Best posts made by Mistertoad

@vickibma
I respect your attitude and understand that you don't want to play 'fishers' as you perceive it as a form of cheating.

I play Scrabble because I enjoy word play of any kind such as codewords - and also those puzzles where you have a set of mixed up letters and have to rearrange them into the original words. Or find as many words as you can from a single word. So I treat Scrabble in the same way - I 'fish'. You and I see the game differently!

I don't want to have to learn all those 2-letter words so I like to see them in front of me. That's a big plus for me. Out of interest, I would like to know if you think that the 2-letter word list should be removed on a similar basis to removing the 'Move Strength'?

Following your purist approach further would imply that Lex should also no longer offer the facility for checking if words are valid either!

I can offer a different, but somewhat related, perspective. I play online chess and am aware that my opponents will 'fish' for moves using a chess engine. Also they will deliberately play lower rated players so that their rating increases and they never lose.

Among many other tricks, they will stop playing for a while if they are losing badly - hoping that I will think they have left the game and give up the play. In that case, my time would run out and I'd lose on time (I always wait them out). I play them all, I'm just happy to improve my game by facing whatever comes my way.

In a similar way to chess, why not just be happy with the wins you get IN SPITE of opponents who 'push themselves to play better by 'fishing'. You say you usually win anyway!

IMHO the Lexulous experience (in its present form) is the best online Scrabble experience on offer.

Dear Admin,

May I suggest that some of the forum posts could be safely deleted?

I refer to the ones in which insults are hurled, personal attacks pursued? Indeed, I am becoming reluctant to recommend the site to friends when the posts have become so unpleasant.

Thank you for your kind attention.

@mapmakere
Agreed. Like they don't appreciate the effort that goes into producing all the bells and whistles so we can have fun

Can we have a button to access this forum? Somewhat non-intuitive to have to access via User menu (top right), then Resources - after which the screen shows various dictionary links ... but no link to the forum is apparent. You just have to somehow divine for yourself that scrolling sown will finally reach the forum posts.

I don't understand what this is all about. I've not seen these 'dots' and assumed missing posts had been deleted by the poster.

If these naughty words appear in Google and elsewhere then, surely, Lexulous has no right to censor them.

Are we sitting in a little corner of the web preening ourselves for being "holier than thou"? I hope not.

Any justification for it?

@betterlate1-0

"cant you keep track of what happens in the games without disclosure?"

Clearly there's a distinction between cheating with some sort of Scrabble software that suggests moves and the fascination of looking for a better move when 'Move Strength' says 23%.

In chess, both if the above cases would be cheating because you only have to choose between a handful of moves, say Nf3, a4, Qa4+ or Bg2. The chess engine might then give the respective results as 23%, 45%, 80% and 15%. Then you have a clear message of which variation to check over. It's cheating!

In Scrabble the datum tells you nothing about which combination of letters is optimal, nor where to put them. So I use it and feel that 'Move Strength' spurs me on to find a better word!

Stefan Fatsis beats Scrabble legend, David Gibson in a game explained on this Twitter link. Enjoy!

https://twitter.com/stefanfatsis/status/971215488616460288

“I always did poorly in the SAT verbal. But about 10 years ago a supernatural love for words came upon me. When you get changed, you can’t help it. It’s spiritual.”

Fatsis also writes about another top game here:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/08/a-breakdown-of-the-best-game-at-the-north-american-scrabble-championship.html

@A Former User
You appear to be trolling Lexulous, apparently because you had an issue that wasn't addressed to your taste?
You also said you'd left in a huff - so how come we see more posts? LOL

I know this is a serious thread but I had to laugh over something the owners of our beautiful game said on the subject recently.

It seems that more than 200 dictionary words have been removed from the Scrabble lexicon in the past year or so by Scrabble's board game owners, Mattel. A spokesman said:

"I’ve heard the argument that these are just words, but we believe they have meaning."

Er, yes. Quite so!

