Scrabble - A Near-Impossible Placement

This post might interest Scrabble aficionados. They would certainly have played games in which all the one hundred tiles have been used up. And instances may be numerous where a bingo (making a seven-letter word) or two have been scored.

This is something I found in my scrapbook. I am not sure if I 'invented' it during one of those lonely Sundays afternoons in Calcutta in the early 1970’s when I had nothing else to do. It is equally possible that I copied it from somewhere. (The latter is more likely, given that I am not all that inventive.)

Have a look at this formation:

Unfortunately, I do not have a clearer picture than this.

The interesting feature about this grid is that all the letters in a standard Scrabble game have been used. The blanks have been used as I and A. Formation of the words has been done strictly complying with all the standard rules prescribed for forming words. This is theoretically possible if the appropriate letters happen to be picked up by the players in succession.

A possible order in which the words are formed is:
QUEUING, BEHEADED, AQUARIUM, WEAKLING, DELAYING, ABILITY & YA, REVIVING, OOZIEST & GO, ISOLATOR, COMPACT & IT, SWEATER & AQUARIUMS, PONTIFFS, EXHORTER, JOINDER & ER, IS and AS (or US - using the blank).

As you can see, there are fourteen words of seven or more letters. I guess the highest possible number of seven-letter words have been formed.
The only problem is that the probability of two players picking up the tiles required for this formation is zero. I know it is not zero, but those who say it is not will have to calculate and tell me the exact probability.

As there are 100 tiles consisting, inter alia, of three B's, twelve E's, three H's, and four D's, the probability of the first player picking up one E, one G, one N, one Q, two U's and one blank (not necessarily I that order) from the one hundred tiles would, if I am not mistaken, be (12/100)*(3/99)*(6/98)*(1/97)*(4/96)*(3/95)*(2/94) = 0.000 000 000 064 255 350 419 873 374 551 141 572 335 707. (Till someone proves me wrong,I will stick to this number!)

Placement of a Different Kind

I am worried about placement. At the ripe old age of 62? Yes.

So was Andre Agassi, going by what he is supposed to have said. ‘Placement is everything’, he said, talking about winning strategy in Roland Garros.

And my son Gautam, when in the last trimester in the B-School, too was worried about placement.

Yes, gentle reader, we are talking about placements of different kinds.

The placement in question right now is in the game of Scrabble. The number of points you garner is everything and at each stage, it varies with placement. It could fetch just the sum of the face-value of the tiles, or a lot more, depending on where you get to place the tiles. The over-all image, the big picture, is what drives and dictates where to place what tiles.

To me, the points that the placement gives is all that the tiles mean. Smutty words are perfectly par for the course in Scrabble for me, as long as they fetch points and help me on my way to winning another game.

Like if I have K and F, I would pray for a C and a U (rather than an O and L, or an O and R) so that I can put the F on the red square at the top left or the bottom left corner, the K in the light blue square three squares away to the right of or below F, and fill the intervening squares with U and C. F means 4 points, K is 5, and C is 3 and U, as a vowel, has only one point. That makes it 13 points, but the placement gives you 54. Get what I mean? But then you should be so lucky.

I prefer tiles of lesser value like H, Y and V to the high Z or Q or even X or J, sometimes. The latter fetch lots of points, yes, but you are stuck with them until you find the exact spot to place them to get a triple word score or double letter score.My personal strategy is to hold on to a tile of U until the queen of the lot, Q, has put in an appearance. Because, The humble one-point U is a valuable tile. Without U, you can't make many words using Q. There are only four of them. Until the Q is played, I do not let go of the first U that I get.

Of course, this requires some cerebration and calculation. If you stand to make some 30 points and also get the bonus of 50 points for using up all seven tiles, you should go for it. That sort of lead is hard to beat, unless your opponent chances upon a big one too.As a rule, I try to hold on to at least one S, one D and a blank tile till near the end of a game, because that's when the going gets tough and your options get limited. I don't use up my blank tile quickly either. It is precious; I hold on to it and go on playing small simple words until I lay the killer word on board and slay'em.

I am talking about leisurely Scrabble games with friends like Santanu. We play a fairly open game, not minding giving the other player a chance to open a new area of the board. As a result of the cooperation, we toted up a combined score of over 932 points. We got Bhawani to immortalise that moment through a photograph with the two of us flanking the board, much like the shikaris with the trophy – the carcass of a tiger or a wild bison that was the game of the day!