09 Dec 2012 Jurong Green Mini

The 2nd official tournament by the Scrabble Association since the 12 Aug 2012 Jurong Green Mini, this tournament drew a large number of NTU players as the last tournament, the Singapore Open Championships 2012, was held too close to our exams. Of notable mention was the Hall 7 Scrabble Team, which came down in force with 4 of their members.

Div 'A', as usual, was the clash of the titans, and there were many indeed. Out of 8 players, 5 were Grandmasters (GM), 2 were Senior Masters (SM), and our own SKY was the only Master (M) there. SKY did his best, and in a remarkable game against our boss LKB, he lost by just 3 points, with both players having breathtaking scores of 516-513. In his last 2 games, which were both King Of The Hill (KOTH) after 7 rounds of Round Robin, SKY came back with 2 wins against SM Adrian Tay to overtake him and place 7th, despite being seeded last.

GM Aaron scored 6 wins out of 9 to place 2nd with a superior spread. Interestingly, he defeated all the other players exactly once, except the big boss GM LKB.

GM LKB proved himself the National Champion once again, as he left everyone trailing at least 2 points behind, scoring 8 out of 9 wins, achieving a high game of 590, even bullying 3 other masters with spreads of >150.

Div 'B' was really a 'fake' division, with more than half the players pushed up from Div 'C' due to insufficient players. Out of the 9 players (excluding dear ZZ Bye), 6 were from NTU. Aside from the 4 Hall 7 players, there was also Gabriel, and Stifen, a hall 6 alumnus who had his first tournament after a long hiatus.

Gabriel was the highest rated in Div 'B', but only managed to win 2nd place, losing just 1 game to the division winner with 8 points out of 9. He had an almost perfect record of every game above 400 points, except for the 1 game he lost.

Tommy achieved 4th place, narrowly missing the prize pool. with a score of 5 points out of 9. With a score of 507, Tommy took the honours for high game.

Jinghan came in narrowly behind in 5th place, also with 5 points, but losing to Tommy by spread. Nevertheless, he was crowned "King of the Hall 7 Slope" by defeating all other Hall 7 players in their personal encounters in the tournament.

Stifen graduated in AY2010-2011 and used to be known as one of the better scrabble players from hall 6 on par with SKY. After not playing for a long time, he made a comeback with a decent score of 4 out of 9.

Chun Kin, aka "Dancing Hunk" (an anagram to his name), scored 3 points. He tried very hard to overcome unfavorable circumstances, especially when 3 moves into his game against Tommy, he was supposedly trailing by 160 points. He finally managed to catch up to 20 points, but was thwarted by the tiles in the end.

Ramona did not have such a good tournament, scoring 1 point, but that would be in part due to the fact that she had 2 papers on the last day of exams, 7th Dec, unlike most of us lucky souls. Nevertheless, she put up a good fight, losing to the top 2 players by margins of less than a hundred.

Div 'C' this time consisted mostly of "first-time" players. Another 3 NTU players, Seline from Hall 12, Yun Jie from Hall 6, and Morris from Hall 6, had their first foray into local scrabble tournaments. However, insider information from SKY raised a puzzle, as he mentioned that Yun Jie had played in Div 'C' 2 years ago and had actually won a prize then.

After 8 rounds, Seline was revealed as the clear winner, with 7 wins out of 8, beating both other NTU players narrowly, with margins of less than 30.

Yun Jie placed 4th with 4 points out of 8, winning 3 games by huge margins of more than 120, and in an epic match with Morris, losing by just 2 points.

Morris placed right next to him at 5th, also with 4 points out of 8. Nevertheless, Morris claimed the honour of having the high game, with a score of 495, thrashing his opponent by 265 points!

More detailed results can be found here

The next Scrabble Association (SA) event mentioned on their Calendar of Events is the "SA Millenium Cup" to be held on Jan 12-13, 2013, which is, unfortunately, only open to SA Members. However, as SKY said, one could simply treat the membership fee to SA ($12 if I'm not mistaken) as the entry fee to a regular tournament. Also look out for our own WGS Boggle Mini happening on Week 5 of Sem 2, more details later!

