Thursday, January 26, 2017

Using the wrong answer to lead you to the right answer

Howdy folks...

You'll remember I mentioned the last time that saying words aloud or to yourself, particularly ones you miss in practice, can help reinforce what you've learned. Today I'll talk about a specific way to apply that technique to help you reach correct solutions faster and more reliably. It's especially useful for words that don't follow the most common prefix and suffix patterns.

Practicing solving an anagram is really practicing a path to the solution. The first time you see AGIMNOST, maybe you think of trying -ING words first, then -INGS, then MIS- or -ISM or -IST words, and so on. Those are all false paths in this case, and you'll probably give up before thinking of trying ANTI- words. The first thing you saw was probably something like MOATINGS* or SOMATING*, and either you entered one of those as an incorrect guess or you correctly ruled them out but did not find the real answer.

You've missed the question, and the solution is revealed: ANTISMOG. I can solve this one reliably now, but when I was first studying it, I would always see MOATINGS* and either I'd think it was good and try it or I'd go down a number of other blind alleys and give up. What I needed was a way to be able to jump from my instinctive wrong answer (MOATINGS*) directly to the right one (ANTISMOG). So I would say "MOATINGS* is ANTISMOG, MOATINGS* is ANTISMOG" to myself every time I missed it (or even the first few times I happened to get it right, until I knew it well enough that I didn't need to). Whenever I see those letters now, I still see MOATINGS* first, but that sentence I said to myself long ago is ingrained enough that I instantly know it's ANTISMOG without having to try anything else. I don't always use this technique, but it's nice to have in the tool box.

So that's the principle for today: For anagrams you have trouble with, try to create a link in your mind between the wrong answer you tend to see first and the solution.

I will warn you that there is a hazard to this method, and I've been bitten by it a couple of times. You have to be careful that you don't start thinking of your wrong guess as an actual legal word. I played OVERBIND* in a game a long time ago, thinking, oh yeah, that sounds familiar to me, I think that's good. Shortly after I hit my clock I realized, whoops, no, OVERBIND* is OVENBIRD. Fortunately my opponent didn't challenge. This isn't usually a problem, but it's something to watch out for - when you see a word during a game, spend a moment to make sure it's a real word and not just a reminder for a different real word.


Thursday, January 19, 2017

On Anagramming Speed


Let's say you're fairly new to the game and you've been practicing anagramming Scrabble words for a little while. You're at a tournament, and after the first day's games are done, you go out to dinner with a large group of Scrabblers, including a few expert players. At some point in the pleasant evening, one of your fellow diners throws out an anagram puzzle or two for the table, and you're wowed by how quickly certain players can get the answers. You're able to solve most of the anagrams you've studied when you practice at home, if you stick with them long enough to find the solutions, but you can't imagine being able to flip the letters around in your mind so fast that you can reliably solve thorny anagrams in just a few seconds.

Most of that is no secret: like anything else, there's no substitute for putting the practice time in. But you absolutely can tailor your practice in ways that will help develop your solving speed. Which leads me to another of Geoff's Scrabble word learning principles: To learn to find words fast, study fast.

Why is speed essential, besides the mild pleasures of impressing your Scrabbling friends at the dinner table? Well, it's clear that anagramming speed can help you in live games. Scrabble isn't just a game of words or anagramming - it's a game of decisions, and the better decisions you make, the more often you'll win, over time. Each of your turns has two components: first, you're trying to find some good possible plays you can make, and second, you're trying to make the best choice from the ones you find, considering all the relevant factors in the game at the time. If you can find good candidate plays quickly and reliably, it means you'll have more time left to consider which of your candidates is best to play - and that's a much better use of your time. You don't want to find yourself having to figure out a complex pre-endgame with 90 seconds left on your clock because it took you four minutes to find your bingo back on turn six.

