Diving into Collins
Just a warning, the Scrabble content of this blog will probably be very Collins-heavy for a while. You've been warned!
After spending about a month and a half working on a new Zyzzyva version specifically to help me study Collins, I finally started studying in earnest last night. I forgot what it feels like to learn 2s and 3s! There are only 23 Collins-only 2s and 277 Collins-only 3s, but going through them makes me feel kind of like a dunce because... well, they're 2s and 3s, and I don't know them. It's also exciting, and I'm looking forward to playing some of these monsters like CH#, AUA#, TWP#, and ZHO#.
Speaking of which, last night I played my first Collins game ever, against Quackle. I missed a 50-point ZHO#, playing ZEE instead, and Quackle immediately hooked it to make MZEE#. OMGWTFBBQ!? How wicked is that? I was proud of myself because I did make a few Quackle-best plays with Collins words, like HOA#/EH/IO#/LA, GODWIT/TE#, and BLAG#/AMI/GOY. But I missed the best spot for a bingo with ?EKNOPS because I forgot about EE#, and missed a few more best plays due to OWL board vision. It will take a little while for my brain to adjust. Not to mention I have to learn the words before that can happen.
As I was studying last night, I noticed a lot of Collins 3s that for some reason I always think are good in OWL, or always see even though I know they're no good. CUZ#, DOH#, GON#, HOH#, JAP#, NAS#, NAT#, SOG#, SUD#, TID#, TIX#... all good. Even EMO# is good. And it has an anagram! I started wondering whether I'll be able to remember which of these are Collins-only, especially since I already get confused on some of them.
As a result, I added a function to Zyzzyva today which forces you to type lexicon symbols along with words when taking a quiz (by default, this behavior is turned off). For example, "NAS" would be considered an invalid quiz response, but "NAS#" with the octothorpe would be considered valid. Already I'm finding this useful, as it forces me to remember which words are Collins-only, as an integral part of the quiz. There are a few more features I plan to implement before releasing a new version in a month or two, but if people want to get their hands on this right away, I may be able to put together a development release. I think it might be a good idea to start doing that anyway, just so people can try out bleeding-edge features and give me feedback before I create an official release.
So, it begins. I haven't even looked at anything more than 2s, 3s, and a few stem 7s, and I'm already excited. There's a lot of cool stuff in here, and it should be fun to start digging it out.
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saganist) wrote,
hopeful