[https://7news.com.au/entertainment/games/scrabble-bans-long-list-of-words-players-are-no-longer-allowed-to-use--c-2593627](link url)

@lexulous Tile dropping is working fine on Chrome!

How do I make videos to load here? Anyway, it would just show that when I drop a tile in the exact position it should be in, it jumps toa different square.

Many congratulations on all the recent improvements! SOMEBODY has put in a lot of work!

@betterlate1-0

Nahma Nadich (deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston):

"I have a hard time seeing “goy” as anything but offensive. In my day job I often find it necessary to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews, as in “What it’s like to be a non-Jewish counselor at a Jewish summer camp” or “In Moscow, a non-Jewish physicist recalls helping build the Soviet Union’s only yeshiva.”

But the word “goy” has too much historical and linguistic baggage to be used as casually as “non-Jew” or “gentile.” It starts with the obvious slurs – like “goyishe kopf,” or gentile brains, which suggests (generously) a dullard, or “shikker iz a goy,” a gentile is a drunkard. “Goyishe naches” describes the kinds of things that a Jew mockingly presumes only a gentile would enjoy, like hunting, sailing and eating white bread."

https://www.jta.org/2019/04/22/culture/is-goy-a-slur

@roymccoy
I'm an unreconstructed shuffler and I like to move the letters around to see if I can maximize my score. I play the 'email' scrabble and so I can enjoy shuffling to my heart's content.

Whether or not this is ethical, I don't know. What does everyone think?

One solution would be if 'Move Strength' was only shown if both players agreed to it.

@betterlate1-0
Thanks yes, I got the answer I wanted. Thus:
"CH is in the UK list but not the US"

Then the thread went a bit loopy. All the felines with snail eyes came out of the favelas, smoking fags, and began to party!

@mapmakere
I just knew I shoulda googled the damn word!! Now I look churlish! The universe is always trying to make me look dumb!

Your turn now. Find me a really ugly word that stands for something beautiful, commendable, delicate or whatever.

Dapper?
Glint?
Shapely?
Cupola?
Lovely
Braids
(not easy to think of any!)

@roymccoy
Thanks for the book link. I'm a little sceptical of learning lots of common letter combos, happy to just stick with the ones already in my head like 'ing' and 'ion' whatever. I don't see how any book can do much more than that.

I sometimes use anagram sites when commenting eg to turn someones moniker into a phrase relevant to the discussion is all. For example, 'beta letter's for 'betterlate' when I wish him all good fortune in finding better letters. LOL

If I am writing poetry I just use rhyming apps. Here's one:

Bereft of experience
(A poem inspired by a George Monbiot text)

Oh yes maybe for you it was this way,
you were taught to postpone pleasures.
That Rome wasn't built in a day,
Must be patient and adventurous.

But me want everything at once.
Though bereft of experience.

For me it is different,
I wait for no man.
Immediate gratification.
Ten second span!

The iPhone generation
Give it all to me now!
No pain, no frustration,
No joy and no sorrow.

I never watched WALLEE,
I never read 1984.
Bereft of experience,
I am an adult child.

Am I alive? Is there no death?
When will life begin.
But I want your philosophy,
I want to know what you know.

I follow the way I am given,
mysogyny and no history.
Though I overflow with love,
I am virtual world bankrupt.

So what can I rebel against?
What have you got?

@mapmakere
Thanks for responding. Funny how you and 'itaintsam' both went for 'pulchritude'!

Crepuscular:
“the evening's crepuscular charm”
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Crepuscular

Puce (not sure that this always fits the bill)
I thought about colors I hated: ecru, puce, lavender, beige and black.
("I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings")
Uncle Vernon stopped, his fist still raised, his face an ugly puce.
("Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban")

I deliberately made this exercise to make the point that there is a natural evolution in language relating to onomatopoeia e.g. cuckoo, sizzle. And, yes, I had to google for the spelling of onomatopoeia! LOL