4 Sep 2012 NTU Scrabble with Friends 2012

NTU Scrabble with Friends 2012 was the first internal scrabble tournament organised by NTU WGS. It was held on 4th September from 730pm-12midnight, with 10 players joining. It was unfortunate that the competition clashed with so many hall committee and CCA AGMs, but it was heartening to see many who came for part of the tournament even though they could not make the whole timing!

Here are the results of the tournament after 5 rounds of King of the Hill no repeats until the last round:

Name	Wins	Spread
1. Liew Kian Boon	5	1010
2. Aaron Chong	3	594
3. Gabriel Cheang	3	-8
4. Ong Xing Long	3	-108
5. Tan Sze Mei	2	-168
6. Eugene Kok	2	-215
7. Jeyaseelan	2	-227
8. Ramona Koh	1	-26
9. Dang Chun Kin	1	-37
10. Ngiam Jinghan	0	-735

KB scored a perfect 5 wins to win the tournament undisputed, but it should also be noted that Aaron came in only from the 3rd round onwards, taking 3 big wins to emerge 2nd with a comfortable tiebreak margin. Several other players also did not play all the rounds, with Eugene only playing the first 4, and Ramona and Chun Kin coming in from round 3 onwards as well.

Do look out for our 2nd boggle mini in semester 2, and we'll try to find a suitable time such that more people can make it! Also note that the next 2 official Scrabble Association events are the Singapore Open held on 17-18 November, as well as the Jurong Green CC Mini held on 9 December.

CCA Fair & Scrabble with Friends Competition 2012

Hi Guys, this week, from Tuesday to Friday, NTU is holding the CCA Fair at North Spine. NTU Word Games Society is at Booth "Orange 32", shared with Chinese Chess and Fast Forward Club. If you have time, do drop by, take a look, and entertain our friends who have stepped up to take booth manning duty. Our exhibition game times are Tue/Thu from 12pm-5pm and Wed/Fri from 9am-12pm.

Also coming up soon is our very own Scrabble with Friends Competition 2012. The name aside, this is simply a scrabble competition between friendly people (us!). Alumni are welcome to participate, as of course are any current NTU students.

See the poster below for more details, and register at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dF93aFRxOURvb2RsLXFybUYybEN2Snc6MQ

12 Aug 2012 - Jurong Green Mini

While several scrabble regulars were not there, in their place sprouted a myriad of new faces, at least to me, and especially in C Division. Apparently there were also some pretty strong players making a comeback after a hiatus and because there were too many 'A caliber' players, several were pushed to B Division. With this excess of C players and A players, B division players found themselves with a lot of new visitors, all hungry for prizes and glory. All in all, the tournament took a round robin format (9 rounds with each player playing every other in their division), with 10 players each in Divisions A, B and C.

From NTU was Xing Long and Sze Mei, Xing Long playing his 2nd tournament and finding himself in Division B for the first time, and Sze Mei playing her first tournament. Albeit being the lowest seeded in B, Xing Long made a respectable score of 5 wins out of 9 to place 6th, and Sze Mei shot from obscurity to achievement, clinching 2nd in Div C. NTU Graduate student Aaron Chong placed 4th in Div A, which was a fierce tempest of the gods, the lowest rating (in that div) at the start of the tournament being 1801.

Aaron, with a rating of 2077 before the tournament, was the highest rated player in the tournament, and in Singapore as well, but took defeats from his strong competitors (what the heck, everyone in A is damn strong right) all around him (in fact, those that placed 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th). Just yesterday, at a practice session in Bishan, I was declaring I didn't know of any word with a Y front hook that takes an 's' behind (e.g. YBET, YFERE, YLIKE), but was proved wrong by Aaron with his high word YSHENDS for 103+5.

Xing Long had a brilliant start with 4 straight wins, over his Div C arch-rival Poh Ying Ming (who defeated him twice at the National Scrabble Chps to take first, leaving Xing Long second), Master Jeremy Khoo and even eventual Div B winner NM Goutham. He then survived a tough onslaught, managing to take down SM Adrian Tay in the process as well. Considering Xing Long is estimated (by me) to have a rating somewhere on the high 14s or low 15s, and that more than half of the players in this division were Masters, SMs or NMs (and i thought B Div was supposed to be intermediate), this was an extremely spirited performance by him!

