn amazing new things about how to play the game better and better.
@@wanderer15 Ronaldo (pen), Ronaldo (pen)
@@slowfreqI'm seeing some evocation of When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer in that, and all the same refutations apply.
Sure, the Engine will spit out an answer and some odds, but for now, they're really bad at explaining things. So, at worst, they're mostly an idiot pointing out things that make no sense, and we have to figure out why our assumptions are wrong. There's still wonder,and IMO it's improved by knowing a little bit more.
Not to mention that anyone who isn't a pro can safely ignore the Engine like we do in chess, and just play the game.
@@slowfreq people thought computers were going to kill chess in the 90s. The early 2020's was the biggest year for chess by huge margins.
The double hook hits me everytime. Elite understanding of the game state, so impressive every time.
GothamScrabble is becoming more and more real
This is my transformation arc
@@wanderer15 you're a helluva lot less annoying than Levy. Keep it up!
Did a genuine lol at the Jay-Z flash, btw
not enough yelling for the tiktok zoomers and clickbait to be Levy
@@DJFracusu sound slow
Trip seems just as interesting to me. Nigel knows the words, as his French victories show, but being able to compete in crossword is a completely different level in some ways - you have to know the words AND definitions
The one second photo clip of Jay-Z when you mention Nigel’s JZ makes me wish I could give this video 1,000 automatic thumbs up clicks. You’re great, Will. 😂
_Who wanna bet us that we don't touch letters_
I love little editing jokes like that and this was one of my favorites ever
@@r.mcdonnell8614 They’re just so fun!
haha word game man put celebrity haha
One last comment... can we appreciate that the National Crossword Association has an amazing logo
ive only watched 2 videos of scrabble ever and this channel made me realize how deep scrabble really is
Thank you for giving my videos a try
Wow. I didn't know Scrabble had this level of reasoning! So impressive!
Could you make a video regarding how engines work in Scrabble and how they calculate the best possible move? Cause what I find confusing is, how they 'deal with' unseen tiles. In chess, it makes sense for me at least, cause they know which moves are possible, but that isn't really the case for Scrabble (I think). So, a video regarding how this works would be great!
Being someone who's coded an AI for a card game, it probably works similarly to that.
Basically, you just randomly pick what tiles the opponent could have and what the order drawn next is, simulate that game, and repeat.
The percent chances are based on "in x% of simulated games, this happened"
I plan to do a video essay on this - probably more suited for a long video (think 30-40 minutes) than Will's typical length.
What @romajimamulo said is correct though. The issue at the moment is that the way engines predict the next moves in those simulations is very crude, so they won't, for example, realize that the opponent needs to adapt after seeing a move like IN.
@@AlexDingsI'd love to see that. I've been doing my own research for a possible school project and scrabble engines are definitely hard to userstand.
@@AlexDingsagreed, though it will usually get the IN response correct here given how dead the board is. The bigger misevaluation it would make in this game most likely is not having Trip play defensively on other turns in order to score (e.g., playing ZINE after ZIN turn)
@@AlexDingsI am currently creating a comprehensive dictionary for Scrabble in Estonian (we have many dictionaries, all of which have some vocabulary that others omit) in order to program the game and an AI in Estonian. Such a video would be VERY appreciated.
What a wild game! It's a great example of differences between Nigel's judgment and computer analysis.
I looked at the IN move with all the three major engines we have right now (at 4 ply depth each time) and the results were all over the place:
- Quackle thinks it's best and gives it 59% to win
- Elise has it at just 45% but gives the edge to JIN in the same spot at 49%
- Macondo hatest it and gives it just 40%, compared to 52% for ZIN - although it must be noted I had to use the newer TWL20 lexicon here with some additional words
But this shows how much is still left to do in terms of computer analysis. It's a typical spot where the engines just have no proper model for how an opponent will react to such a move. If and when we get a really strong, machine-learning-based engine, this will be one of the games I'll run through it. Not just because of IN but also all the other moves.
The inclusion of VIN probably tips the scales for it to be too risky/too useful to Trip to shed Vs and score a ton. It might be a play uniquely suited for TWL06!
I've discussed some things with Cesar about how these sorts of racks can be analyzed from an engine's perspective. The two things that will likely improve it is (1) improve the static play ranker to account for board dynamics and number of tiles in the bag in some way, and (2) make the opponent response choice stochastic instead of deterministic in a sim, and response plays that perform better get upweighted as the sim goes along (so instead of simulating, say, 10000 random racks, you simulate 100 random racks 100 times allowing for different responses in each of the 100 trials)
@@morrisgreenberg5223 Thanks, I was aware of the first idea (that should be one of the things machine learning will improve) but not of the second, and that actually sounds brilliant. Hope to see it implemented sooner or later.
