Word Wars

A section to discuss matters not related to Chess in particular.
Jonathan Bryant
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Joined: Sun May 11, 2008 3:54 pm

Re: Word Wars

Post by Jonathan Bryant » Wed Jan 28, 2015 11:39 am

MJMcCready wrote: I think what I took from this documentary was that we in chess might complain about conditions and lack of money and so on, but compared to the likes of draughts, scrabble, Othello and so on, we're pretty well off.
After watching the documentary linked to here, I bought the book Word Freak. It’s a really great read if you’re interested in finding about a subculture that might be alien to you.

I was interested to see numerous references to chess in the book. What really comes across is that the top players (many of whom seem to have been chessers at some point) actually envy the money that’s available in chess and the attention they feel the game gets. That it’s possible for the top players to make a good living etc.

(The book was published at the turn of the century so perhaps things are different now but I somehow doubt it).

Paradoxically I think this explains why the scrabble championship tournaments get covered in the mainstream press when chess equivalent often isn’t (outside of specialist chess columns).

Scrabble is seen as a 'fancy that' quirky story. Chess on the other hand is too mainstream to be quirky but at the same time not mainstream enough to warrant attention.


Anyhoo, Word Freak is a great book and I highly recommend it. Thanks to MjMcC for this thread without which I’d never have found out about the book.

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MJMcCready
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Re: Word Wars

Post by MJMcCready » Thu Jan 29, 2015 8:57 am

My pleasure, glad something positive could come out of it.

Brian Towers
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Re: Word Wars

Post by Brian Towers » Sat Feb 28, 2015 10:13 am

IM Jack Rudd wrote:The usual rule of thumb is that the letters of RETAINS should be kept, other letters should be played
My immediate reaction is that that looks like the beginning of -
ETAONRISHDLUCMPFYWGBVKJXZQ
which is the letters listed in frequency order. A very odd fact to retain which I learnt originally about the age of 11 or 12 from books about code-breaking, or more accurately, cypher-breaking (if the cypher is a simple substitution then the most common letter is E etc., then look for likely occurrences of THE) . It really comes into its own in games of Hangman.
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.