Sze Mei was in the lead after the first 3 rounds, and several GINORMOUS (omg it's a word) wins (+386 and +484) until she took 2 small losses (-25 and -23) to be knocked down to 3rd place. In her crucial game in the fight for 2nd place in the penultimate round, Sze Mei edged past her opponent by just 4 points, leaving her with the same number of wins as her opponent, but 800 points ahead in spread. Sze Mei told me she was scared because her last round opponent had this 'killer aura', but she prevailed in the end to comfortably sail into second place.

Yours truly took a hand in TDing for the first time, as the BOSS LKB couldn't find anyone else and asked me to. It was a good learning experience, both in how a tournament runs, and in learning words, as I could walk freely during the game. Looking at Div B, retrospectively I'm glad I was watching and learning instead of foolishly jumping headlong into the fray to get slaughtered!

21/22 Jul 2012 - National Scrabble Championships 2012

The National Scrabble Championships took place over 21st and 22nd July for Division A and B, spanning 16 rounds, something like a 2 day field camp for the brain. Division C played an intensive 8 rounds on 22nd July, conditioning them for when they would ascend to higher divisions.

While I am unable to fathom the mechanism of the 'Team Prize', it was somehow won by NTU, undoubtedly due to the contributions of our champions, Kian Boon from Division A, and Jeya from Division B. Xing Long also achieved 2nd in Division C, with Gabriel taking 4th in Division B.

NTU also very encouragingly sported a relatively large turnout this tournament, with Sky and KB as the regulars in Div A, Gab and Eugene being the regulars in Div B, Jeya being the irregularity in Div B that will ascend to Div A soon (=P), and Xing Long, Jinghan, Tommy, and Ramona making their forays into Div C.

Kian Boon took the title of National Champion in Div A by a score of 13 wins out of 16, losing one of his games by just 1 point. Sky had a respectable score of 5 wins in Div A, even managing to defeat 2 GMs.

In his first tournament in Div B, Jeya won with a score of 13 wins out of 16 as well, losing 3 games in the first day, but coming back with a perfect score on the second. Gabriel was neck to neck with Jeya until round 14, both leading with 11 wins then, but fumbled in the last 2 rounds, losing both and settling for 4th place. Eugene scored 7 points for this tournament, though he managed to win the 2nd placed player, and also managed to enjoy an epic game (by div B standards), where both him and his opponent scored 3 bingos each, though he lost that game 527-431.

In Div C, Xing Long was 2nd with 6 out of 8 points, losing twice, but only to the one player who was the Div C Champion. Tommy from hall 7 did well with 5 wins out of 8, achieving 7th place in what I believe is his first tournament. Ramona also finished her first tournament with 4 out of 8, taking 13th place. Jing Han also achieved 4 out of 8, though it seemed he was fated to be brought down by friendly fire, having played both Xing Long and Tommy. Interestingly, in his 3rd round, his opponent was also called Jing Han, and this time, our Jing Han won the encounter with his evil twin.

The next tournament would be the Jurong Green Mini held on 12 Aug (Sunday). It's the day before Semester 1, so if for no other reason, we should play to enjoy ourselves before school starts!

What is your Scrabble Path, from Novice to Intermdiate level (not qualified to give more haha)

John Maynard Keynes (an economist) once said that "In the long run, we are all dead". Just like for scrabble, in the long run, word knowledge will tend to equalize, as the gap between novice players learn more and more words to catch up with more experienced players, and play will revolve more around board play instead.

However, what this article focuses on is scrabble study in the SHORT RUN. With limited time and limited RAM, which path will you take in achieving an intermediate level of mastery, from being a novice? (I am only qualified to comment thus far, otherwise i'm sure the experts will take me apart haha)

There are 4 paths I would like to set before you, and it is up to you to decide which suits you the most. Are you a Scrabble Warrior, Scrabble Archer, Scrabble Thief, or Scrabble Mage (adapted from Maplestory).

The Scrabble Warrior has high STRENGTH attribute (high RAM). Zyzzyva and Zarf does not daunt him. One day he will know as much as them. He studies his 7 and 8 letter anagrams in probability order as calculated by zyzzyva, in the hope that every 7 tiles he draws, he will bingo and conquer your puny 3 and 4 letter words. 1000 anagrams, 10000 anagrams, they will not stop him.