Hey Will, great video as always! Random thought while watching, are there ever *themed* matches between high level players? Something like "adjectives only" or "any foods get double points"? It seems like it might be cool to see which strategies emerge and promote actual knowledge of the meaning of the words being played. Bringing back the *language* element of the language game at the top level, if you will. I'm sure something like this already exists though
Actually, I’ve never heard of this sort of thing. Maybe a bad sign for us as tournament players to be *that* disconnected from actual word meanings. But maybe also an opportunity to do something fun and different! (There are often extra prizes for “best theme word” like a holiday word for a tournament held on a certain holiday, etc)
By far the coolest thing about scrabble to me is it not being completely solved, the idea that you can use computers to try and better understand what players are doing, but still have to defer to their agency/intellect in the end is amazing
Scrabble has a lot of untapped territory revolving around making inferences into your opponent's specific holdings after each play they make, as well as board dynamics (openness/closedness) and some other stuff. Either the game retains its mystique, or computers figure out some of this and we end up learning amazing new things about the game. Win-win!
Scrabble will never be completely solved because it's fundamentally a game of randomness and incomplete information - the often compared Chess has no randomness and both players have complete information about the state of every piece at all times. The best bots will never be able to beat humans 100% of the time and I think that makes the game much more interesting at the top level
Will, been a silent fan for a while but I just have to say I love this series and all your videos. You can tell when a video is made by an expert versus a fan and this series is a showcase of that. Fantastic job and your brilliance shows.
In addition to the graphics and story itself, the video title deserves some praise. Great stuff.
These videos are so awesome! Love that you added the timeline!
I get so happy when I spot something they can do, but then it's usually "but Nigel of course, does something more optimal instead ... "
Love these videos
Believe me, I get the same feeling a lot of the time watching him!
Great video. I appreciate the subtle touches like the Chess brilliant symbol, Jay-Z, and the word definitions
lovely stuff as always Will
Awesome video as always. Keep it up
Thanks for the Timeline! Very helpful.
Great video my man, keep it up!
Great video as always!! Best content on UA-cam right now!!!
Too kind, thank you!
Another video from Will Anderson! Yay!
I'm in that bizarre place where I want to leave a nice comment because the video is great, but Nigel's play has left me speechless. Haha. What a fantasic talent!!
Silly as it sounds, the Michael Jordan analogy is appropriate. Nigel is simply on another level. Thanks for making these videos Will, your content is fantastic.
Great video as always, still hoping to see a video about your career. What got you interested into scrabble, how you won your first tournament and what convinced you to start a youtube channel.
All great ideas!
Great video, and nicely done with the Jay-Z insert 👌🏻😂
Another great video!
Got recommended this one very interesting breakdown on someone/thing I’ve never heard about before.
i cant wait to see this video
Very cool, keep it up, subscribed
1:20 love how when Trip has too many vowels his rack spells OOOPS
This is so good
Editing is top tier 🔥
It's weird to see a 100% winning move be suboptimal, but I suppose that's because spread matters. That's such an interesting aspect of Scrabble strategy, that your moves still matter even when the outcome of the game is certain. In most games you kind of have to treat all wins equally or else you get really weird incentives, but Scrabble doesn't seem to have this issue.
In matchplay tournament formats, it ceases to matter as much, since you can just specify that players play odd number of games (and hope they don't have a tie game!). It is true that, as you suggest, using spread as tiebreaker could introduce some weird incentives, especially late in tournaments when players may need to win or lose by certain amounts, and be matched up against players who need only to win or lose by any amount. But I've never heard of shenanigans happening.
The comical stary with POO then RETRIAL. i am dying laughing!! 😂
Nice touch not mentioning the word Trip chooses to use his two v’s for
I really enjoy these videos about Nigel, but I also want to see videos about other top Scrabble players. What are other players known for, what are interesting games and plays they've had in the past? I know there are a few on your channel, but it feels like the majority are about Nigel, and he's one of the only people mentioned in the titles or shown in thumbnails usually.
Fair point! There’s lots of great players I have yet to feature. I do find Nigel fascinating and hugely entertaining to watch, though, and viewers definitely seem to agree.
