saganist: Three random Scrabble thoughts

Michael Thelen (

saganist) wrote,
@ 2006-10-02 13:03:00

Current mood:	awake
Current music:	Barenaked Ladies - Humor of the Situation
Entry tags:	scrabble, zyzzyva

Three random Scrabble thoughts
Thought the First: I forgot to check cross-tables.com for any rating updates until just now. Looks like my rating went from 1582 to 1541. That's a lot better than I expected. My performance rating for the early bird was 921, which is by far the lowest I've ever achieved, except for my very first tournament once upon a time.

Thought the Second: I love when I "discover" Zyzzyva features I've somehow forgotten about. Like flashcard mode. I usually type my answers when taking a quiz, and recently it's sorta started bothering my wrist. Today at lunch I took my laptop and did some studying while eating. Pretty difficult to type while eating, so I jumped into flashcard mode. Not only was it much easier on the wrists, but it's much faster too! I did about 400 questions in an hour, which is blazingly fast for me. I think I'm going to start using flashcard mode all the time now.

Thought the Ultimate: Here's a cool alphagram for you: FILLOTU.

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Letterbox vs Zyzzyva

olaugh
2006-10-02 07:53 pm UTC (link)

For me, quizzing speed has been like this

Letterbox tapping > Letterbox typing > Zyzzyva tapping > Zyzzyva typing

I'm able to go through words at a faster rate in Letterbox and JumbleTime than in Zyzzyva because I get to look at a short queue of alphagrams rather than one at a time. Instead of solving, typing, solving, typing, I'm doing both simultaneously. Another thing I prefer about Letterbox is that the answers linger on the screen longer. Here's a screenshot for example:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~o-laughl/screenshots/letterbox.jpg

The alphagrams and the solutions both scroll up. When I type LOFTIEST, it will show up below GOATFISH, and everything will move up one spot. Letterbox hasn't had many users, but some of the people who've watched me do it have thought it was too busy to have so many words (and especially the extensions) on the screen at once. You might prefer things the way you have them now, but if you get a chance, studying this way is something to experiment with.

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Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva

saganist
2006-10-02 08:22 pm UTC (link)

Actually, I think I would like that kind of studying quite a lot. Eventually, I'd love to get that kind of method into Zyzzyva, too. I've had a JumbleTime-like interface kicking around in my brain for a while, and I think a Letterbox-like interface would also be very valuable. It's not for everyone (almost definitely not for beginners), but as I get faster and faster at anagramming, I think I'll definitely want something like Letterbox.

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Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva

saganist
2006-10-02 08:35 pm UTC (link)

Oh! Somewhat off-topic, I recently installed the latest version of Quackle, and noticed the fabulous Q-tile icon. I've always wanted to do something similar for the Zyzzyva icon, and its current icon is just an approximation (the best I could do). Who did the icon for Quackle, and do you think there's any chance of persuading that person to do a similar one for Zyzzyva? Or coaching me through doing it myself?

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	Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva olaugh 2006-10-02 08:45 pm UTC (link)
	http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1456 I didn't make it, but it does remind me of when I used to fool around with POV-Ray years ago. You could take the Z out of that set, but personally I kind of like that the Quackle and Zyzzyva icons are different styles. Maybe you could edit it to be a different color? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva saganist 2006-10-02 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	Cool, thanks! Yep, I'd edit the image to be blue, which I think I may be able to do even with my feeble Photoshop skills. I hope that's okay with you, because that's almost exactly what I've envisioned. It helps a lot to have a base image to start with. :-) Thanks again for that link! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva redaragorn 2006-10-02 09:16 pm UTC (link)
	If you like, I could talk to my wife (who happens to have all the Photoshop skills in the family!) and see if she'd be willing to do something for an icon for you. I imagine she might be interested. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva

saganist
2006-10-02 09:29 pm UTC (link)

Dude, that would be awesome! But I also know she's probably got other things on her mind about now. :-) I'll take a stab and changing the Z icon to blue, which will probably take way longer than it should. But if she's able to help, that would be sweet. Since the icons are in Mac icon format, I don't know if you can access them as regular images, but here's a link to a potentially useful program I'm planning to try to use:

Axialis IconWorkshop 6.0

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva

olaugh
2006-10-02 09:18 pm UTC (link)

Yep, that's fine. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm kinda tempted to dabble with POV-Ray and make a new icon. If I do, I'll send you the source file.

I've had a recurring idea that popped into my head again today about producing Scrabble study videos. I'm envisioning something that would look like a slightly fancier Letterbox, perhaps with definitions and pronunciation audio. Some gyms have DVD players mounted on their cardio machines and people would be able to study words while running or stairmastering. Or people could just load them on an iPod. Wouldn't be hard to do, except we'd need a distributed effort to get pronunciations.

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	Re: Letterbox vs Zyzzyva hubertwee 2006-10-03 12:33 am UTC (link)
	Looks interesting- where do u get Letterbox ? (Reply to this)(Parent)

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