{"id":17183,"date":"2009-08-07T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T10:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/08\/07\/not-beany-enough\/"},"modified":"2009-08-07T10:00:01","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T10:00:01","slug":"not-beany-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20090807-01\/?p=17183","title":{"rendered":"Not beany enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other night, I was playing a friendly game of Scrabble®, and I managed to play BEANIER* (meaning “with a stronger flavor of beans”) onto a triple-word score, crossing the B with an open Y, scoring over 100 points in the process. This sufficiently demoralized the other players that the game turned into “play anything that vaguely resembles a word, with creative spelling encouraged.”\n It turns out that BEANIER* is not listed in the online versions of the SOWPODS or TWL Scrabble word lists, although I made the move in good faith. If the others had thought to challenge, they would’ve succeeded.\n My brother and I play Scrabble with very different styles. I’m not so much concerned with scoring (although I certainly try to make high-scoring moves) as I am with having a pretty board with a lot of intersections and clever words. I treat Scrabble as a collaborative effort that happens to have a winner at the end, in the same spirit as shows like My Music<\/i><\/a> or Says You<\/i><\/a>. As a result, I don’t pay too much attention to whether I’m opening easy access to a triple-word square, and I will forego a higher-scoring play in favor of one that uses a funny word or which connects two parts of the board. If you look at my scoresheet at the end of the game, it consists of a lot of medium-scoring moves (and a few really pathetic ones), with maybe one “super-move” per game where I play a bingo<\/a> or otherwise manage to rack up a lot of points at one go.\n My brother’s approach is much more methodical. He doesn’t play a very flashy game; he just focuses on scoring twenty or more points per move. If you look at his scoresheet, it’s just a slow, steady climb to the final tally.<\/p>\n

This means that when we play, it’s a competition between the tortoise and the hare. (I’m the hare.) Will my “super-move” be enough to hold off the steady erosion of my lead from the constant barrage of strong moves? Usually, the answer is No. Slow and steady wins the race. But I like to think I have more fun. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, I was playing a friendly game of Scrabble®, and I managed to play BEANIER* (meaning “with a stronger flavor of beans”) onto a triple-word score, crossing the B with an open Y, scoring over 100 points in the process. This sufficiently demoralized the other players that the game turned into “play anything that vaguely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-17183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

The other night, I was playing a friendly game of Scrabble®, and I managed to play BEANIER* (meaning “with a stronger flavor of beans”) onto a triple-word score, crossing the B with an open Y, scoring over 100 points in the process. This sufficiently demoralized the other players that the game turned into “play anything that vaguely […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}