The Scrabble Archer has high AGILITY attribute (the ability to squeeze words in where you never thought possible). An archer may not know those big boy words like ETAERIO and SOTERIAL, but she has superior knowledge of 3 and 4 letter words, and the best archers even achieve 5 letter mastery to be able to score score score, at the same time closing the board before you even come close to bingo-ing, just like how an archer takes down a footman before he comes within striking range of his sword. Thinking only 's' comes after FEH, the archer shows you FEHM/NEMN and draws her tiles while you're still trying to pronounce them. BOEP, PEBA, DOEK all do pretty well at taking the triple word on top of the double letter, and allows the archer to score points smugly.

The Scrabble Thief is probably not as unlawful as you thought. He has high LUCK attribute, and while he's not stealing your bingo spots, he's FISHING for them. Instead of memorizing 7 or 8 letter bingos, he memorize word stems. The best example of a word stem is RETAIN?. Many tiles can take the place of ? and you have your bingo. Same goes for 7 letter word stems such as OTARINE?. A higher level thief would even study 5 and 6 letter word stems such as TRAIN?? and RETAIN?? to enhance his fishing skills considerably. Faced with AIINRTZ, many would falter, but the thief would know that TRIAZIN is his word immediately. Many would curse their luck with a RETAIN+A rack, as A,Q,V,X,Y,Z are the only tiles that do not give a bingo with RETAIN, but a thief would happily play NAARTJIE over the J you used to score the middle triple word with a 'JOE'.

The Scrabble Mage is the trickiest of them all. She may not know as many words as them all, but her high INTELLIGENCE attribute, as well as cunningness, allows her to hold her own. She plays scrabble like chess, toying with your mind, studying which words take an 's', and which words take other hooks instead. She sighs and plays AINE next to the last column. "What a dumb bunny", you think, playing AINES/SQUIZ for some big points across the triple word. That's when her eyebrows narrow, her lips curve into a smirk as she challenges your word off, and scores with WEXED/AINEE having wasted your turn. Seeing no more 's'es and blanks in the bag, she plays MILT, ending one column away from the right end on the top right. Seeing no threat, you simply play BAH somewhere on the bottom left. She then proceeds to play MILTZ/ZERO down, pausing just to let you challenge, while you look at the board dumbly. You'd think nothing comes before 'YET', but beware when the scrabble mage places it just below the top row. You know something is coming, but you don't know what, and you miserably consider giving away another 5 points as she plays TWP/PYET, just hitting the centre triple word.

Of course, you may choose a hybrid of the above classes. I have dabbled in each of the above before, and each has proved rewarding and successful in their own way, and I hope that those who put in effort to learn will always be rewarded.

16 Jun 2012 - 1st Jurong Green CC Mindsports Day

The 1st Jurong Green CC Mindsports Day comprised of 2 mind sports - Weiqi and Scrabble. In this short tournament of 7 rounds, NTU WGS members infiltrated the respective scrabble divisions in pairs, aiming for glory in their tag teams.

In Division A, GM LKB and Master Sky faced off other Masters in this highly skilled arena, and some notable results include Sky's win of 520-283 with a mega spread of +237. Our own players ended up facing each other in Round 4, with Sky coming back from a very large deficit to score 2 bingos in the last 2 turns, resulting in a small victory of +64 for Kian Boon.

Eugene and Gabriel played in a relatively peaceful Division B, where even the high game was only a meagre 469, jointly set by Gabriel and another player. Our players also ended up on opposite sides of the board in round 4, culminating in what could probably be called the "Low Game" of the tournament, with a total score of just 625, ending 365-270 in Gabriel's favor. In the end, Gabriel managed to achieved 3rd position in Division B.

In Division C stood Chun Kin and Jinghan, both relatively new in the local scrabble scene, but battling bravely into their 2nd (I think) local competition. Chun Kin played splendidly in Round 6 to win with a spread of +258, the 3rd highest in Div C, while Jinghan played carefully to eke out 2 narrow wins with margins of +22 and +10.