My stem brain always struggled with word based games we played as a family. Recently discovered your channel and really want to give Scrabble another try now I know it's not about being a literary genius
Very common misconception and certainly an understandable one, this being a word game, after all. Glad you're thinking of trying again!
So you are slowly teaching me to play spooky words that go through words and I'm not sure I like it, lol.
I know he's a pretty private guy but he hasn't been at a tournament in a while. I hope he comes back again.
He's been active locally, so I think he'll be back on the scene before too long.
Another banger video
Trip deserves some credit though for taking the opportunity to play poo and vulva in the same game. Mastermind
You missed that wee featured as well.
1:23 HAHAHA that insult is just so out of place and mean that I was like HUH? 🤣
I'd like to see some history on the man, the legend, Mark Nyman at some point!
This is the Scrabble version of walking up slowly and down smashing
Will just casually ignoring the fact that he got third.
Amazing
Hi, Will, (I'm AWFUL at scrabble, so I must be wrong, but the end game sequences are super interesting to me) at 9:29, could trip not have used a ze or zo on the double letter to block Nigel's azine hook play?
Very astute observation! The difference is that the dictionary used in this game was the North American one, and ZE and ZO are valid only in the worldwide Collins dictionary (though I expect ZE to eventually make it in stateside). In fact, with more As available, something like OAF and ZA would have been a good score as well as a decent block attempt, but with only one A remaining, it wasn’t all that likely that Trip had such a move available. I made another video about the dictionary situation in Scrabble a couple weeks ago if you’re curious why we have different dictionaries for different parts of the world.
There’s Nigel and then there’s everyone else.
letter tier list
All the talk about hooks and bingos, and I’m just like…”vulvas…lol…giggity”
amazing
Nice quote.
That must be fun to discover your quote in an article, and not even remember having said it. Does it jump off the page as like "Well, yeah, that's what I would've said"?
It does, yeah. It was a decade ago and I’ve learned a lot since then about Scrabble and Nigel both, but it still reflects my feelings.
@@wanderer15 Nice.
I forgot that the word in existed
You know, I never imagined that it was even possible to play Scrabble at a level where knowing every damn possible word in the English language and recognizing every possibile opportunity to play them was a prerequisite to even compete. It almost pisses me off that that level of memorization and pattern recognition is used to master a board game.
Though Nigel is incredibly good, your videos help me to see how someone can be that good. Well, at least most of how good he is is well conveyed in your videos, the computational ability to calculate so quickly would be regarded as "superhuman" if not for the fact that Nigel (as well as others who have computer-brain) is human.
Nigel is like an adult playing in a competition for preschoolers. It's just not fair.
I don’t quite understand the “he would play POOP instead of POO if he had another P” thing. If he had a bunch of vowels, then POO would be better than POOP because it saves 1 consonant in case he draws a lot of consonants right?
If you take an example case like opening rack AEIOOPP, I think POOP for 16 leaving AEI is definitely better than POO for 10 leaving AEIP. As nice as it is to have balance in your leave, it doesn't feel to me like a 6-point gap. And the worse you get from there, the likelier you would be to see an exchange instead of either POO or POOP. For example, something like IIPPOOU should be an exchange rather than either. It's true that POO and POOP will be close on a rack like EIOOPPS where keeping the P is going to preserve really good balance, so maybe I should soften my stance from "Trip's 4 tiles can't possibly be the P" to "Trip's 4 tiles are much less likely than random to be the P."
5:48 very sneaky. He does indeed have Jay-Z
5:48 this was way funnier to me than it should have been
That's like 92% accuracy.
I thought you weren't allowed to play the same word on the board twice? Did I make that up or is that only in some versions.
Must be a house rule. There’s some funny examples of rare words appearing twice in the same tournament game.
Where do you play scrabble online?
In!
Can anyone link me a video series on an introductory to playing scrabble? Wills videos have really got me interested
What kind of computer algorithm do you use in tournament for predicting the best moves?
The current standard is a program called Quackle. It's extremely strong, but likely not quite as strong as the very best human players.
@wanderer15 Is it free for the public or is it only found in the Scrabble motherboard?
@@rhandhom1totally free, found here: people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/
If you download it, you'll need to add the default Scrabble board in the settings (this was done carefully to avoid any issues with copyright/trademark)
@@wanderer15 How do I add the board?
Poo is self descriptive?! Damn dude you slammin on this man
His letters were poo! His choice to play POO was actually strong.