Why does studying fast lead to anagramming fast? The main reason is that there are a whole lot of words to learn in Scrabble, as I'm sure you've noticed. And if you go fast, you'll get your eyeballs on a lot more words - and even better, you'll get practice on words with all different kinds of structures: common prefixes and suffixes, less common prefixes and suffixes, compounds, plurals of shorter words, oddball variant spellings, unclassifiable foreign-looking words, etc. Your brain starts to absorb how these word parts tend to work, and over time you'll notice you're arriving at solutions quicker as a result, even on words you haven't practiced much before. That's your anagramming muscles being built! Also, when you're working at a good pace, you're conditioning your brain to focus more intensely - and believe me, over time your brain will get used to this demand and it will feel normal. And when THAT happens, you can reliably find words even faster.

Also, remember what I said earlier about getting into a rhythm when studying and avoiding frustration? Nothing is more frustrating in word practice than staring at a set of letters for two minutes straight and not finding anything. (It's not much fun in games, either.) Don't let yourself get to that point - it's better to mark an anagram as missed and move on if you flat don't know it or can't find it after a short time. (It might also help you to write down or say aloud to yourself the words missed. Anything to get it in your brain a little better for next time.)

If you go fast, yes, it means you'll miss more words in practice. Your solving percentages might not look so pretty. But that's okay, because the fact that you're going fast means you can get more repetitions on those words. Every time you see a solution to an anagram, even if you didn't solve it successfully, builds up a little more awareness of the word in your brain. Repetitions are especially good (and needed) for obscure words or words with unusual patterns. What looks like anagramming is really a combination of anagramming and memory, so any little thing you can do to expose more words more often to your memory will help.

***

So how fast should you go? If you're not that experienced, I'd recommend allowing about 15-20 seconds maximum to solve an anagram, and as you get better at solving anagrams, you should reduce that time gradually. You can allow more time as needed if there are multiple solutions to a question or if you expect the words you're practicing to be unfamiliar or difficult - if you think you've almost got it by the time limit, sure, go a few seconds longer and complete your attempt. You can use the timer feature in Zyzzyva or some other timer, though it doesn't have to be quite that structured; I usually just estimate it. If I'm not getting a particular anagram after what feels like my usual allotted time, then I don't really have it down that well, and I need to put it back in the "need to practice" pile (cardbox 0, if you're cardboxing). There's no shame in that; it's why you practice!

This is also an excellent reason to use Aerolith (aerolith.org, Word Walls). While relying *only* on Aerolith for your word practice has its drawbacks, as mentioned in an earlier post here, racing to solve the anagrams on an Aerolith board is the best way to develop sheer anagramming speed there is. Highly recommended.


Thursday, January 5, 2017

Aerolith disease

Hi, my name is Geoff, and I have Aerolith disease...this is my jokey term for what happens over time when your ONLY study method is solving anagrams. (If you don't know, Aerolith - aerolith.org - is a wonderful website where you race against the clock to unscramble words. It's excellent practice, and I highly recommend it.)

The first symptom of Aerolith disease can be seen when you're playing a game: Let's say it's your turn to start a game, and you have DEIKLMU on your rack. If those letters came up in an anagramming practice session, where you know that there's at least one solution, most experienced anagrammers would find MUDLIKE right away. There aren't very many other ways those letters could combine to make a plausible word, and finding MUDLIKE doesn't require you to know obscure words at all. Easy to solve.

So, returning to the game, you slap down MUDLIKE, happily announce your score of 88 and hit the clock. And...your opponent challenges it off, because it's not a valid Scrabble word. (Kudos to your opponent for knowing it's not good - I wasn't sure until I looked it up just before writing this.)

There's no easy way to fix that problem. The optimal solution for making sure you know MUDLIKE* is no good is to commit all the -LIKE words to memory, and you could do that for similar categories (OUT- words, -LESS words, etc.) - but there are a whole lot of those, so it's going to take you a lot of time, and rote memorizing is easy to get burned out on for most of us. I haven't done anything like that in years, though what I will do now and then - say, a few days before a Nationals - is bring up those lists on my computer screen and read them, speaking the words to myself as I go (or aloud, if I'm alone). This creates at least a dim recent memory of the words. Every little bit helps, right? Having more than one way for your brain to come up with a word is a good thing.