Good job to all the players, and strive on! The National Scrabble Championship 2012 will be held at Bishan CC this year on July 21 and 22, and it will be a much more exciting event, with 16 rounds being played in both Divisions A and B, and 8 rounds for Division C.

A Deeper Understanding of the game of Boggle

What do we all know about Boggle? You need 16 tiles, 3 minutes, a piece of paper, a pen (preferably ballpoint), and a hand (or two) to play. In 2 lines, that's it.

How to improve your Boggle gameplay? Here's where it gets interesting...
First, take a look at the scoring system:
3 letters (1pt); 4 letters (1pt); 5 letters (2pts); 6 letters (3pts); 7 letters (5pts); 8 letters and more (7pts)

Some things we can deduce with respect to EFFICIENCY. Relating number of letters written to points awarded,

1. Writing 3 letter words are more efficient than 4 letter words
2. Writing 5 letter words are more efficient than 3 letter words
3. Writing 6 letter words are more efficient than 5 letter words

In general, longer words are rewarded better, with the sole exception being 4 letter words over 3 letter words. So shouldn't we just be learning long words? Why the importance on 3s and 4s?

2 reasons. Firstly, there are normally much more 3s and 4s on the board than 5s and 6s. Secondly, the difficulty level of finding 3s and 4s are much lower than 5s and 6s.

Next, we bring in the most important factor - the 3 minute time limit. This is more important than most people realize, and a 2 minute time limit or a 4 minute time limit would change gameplay TOTALLY. To write long words, or to write short words, that is the question. And this is the deciding factor (in my opinion).

Within these 3 minutes, there are 2 kinds of boards - Boards that you can write finish your words (to the best of your word knowledge), and boards that are so big that you can write nonstop for these 3 minutes.

In the first kind of board, it is clear that the player with superior word knowledge will dominate. As the board is small enough for both players to finish writing their words, naturally the player who knows more words will write more words. In this case, it would be prudent to start with 3s and 4s (since you can finish writing them anyway) before moving onto 5s and 6s. Should you start by finding 5s and 6s, on a small board, you may not be able to find enough to outscore your opponent who would have been writing simple 3s and 4s, and by the time you give up and move to 3s and 4s, you may not have enough time.

However, on the second kind of board, where there are so many words that players cannot finish writing, word knowledge is only secondary. Speed of finding words (not writing speed) and strategy is far more important here. Why? Assuming both players start by writing 3s and 4s, and when the time is up, they are only halfway across writing 4s. Naturally, all other factors constant, their score will be similar, because the player with the superior word knowledge does not get to fully utilize his advantage. In this case, to win, a player needs to find longer words, while at the same time maintaining his or her speed.

In reference to my above point, having a shorter time limit is like increasing the board size relative to time limit - you need to find longer words in order to secure an advantage, given similar writing speed. Having a longer time limit is like having a smaller board relative to time, it favors the player with superior word knowledge.

Some tips I have to offer on Boggle:

1. When playing a small/medium board (you have to stop and think to be able to find more words), the player who is more meticulous will win, given similar word knowledge, otherwise the player with better word knowledge will win.

• Being meticulous in extracting every single word you know from the board is easier, when you follow a logical and orderly way of finding words. Often we find that we miss words that we know, and in a small board, all these words would make a difference to the outcome.
• I adopt the anagram approach. Dividing the 4x4 board into 9 smaller 2x2 squares, I ALWAYS start from the 2x2 square in the top left corner, and find the 4 sets of 3 letter anagrams, and the 1 set of 4 letter anagrams.
• Before moving right to the next 2x2 square, I check if there are any words overlapping the 1st and 2nd 2x2 squares, before finding the 4 sets of 3 letter anagrams in the 2nd set of 2x2 squares, as well as the 1 set of 4 letter anagrams.
• I start from the top left, move all the way right, then go one level down, move all the way left, before going to the bottom level, and moving all the way right to complete all my 9 2x2 squares of anagrams. 
• After that I spend a few seconds checking for 3 and 4 letter words btwn groups of 2x2 squares which I missed, before trying to find longer words.
• Of course, you may happen to see longer words while looking for anagrams, and of course you should write them down immediately, but ALWAYS remember where you left off with your anagrams.
• In writing anagrams, it is best to have a fixed way of writing them down. For example, when I see the well known combo A,T,E,S. I ALWAYS write them in this order: ATE, ATES, EAT, EATS, ETA, ETAS, TAE, TAES, TEA, TEAS, SET, TES, EST, SAT, TAS, SEA, SAE, EAS, SEAT, SATE, SETA, EAST. 22 points, and I know with full confidence I won't miss a single one, nor will I have to stop and think which one I missed out, if I did. (Of course now with CSW12, ATS is a word too, so I will have to add that in)

