Learning new words is always hard work, but it can be very exhilarating. Trying to remember whether a particular word is in a specific dictionary is tedious and exhausting. That's why I favor/favour a switch to the world dictionary.
As a proudly mediocre player at almost exactly the 50th percentile in North America, I have a love/hate relationship with Collins.
I enjoy playing Collins more than NWL because the additional short words get me out of jams that better players know goes to avoid altogether. The Collins-only high probability sevens and eights result in more playable bingos with little additional study.
But sometimes I feel like the only Collins player in North America rated less than 1800. Playing Collins is fun. Getting my head handed to me game after game in a Collins division where I’m the lowest rated player by 500 points is not.
Binning NWL would solve my problem nicely, but NASPA will never do that, WGPO exists for reasons other than dictionary that make reunification highly unlikely, and while I love what CoCo are doing and I really like the people involved, they’re even more expert-heavy than a typical NASPA tournament’s Collins division (only the largest tournaments have more than one).
Between that, and that the players in the club I direct have no desire for Collins, I’ve had no choice but to retreat back to NWL. :(
Love the footnotes. Number 14 is the best :)
yeah, it'll be work to learn the extra collins words, but i'm ready for north america to make the switch. thanks for covering this in such detail!
Wonderful piece: Scrabble Cold War. More! tks
I can't believe it's been 25 years since Word Freak!
And congratulations to Chloe! What fun for her - challenging fun, to be sure.
Learning new words is always hard work, but it can be very exhilarating. Trying to remember whether a particular word is in a specific dictionary is tedious and exhausting. That's why I favor/favour a switch to the world dictionary.
From the cheap seats:
As a proudly mediocre player at almost exactly the 50th percentile in North America, I have a love/hate relationship with Collins.
I enjoy playing Collins more than NWL because the additional short words get me out of jams that better players know goes to avoid altogether. The Collins-only high probability sevens and eights result in more playable bingos with little additional study.
But sometimes I feel like the only Collins player in North America rated less than 1800. Playing Collins is fun. Getting my head handed to me game after game in a Collins division where I’m the lowest rated player by 500 points is not.
Binning NWL would solve my problem nicely, but NASPA will never do that, WGPO exists for reasons other than dictionary that make reunification highly unlikely, and while I love what CoCo are doing and I really like the people involved, they’re even more expert-heavy than a typical NASPA tournament’s Collins division (only the largest tournaments have more than one).
Between that, and that the players in the club I direct have no desire for Collins, I’ve had no choice but to retreat back to NWL. :(
"Swanky" isn't wrong, but "swank" is right there.