scrabble, squirrels and line rider

So I received the following e-mail recently:

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From: Squirrel Liberation Front squirrelliberationfront@gmail.com
Date: Nov 26, 2006 6:41 PM
Subject: Its not over!

i am sure that given the lapse in time that has gone on since your last communication with us you probably assumed that it was over! You probably that we were scared! well, think again!!!! WE ARE WATCHING YOU!!!

Sincerely yours,
www.SquirrelLiberationFront.com
--

My response: HA HA HA! Your feeble threats are no match for my cunning anti-squirrel intellect. Watch away, you furry micro-brained demonspawn!

But back to board games...

Fascinating to read the responses to my Boardgames survey in LJ a couple days ago, which included games like Risk, Monopoly, Life, Talisman, Puerto Rico, Apples To Apples, Munchkin (from tarkrai: "Hearing your 13 year old daughter (at the time) in a perfect Valley Girl voice say "But... it's MY Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment!" made it worth the price of admission..."), Risk, Axis, Allies, Bootleggers, Sequence, Chance, Sorry!, Settlers of Catan, Caylus, Power Grid, Advanced Civilization, Arkham Horror, Ticket To Ride, Carcasonne, Thurn, Traders of Genoa, Trivial Pursuit, Encore, Pictionary, Kill Doctor Lucky, Chez Geek, Rummikub, The REAL Game of Life, Dune, Cranium, Catch Phrase, and Scrabble.

Speaking of Scrabble, I have to mention my friends John and Kristen Chew, both of whom organise and play in tournaments. Many of these tournaments are listed on their Poslfit.com page (under Scrabble) as well as on the Toronto Scrabble Club tourney page. Here's a photo of John when I knew him back at the University of Toronto:



You can see a more current photo of him in this photo (posted in my previous Blathering). John's wearing the red shirt.

When involved in organising, John will act in any or all of the following capacities: organiser (arrange logistics for event, book venue, hire staff, register players), director (in charge during the event, emcee/referee), software developer (for on-site or web use), computer operator (entering scores, determining who plays whom, posting web coverage of scores and/or games), or as a player. Kristen has worked as a word judge (back in the days before this job was computerized) and game annotator (records games as they progress on paper and electronically), and also plays in tournaments. John has a long-term contract position as the webmaster for the National Scrabble Association (of Canada and the United States), and also runs the Toronto Scrabble Club.

Kristen (on the left), at one of my sister's book signings:



Kristen was the Toronto Scrabble Club's Division "C" champion the first year she played. John's won a number of short tournaments, was 10th in the first Canadian Championship, and 2nd in the 2nd division at the first U.S. Nationals that he played in. He also had a pretty amusing Scrabble-related letter to the editor published in the Toronto Star a couple days ago. :-)

I asked how much luck was involved in playing Scrabble. John's response:

"There is more luck in Scrabble than in chess, and more luck in poker or backgammon than in Scrabble. There's also more to Scrabble than luck and word knowledge: if you knew the whole dictionary and always played the highest-scoring play, you would have have to be very lucky to win a typical expert tournament. Also, while even the world champion can lose to a much weaker player by drawing poorly, he is much less likely to do so than me because he is better at playing off bad tiles and managing his rack to avoid filling it with tiles that don't go well together. Lastly, it's a good thing that even a top player sometimes loses to a weaker player, because it makes expert Scrabble players typically much better sports than expert chess players."

LINKS FROM MY FRIEND RAY:

25 Funniest Analogies (collected by high school English teachers) One of my favourites: "The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant."

Cool whiteboard animation

LINK COURTESY A FRIEND'S SON:

Thanks to the teenaged son of my friends Tom and Michelle for pointing me to the horribly addictive online game of Line Rider.

But before trying it yourself, do check out this ride (if you're at work, turn down the sound first!). :-)




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