2. The playing strategy is different with a big board. Being meticulous isn't necessary, as there are too many words to find. The essence is to find the big points, while maintaining  your FINDING and WRITING speed. I don't have a good gauge right now, since I having played writing boggle for months (only prolific), but I would say maintaining 3 letters per second would be about the maximum writing speed one can have. That would translate to 180 pts for all 3 letter words, and more for longer words.

• Identify the 's' on the board. It would be disastrous to find 40 words, and then realize half of them can add an 's' behind. If those are 4 letter words waiting to be converted to 5 points, it will be all the more painful.
• This time I use the hook approach. I still start in the top left corner, and start by finding anagrams, but I don't stick to the anagram method. This is just to buy me some time to find my hooks, while scoring points.
• Once I spot some nice hooking material, say 'ill', i jump to that, remembering where I left off. 'Ill' takes almost anything in front, except the vowels, q and x (that's 19). Don't forget the 5 letter 'ill' words such as trill, quill too.
• After I'm done with that, I go back to the anagram I was at to buy me some time before jumping to my next hook. 'Ing' is good too, lots of stuff goes in front (e.g. ding, hing, wing, sing...) Even better, after you're done with the front, lots of those take an 'e' at the back too (dinge, hinge, winge, singe), so that's a lot of points. Done? Get back to anagrams.
• In general, I follow the order of starting top left, moving right, then down one level, then left, then down one level, then right. But at any time you spot big points, don't hesitate to get to them immediately. Even if you forgot where you left off, don't waste time trying to find. Just choose a point, say 2nd row 1st block and start there.
• The key to FINDING words faster, is to be finding while you are writing. Looking at your paper and writing is a big no no. Constantly glance up to find your next set of words. Set of words, not word. Finding groups of anagrams or hooks will buy you more thinking time while you write them down, as compared to one word by itself. Moreover, you should always be finding one step ahead than your writing. Also, as I've mentioned earlier, having a practiced way of writing your anagrams down helps you to not miss stuff.
• If you find that you've missed 1 or 2 anagrams or hooks, DON'T WASTE TIME THINKING. Move on. There are other fish to be found in the sea.
• Combining hooks with anagrams are also useful, especially words that you can flip behind. E.g. ANT/tan/nat -> ANTE/etna(neat and tane if available) -> ANTA/ANTAR/ANTAE/ANTRE. By expecting these words, I can spot them quicker.
• Of course, this is just the playstyle I have determined works best for me with my given word knowledge. Using this, I can hit 150 constantly with big boards. Hope this can help those trying to break into 100 for big boards, and those trying to improve from 100-120 onwards.
•  P.S. I have heard that other players like Jeya adopt a different style, finding long words, and then breaking them down into smaller words. To do that, you need to have sufficient long word knowledge, and you cannot waste too much time chasing the ghosts of long words that aren't there. He has scored >200 with his method, so perhaps those seasoned scrabble players can try this.

Some useful big points to look out for:

1. TEA -> TEAD/taed/date -> TEADE/TEAED
2. STEAN -> STEANE -> STEANED
3. ?EAR -> ?EARE (lots of those) [one of them is STEAR->STEARE->STEARED, and scrabble players will know STEARIN -> STEARINE
4. WEETE/etwee -> WEETED/WEETER/WEETEN
5. Always look out for -ER, -ED, -ING, -IER, -EST, -IEST suffixes. Missing one whole set could be as costly as 20-30 points.

Updates - 28 May 2012

The only thing i have to say about Bishan RC Mini held on 27th May is, "Woot! No NTU Players!" (Lucky I nv go if not I'd be bored and lonely...) Anyhow, the next local scrabble event will be the 1st Jurong Green CC Mind Sports Day held on 16 June 2012.