A second symptom is particular to folks who use Aerolith (WordWalls) for all their word practice. There's no penalty for guessing wrong in Word Walls, and so with certain anagrams there's a tendency to type the wrong answer first and then realize, oh yeah, it's not OVERBIND*, it's OVENBIRD or whatever, and then type the right one and move on. In a game, though, every once in a while I'll mistakenly think of my usual wrong guess as being correct. I can usually catch myself before I put the phoney on the board, but if I get careless...

Do understand that none of this is in any way a criticism of Aerolith or other study sites or programs. They're great! I have a case of Aerolith disease myself that could use some fixing, but I've used it a whole lot to study because I find that the format is the most fun for me. And remember what I said when I started the blog: it's better to have an imperfect method you enjoy than a perfect one you don't. Aerolith makes me want to practice words, and that's the most important thing. But when I want to review more in depth or identify holes in my word knowledge like the ones I described above, I'll switch to something like Zyzzyva. Or Xerafin, a new web-based cardboxing app I've been trying out lately.

Or I might try an approach other than anagram solving - could be rote memorizing, could be mnemonics, could be trying to recall words in certain patterns, could be spot-the-phoney quizzing. Any of those methods can help. But I am a firm believer that solving alphagrams is the best way to build a big arsenal of words for yourself, so I'll always spend most of my practice time doing that.


Happy Scrabbling,

Geoff


Useful fours!

My last post discussed some strategies for how to incorporate useful four-, five- and six-letter words into your game. Today, I've got a list of THE most useful fours to get you started.

IMPORTANT: In the last post, I discussed using "playability" as a way to prioritize medium-length words for study, and I mentioned that Zyzzyva gives you a way to search for and rank words by their playability. What I've found out since then is that the current version of (NASPA) Zyzzyva does NOT have accurate playability values, so unfortunately you can't use it for this purpose.

I do have access to sound playability values elsewhere, however, so I can fill in that gap here and there as we go. The words below are all very high-probability fours that are valid in TWL; below them is an additional set of words that are CSW-only, for those who play Collins. I've omitted words that are merely three-letter words with a plural S attached to the end. Some of these you'll already know well, of course, so I'd suggest focusing on the ones you're not used to yet. You can try memorizing these words, or anagramming them with study software or flashcards, or any mix of methods that you find helps you remember them.

What will also help you learn these words is the same advice I give for the threes: supplement your learning by playing lots of games, so you can get used to seeing these words played on a board and teach your brain to think of them as potential plays.



ABYE ADZE AEON AERO AGEE AGIO AGON AGUE AHOY AIDE
AJAR AJEE AKEE AMIA AMIE ANEW ANOA APEX AQUA AREA
AUTO AVID AVOW AWAY AWED AWEE AXED AXEL AXIS AYAH
AYIN AZON

BEAU BEEF BEVY BIDI BIOG BIZE BOXY

CIAO CINQ

DAGO DAVY DEFI DEFT DEXY DITZ DJIN DOJO DOUX

EAUX EAVE EEEW EIDE EMEU ENOW EPEE ERUV ETUI EXED
EXIT EXON EYEN

FADE FADO FANO FATE FAUX FAVA FAVE FAWN FAZE FEEB
FEME FEND FETE FEUD FIDO FIND FIVE FIXT FLEW FOAM
FOHN FOOD FOXY FRIZ FUJI FUTZ FUZE

GAWP GEEZ GIBE GIFT GOBO GOJI GOOF GREW GRIZ GYVE

HAAF HADJ HAJI HEWN HIDE HIVE HIYA HOAX HOOF HOVE
HOWE HOYA 

IBEX IDEA ILEX ILIA INIA IOTA IRID IWIS IXIA

JADE JAGG JAIL JAKE JANE JAPE JARL JATO JAVA JEAN
JEED JEEP JEER JEEZ JEFE JEHU JEON JEST JETE JEUX
JIAO JIBE JILT JINN JINX JIRD JIVE JIVY JOEY JOHN
JOIN JOLE JOLT JOTA JOWL JUBE JUDO JUGA JURA JUTE

