Conquer Club

That would be 16, but it would be nice to have a reserve or two.

ill reserve.

Okay, full and ready to roll.

If anybody didn't get in and wants to, add your name to the list: I'll run this again soon, and I'll reserve a place for you.

Tournament privileges have been granted.

I've been out of town for a day and a half and just getting caught up, so I probably won't have time to start making games and invites until tomorrow.

All phase one games created and invitations sent.

Good luck to everyone, hope you enjoy this tourney!

Well, it's only the first day, and only half the games have begun, but already I can see a terrible shortage of vowels. Now, I need some input from you guys:

Should there be a rule change of some kind to bring more vowels into the game. Here's a few possibilities:

Option 1: The default value is always to do nothing, just leave it as it is. This will most likely mean that some players will be completely unable to make a word, but after all, only one can win the tournament anyway, so why not save a step and have people know right from the opening bell that they're going to lose?

Option 2: We could have everyone get a random vowel after the opening round. The upside is that everyone will at least be able to make a word. The downside is that this tourney, which already has a large random element, will be even more randomly-ruled.

Option 3: We could have an auction after the opening round, where everyone can "sell" two consonants for one vowel of their choice.

Option 4: This is actually a variation of option 2. It's the best that I can see so far. After the opening round, everyone will get two random vowels. Only one of those can be put in your protected list. The other one MUST be available for challenge. The challenge round for vowels will be independent of the challenge round for consonants.

Option 5: (As suggested by DoomYoshi) If you find yourself short of vowels, you may add up to two vowels to your rack at no cost. However, these free vowels will score no points.

Well, those are some ideas. Feel free to suggest others. Please post and discuss -- do not leave me without a sense of which option you would prefer. And if you want to just leave the status quo, please say so explicitly.

You say we can use online resources. What are the limits on words other than 7 letters? Does urban dictionary count? How about Olde English? Foreign languages?

Option 5: Allow players to use whatever vowels they want but have fought for vowels be worth more?

Do you have a list of the values of the Scrabble letters?

chap

chapcrap wrote:Do you have a list of the values of the Scrabble letters?

chap

I can post one tomorrow.

DoomYoshi wrote:You say we can use online resources. What are the limits on words other than 7 letters? Does urban dictionary count? How about Olde English? Foreign languages?

No.

Dukasaur wrote:game ended. The word must be in the standard Scrabble dictionary. It will score according to standard Scrabble point values (no double or triple bonuses apply.)

Feel free to use any resource (online thesaurus, etc.) to make your word. (Yes, it would be

The word must be in the standard Scrabble dictionary in order to score. However, browsing the dictionary is not a very efficient method of spotting a word, so we're allowing other resources to be used to assemble it.

DoomYoshi wrote:Option 5: Allow players to use whatever vowels they want but have fought for vowels be worth more?

I'm not sure I understand, but I will get back to this tomorrow.

I mean give everyone an unlimited pool (or nearly unlimited) of vowels that are worth 0. So consonant use is the focus. However the letter you won from Austerlitz still gives a value of 1.

DoomYoshi wrote:I mean give everyone an unlimited pool (or nearly unlimited) of vowels that are worth 0. So consonant use is the focus. However the letter you won from Austerlitz still gives a value of 1.

Okay, I've added that option to the list. I limited it to two vowels, however.

hey man, really enjoying this tourny....good work,
I was just about to come in here and say there is not enough vowels to play for but I see u have already addressed the issue...

I think option 4 or option 5 would sort out the prob...

Cheers and keep up the good work

I say option 4

I think you should keep it as is.

Maps with A: 15
Maps with E: 10
Maps with I: 7
Maps with O: 4
Maps with U: 11

The only real vowels that would be hard to obtain are I and O, you don't absolutely need them either.

Gilligan wrote:I think you should keep it as is.

Maps with A: 15
Maps with E: 10
Maps with I: 7
Maps with O: 4
Maps with U: 11

The only real vowels that would be hard to obtain are I and O, you don't absolutely need them either.

Good thing I'm not playing. If I can't make ZOOLOGY in a Scrabble game I get depressed for days.



On a more serious note. The trouble is not so much what maps are available (because except for the Ws, the distribution of map names is not too far off from the distribution of letters in everyday language, and there is only a slight tendency towards a shortage of vowels.) The trouble has arisen because in the small sample size, the random maps that have actually come up so far in the tournament have skewed the distribution even further. So, a slight tendency has become a rather severe tendency. Vowels are represented by about 25% of the games that have actually started, instead of the 35 or 40% that one would hope for. This might be a problem, or it might not. Maybe the 22 games that haven't been joined yet will completely reverse the trend and be all vowels. We shall see.

I got 3 Us...

Zuulugy?

i say keep it the same now too

i need to win ireland or usa and i have a word haha

Ok I'm out of town for the next 30 hours again, so unfortunately if bannana lets his invites expire again, I won't be here in the morning to renew them. I hope he gets here and accepts them, but otherwise it will be early Tuesday morning before I can activate a reserve.

Stringybeany also still has some invites to accept, but he's been in contact and that's under control.

bannana0 has let his invitations expire for the second time and is now disqualified. Activating got tonkaed.

I think the change to let 2 vowels in is ok. If I don't get any vowels at all, I'd be screwed.

All Opening Round games have now started. In fact, 46 of them are already finished.

I have the opposite problem...I have too many vowels...

i got 3 C 2 U 1 P and playing for E what should i do i loocked in scrabble dictionary and cant get a word of 5 or more latters.