Anyway, I would just like to bring to light two innocent looking words which I discovered in my never-ending quest for words. They have an unexpected amount of hooks (to me) and any sly fox can utilize them to their advantage against an innocent rabbit over the board.

Behold: ORAL takes B, C, G, H, L, M, P, R, S in front. This is pretty useful as the only 'common' english word is CORAL. Imagine setting up ORAL in front of the double letter square at the bottom left corner of the board. Your opponent doesn't have any more 'C's, makes a face at you, and you slam down your tiles the next move, eating the triple word with a minimum of 30 points. Delicious!

P.S. Don't try this against a Tier A player though. By trying this, you accept that all consequences are not my responsibility, even if your opponent plays HOAX scoring 66 points.

On the other hand, SAME takes Y as a front hook, and K, L, N, S, Y as back hooks. None of these are 'normal' english words, and any decent english student would hesitate to put even 's' behind same. Try counting how much SAMEK would net you across the double word and triple letter. At least 40. Tasty...

13 May 2012 - Jurong Green Mini

Only 3 NTU WGS players, Gabriel, Kai Yuan and Eugene took part in this scrabble competition, with Kian Boon as tournament director. The overall tournament participation was relatively small, compared to the previous Jurong Green CC Open Chps, and the tournament proceeded in a round robin for both Divisions A and B.

While we had no outstanding results today, interestingly, more than one other player commented on the large influx of NTU players during the previous Jurong Green Open, but who had all disappeared again. It was like a bunch of predators waiting for fresh meat, striking in packs and eliminating their prey, before disappearing into the shadows again. (Ok I bs-ed the last line lol)

Full Results here

Don't forget that there's another Scrabble Mini 2 weeks later on the 27th of May, this time at Bishan Heights RC!

And I'll end off with a brain teaser - What's the front hook of 'GAG'? Highlight below for the answer (Sorry for the lameness - i came up with it myself).

Ans: 9GAG

Changes from CSW07 to CSW12

Haven't gotten down to study the changes from CSW07 to CSW12? Well, now they're coming to you.

3 Letter Additions (a total of 19):

ALU, AME, ANS, ATS, AWK, ERM, GAK, GAW, GER, ING, MEH, OIS, PEL, QIN, RAV, SOZ, SUG, TIK, UMS

Note that 'YOS' is no longer valid.

For more details, click here for the full CSW12 initiation kit.

As also mentioned already, there will be no trainings until further notice as we break for exams. All the best everyone!

1st WGS Boggle Tournament

Held on 28/3/2012, the 1st WGS Boggle Tournament, also the first ever individual boggle tournament in NTU, and maybe even Singapore, took place in SAC Activity Room 3. 14 enthusiastic players, including 2 alumni, came down not just to compete, but to enjoy the game we all love.

In a Swiss System of 6 rounds, Sandra took 4th place, easing ahead of others with the same match points with a superior spread, with Bowei taking clear 3rd, Jeya taking clear 2nd, and Gabriel finishing clear 1st.

Full results are shown below:

Ranking	Player	Match Points	Spread
1	Gabriel Cheang	6	+304
2	Jeya Seelan	5	+258
3	Loh Bowei	4	+59
4	Sandra Wang	3	+18
5	Jolene Yeo	3	-33
6	Eugene Kok	3	-87
7	Wilson Lee	3	-99
8	Dillon Tay	3	-162
9	Edward Pariwono	2	12
10	Ong Xing Long	2	-76
11	Lim Wen Zhen	1.5	2
12	Tan Sze Mei	1.5	-71
13	Jonathan Yang	1	4
14	Nicholas Tan	1	-129

Jeya Seelan took the 'High Game' with a score of 299 for a single round (2 games)

17-18 Mar 2012: Jurong Green CC Scrabble Open Championship 2012

10 NTU Students and 2 Alumnus from NTU WGS took time off their precious weekend and gave it to scrabble at Jurong Green CC, certainly making their presence felt.

We would like to congratulate Seow Kai Yuan for getting his Master Title in this tournament, as well as Jacky Gan, Russell Ang, and Fernando Pratama for taking the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places respectively in Division C!

For full results, check out this link