Scrabble

I have not read Going Rogue. Nor will I. I did, however, read on someone else's blog that the Palin family played Scrabble, which is the second time Scrabble has popped into my field of vision lately. The first time was in a phone conversation with Davis a couple of weeks ago. He was headed to the store to buy a game that would challenge him and was looking for recommendations. I buzzed through several options which he rejected for various reasons. Then I suggested Scrabble on the theory that as a mathematician who rocked at strategy games (he is practically unstoppable at Pente, Risk, Monopoly, and any other game based on recognizing patterns) that maybe a word-based game would take away his usual edge.

That's when Davis explained to me that Scrabble really was a math game.

Do you believe that?

He went on to explain that Scrabble required a knowledge of sets and combinatorics. The basic strategy was to maximize the overlap between the various combinations of letters on your rack and then to compare the combinations with the set of words in your mental dictionary. Once you had a set of matches, you can maximize your score through the placement of tiles on the optimal available spot on the board.

Is that how you play Scrabble?

No hording of Ks and Qs, as the Palin family does?

No memorizing of obscure words that contain multiple high point tiles (for example, QUARTZY)?

No coming up with convincing definitions of fanciful words so that you can, in one fell swoop, get rid of the problematic letters or perhaps the several "i"s that always gravitate towards your tray?