LJ Idol Season 10, Second Chance Round 3: "Getting to Carnegie Hall"
The Grind
The San Francisco Scrabble Club has had some interesting homes over the years. When I first attended, it was based in a Carl's Jr. near the Embarcadero, a location frequented by transients and generally not conducive to focus and concentration. My clearest memory of playing there was a game against Chris, our director. We're sitting there, trying to find a way to win the game, when the plate-glass window separating us from the street simply shatters. Nobody's quite sure, to this day, exactly what happened--a rock? a bullet?--but fortunately, nobody was sitting right next to the window (we were about ten feet away).
"What the hell?' Chris shouted. "Everyone okay?" People are looking around, checking themselves and each other. Nobody says anything.
"Alright, now what the hell was I going to play?"
*****
Fifty sets of seven or eight tiles, each including a blank, each containing between one and five words. You have nine minutes. Go.
That's the premise behind the blank-bingos quiz at aerolith.org, one of the most popular Scrabble study sites. They have other quizzes too--words of any length from 2 to 15, plus the ability to design your own lists to study from. You can set the timers, save your progress, and speed through as many words as you can in whatever time you have.
The daily blank-bingos quiz, though, is my favorite, because it forces your brain to bend in ways that actually resemble a real game. Okay, you have a promising-looking seven letter rack; what tiles does it bingo through, and are they available. Six middling tiles and a blank; you know there's something there, you've just got to find it.
Jumping between racks, trying to find the words you know are there, under time pressure...it's the best practice I know.
*****
Eventually, the club moved to the basement of the YMCA downtown, thanks to one of our players who had a membership and could reserve us the room. The space was also used by one of the local educational organizations for disadvantaged kids, and they had various motivational slogans on the walls. One of them, taken completely out of context, became our unofficial club motto (right next to "whenever you find a bad play, look for a worse one"): "If you're not doing your best, then what are you doing?"
When the YMCA decided to start charging us, we migrated across the street to a business center that had an atrium in their food court. Most of the restaurants closed down after lunch (this being the business district), but the atrium was open until midnight. Unfortunately, the cleaning crew started work on keeping the floor spotless around 6pm, right as we started playing. Needless to say, they weren't exactly enthusiastic about having us around. (I never thought I would use the phrase "passive-aggressive floor buffering", but that's exactly what we were victimized by.)
The one redeeming feature of the space, aside from being free, was the large water-column fountain in the middle of the atrium. Even though it was surrounded by a ring of planters, we would still get someone, about once a month, looking down at their cell phone and walking straight into the fountain, usually followed by a string of curse words from them and stifled laughter from us.
Then we'd go back to our games.
*****
The theory behind cardboxing is simple: you put the things you want to study on flashcards, then quiz yourself on them. Each question you get right moves forward one box, from 0 to 1, 1 to 2, etc. The questions in higher-numbered boxes are studied less frequently; every three days in box 1, once a week in box 2, and so on. If you miss a question, it goes back to box 0 and you try again tomorrow.
Managing something like this in paper is incredibly cumbersome. Fortunately for us Scrabble players, Zyzzyva makes it easy. Even if you miss a day, the program will catch you up, letting you study as frequently as you like, learning the words by practicing the process of unscrambling them, which is just as important as learning the words themselves.
I first started using the program seriously in about 2008, when a couple of young high-schoolers came into the club and started zooming right past everybody. I'd gotten by, to that point, on guts, guile, and a few selected word lists. But to keep up with these young punks, I knew I'd have to actually learn some words.
And eventually, all of them.
*****
We now play at a Whole Foods Market near the Castro, making us the most hipster Scrabble club in the country. Occasionally we'll get passersby who stop and look at our boards, their eyes goggling at the unusual words splayed across the table. "How did you guys get so good?"
I give the same answer every time. "Same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice, practice."
The San Francisco Scrabble Club has had some interesting homes over the years. When I first attended, it was based in a Carl's Jr. near the Embarcadero, a location frequented by transients and generally not conducive to focus and concentration. My clearest memory of playing there was a game against Chris, our director. We're sitting there, trying to find a way to win the game, when the plate-glass window separating us from the street simply shatters. Nobody's quite sure, to this day, exactly what happened--a rock? a bullet?--but fortunately, nobody was sitting right next to the window (we were about ten feet away).
"What the hell?' Chris shouted. "Everyone okay?" People are looking around, checking themselves and each other. Nobody says anything.
"Alright, now what the hell was I going to play?"
*****
Fifty sets of seven or eight tiles, each including a blank, each containing between one and five words. You have nine minutes. Go.
That's the premise behind the blank-bingos quiz at aerolith.org, one of the most popular Scrabble study sites. They have other quizzes too--words of any length from 2 to 15, plus the ability to design your own lists to study from. You can set the timers, save your progress, and speed through as many words as you can in whatever time you have.
The daily blank-bingos quiz, though, is my favorite, because it forces your brain to bend in ways that actually resemble a real game. Okay, you have a promising-looking seven letter rack; what tiles does it bingo through, and are they available. Six middling tiles and a blank; you know there's something there, you've just got to find it.
Jumping between racks, trying to find the words you know are there, under time pressure...it's the best practice I know.
*****
Eventually, the club moved to the basement of the YMCA downtown, thanks to one of our players who had a membership and could reserve us the room. The space was also used by one of the local educational organizations for disadvantaged kids, and they had various motivational slogans on the walls. One of them, taken completely out of context, became our unofficial club motto (right next to "whenever you find a bad play, look for a worse one"): "If you're not doing your best, then what are you doing?"
When the YMCA decided to start charging us, we migrated across the street to a business center that had an atrium in their food court. Most of the restaurants closed down after lunch (this being the business district), but the atrium was open until midnight. Unfortunately, the cleaning crew started work on keeping the floor spotless around 6pm, right as we started playing. Needless to say, they weren't exactly enthusiastic about having us around. (I never thought I would use the phrase "passive-aggressive floor buffering", but that's exactly what we were victimized by.)
The one redeeming feature of the space, aside from being free, was the large water-column fountain in the middle of the atrium. Even though it was surrounded by a ring of planters, we would still get someone, about once a month, looking down at their cell phone and walking straight into the fountain, usually followed by a string of curse words from them and stifled laughter from us.
Then we'd go back to our games.
*****
The theory behind cardboxing is simple: you put the things you want to study on flashcards, then quiz yourself on them. Each question you get right moves forward one box, from 0 to 1, 1 to 2, etc. The questions in higher-numbered boxes are studied less frequently; every three days in box 1, once a week in box 2, and so on. If you miss a question, it goes back to box 0 and you try again tomorrow.
Managing something like this in paper is incredibly cumbersome. Fortunately for us Scrabble players, Zyzzyva makes it easy. Even if you miss a day, the program will catch you up, letting you study as frequently as you like, learning the words by practicing the process of unscrambling them, which is just as important as learning the words themselves.
I first started using the program seriously in about 2008, when a couple of young high-schoolers came into the club and started zooming right past everybody. I'd gotten by, to that point, on guts, guile, and a few selected word lists. But to keep up with these young punks, I knew I'd have to actually learn some words.
And eventually, all of them.
*****
We now play at a Whole Foods Market near the Castro, making us the most hipster Scrabble club in the country. Occasionally we'll get passersby who stop and look at our boards, their eyes goggling at the unusual words splayed across the table. "How did you guys get so good?"
I give the same answer every time. "Same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice, practice."