KIVA KIWI KOJI

LIEU LIRI LOWE LUAU LUTZ

MAXI MEOU MEOW MINX MIXT MOUE

NAOI NEWB NEXT NIXE NOVA

OATY OBEY OBIA OBIT OBOE ODAH ODEA OFAY OGEE OHIA
OLEA OLEO OLIO OOZE OPAH OPEN OUZO OVUM OWED OXEN
OXID OYER OYEZ

PAUA PAVE PERV PFUI POOF POUF PREX PREZ PUTZ

QADI QAID QOPH QUAD QUAG QUAI QUAY QUEY QUID QUIN
QUIP QUIT QUIZ QUOD

RAIA RAJA RITZ ROUX

TAXA TAXI TEXT TITI TIVY TOEA TOFT TOYO TWIG TWIN
TWIT TZAR

UNAI UNAU UPON UVEA

VAGI VAMP VANG VATU VEEP VEGA VEND VENT VERB VETO
VEXT VIBE VIDE VIEW VIGA VINO VINY VITA VIVA VIVE
VLOG VOID VOLT VOTE VROW VUGG VUGH VULN

WADI WAGE WAIF WAUL WAUR WAVY WAXY WEEP WEFT WEND
WETA WIDE WIFE WINO WIPE WITE WIVE WOAD WOKE WOOD
WOOF WOVE WRIT

YAGE YAGI YEAH YEOW YETI YIPE YOGI YONI YOOF YOUR
YOWE YUGA YUTZ

ZANY ZARF ZEAL ZEBU ZEDA ZEIN ZERO ZEST ZETA ZINC
ZINE ZING ZITI ZOEA ZOIC ZONA ZONE ZOOM ZOON ZORI


***

Collins-only words:

ADAW# AIDA# AIGA# AINE# AITU# ALOO# ANOW# ATUA# AUNE#

BAFT# BAYE# BEGO# BENJ# BIGA# BOEP# BUFO#

DEFO# DERV# DEVO# DIVI# DIVO# DIXI# DOWF# DZHO#

EINE# ENEW# EOAN# EREV# ETHE# EUGE# EUOI# EVET# EVOE#

FAAN# FAIX# FEEN# FEHM# FENI# FENT# FIGO# FINI# FIQH#
FLOX# FOEN# FOID# FONE# FOUD#

GAJO# GOAF# GOBI# GOEY# GOWF# GRAV# GREX# GRRL#

HAUF# HIOI# HOUF# HUIA#

IDEE# IURE#

JAFA# JAGA# JANN# JARP# JEAT# JEDI# JEEL# JOBE# JONG#
JOUR# JURE# JUVE#

KAIE# KIEV# KUIA#

LANX# LAZO#

MIRV# MOAI# MOOI# MOWA# MOZE# MZEE#

OMOV# ONIE# OOSE# OUMA# OUPA# OUTA# OWER#

PAWA#

QUAT# QUEP# QUIM# QUOP#

RIVO# RIZA# ROJI# RONZ#

SAXE# SJOE# SWIZ#

TAVA# TAWA# TOEY# TREZ#

ULEX# URAO# UVAE#

VANT# VAPE# VAUT# VEGO# VEHM# VIAE# VILD# VINT# VIVO#
VIZY# VOIP# VRIL# VROT# VROU#

WAID# WAQF# WAWE# WEEM# WEMB# WENA# WEXE# WHIO# WICE#
WILI# WOAH# WOON# WOOT# WUDU#

YEVE# YGOE# YODE#

ZARI# ZATI# ZILA# ZITE# ZOBU# ZOOT# ZUPA#