I am only watching you for NIgel videos; other than that, I dip (barring learning about x or y word)
Thank you for your honesty! I'm eager to hear more reasoning behind this stance. Videos without Nigel are boring?
@@wanderer15It's not that you're boring; I just don't usually care for the subject at hand/ only watch a few things from content creators, content wise.
When it comes to people like Nigel; it's just fun learning about the bizarre titan among their peers.
I'm not someone who cares for Scrabble content wise in the first place.
Most content creators I only watch them for a few things they focus on in their field. Until I find another topic/ thing in said activity interesting I don't really stick around.
An example being; Overly Sarcastic Productions I only watch them for their trope talks/ other writing stuff.
Not that they're a bad channel but I'm just one of the small camps of people who care more about the subject than the content creator (most of the time)
5:28 STOCKFISH FOR SCRABBLE
Me the entire time: hope he plays kwyjibo
@5:50 , you say Nigel's best scoring play would yield 27, but what about using the blank with ZOO for 31?
Fair point - typically, the blank isn’t used for score increases of just a few points, as it’s so powerful for playing all of your letters at once for the 50 point bonus. I should have said “highest scoring without using the blank.”
He probably just tried to spell 'Nigel' and got confused
for the move you talked about in 5:04 , could not Payne also play "Gin" with drawing G, and "Tin" ?
Yes, definitely. But the G is worth two points and the T only one, so these plays aren't nearly as dangerous as almost all of the other potential hooks to IN, which Nigel either possesses or have already been played elsewhere on the board.
how good are engines in scrabble? are they far and away better than any human, like chess, or are they still worse than the masters, or somewhere in between?
They’re very, very strong - simply knowing and finding every word is a great start. I would say that the strongest human players like Nigel are still stronger than any current engine, but that’s likely to change at some point.
lol! I wonder who the thumbnail at the start is meant to be parodying
Gotta get some use out of those joke thumbnails!
scrabble should have a grow in popularity like chess had in 2020, i think it's so fun and competitive but non of my friends wants to play it thinking it's boring lol 😅
Fun fact: Will Anderson’s lifetime record against Nigel Richards is 5-2, making him one of only two people that have played Nigel at least 6 times and won more than they lost.
Very simple explanation - extreme, lopsided tile draws in my favor! I've won one more game against him not tracked by cross-tables when I traveled to Malaysia to compete in the Alchemist Cup, so my full record is 6-2. I eagerly await getting to play him more and inevitably dropping back to earth.
I would love to see games of Nigel playing amateurs in languages that he doesn't know. That would be such an interesting handicap
In = Brilliant Move.
Stupid newbie question, but how do the players know which letters are still in the bag? I understand they can see what has been played, but how does Nigel know his opponent isn't already holding the Z and the J ?
Not a stupid question. The tiles Z and J are in a very small group of which there are only one in the set, so if you have them, you know by definition your opponent does not. (The full set of them is KJQXZ.) However, all the other tiles have more than one in the set. So what players do is actually cross off the letters that are played on a little sheet to keep track - we call it “tracking.” Using the increasingly precise information about what letters have yet to be played is one of the richest sources of fun, complex Scrabble “puzzles!”
@@wanderer15 ok so they can't see what letters are in the bag Vs which ones their partner has on the rack? So it's a game of probability unless you are holding them?
And do they use a bag in professional games?
And also , if a person like me is used to absolutely whipping everyone they play against in everyday life, (in fact it's the only game I can beat my chess master husband at 😂) just by having an above average vocabulary, trying to be strategic with the triple word scores and high scoring letters, and aiming for at least one bingo per game; what, besides watching UA-cam videos such as yours, can a person do to actively improve their game?
ah yes, the nigel timeline
I used to think Scrabble was an easy game until I saw this video.
Meanwhile me:
I know some of these words!
I'm hooking every day, but you don't see me win any scrabble games with it
"trip does have a horrendous rack" 5:28
I'm sorry
🔥
5:00 what about T for Tin?
That’s definitely a possibility, but with the T scoring only one point, it’s not going to result in the same threat level as a tile worth more points that would play there, like the 4-point F, W, or Y.
Ween mentioned???
I was wondering why Trip didn't play something like OOF and ZO. Realized ZO is not valid for NWL :P
does nigel richards still play competitive scrabble?
Yes, though he hasn't traveled far from Southeast Asia since the pandemic eased. Hopefully he'll be back on the world scene sometime soon.
@@wanderer15question, who gives a fuck? Thank you.
Why didn’t he play JET at the end