It's Halloween, and Scrabble is now Spookbble, where playing phony words can win you games immediately. Wait, what!?
Playing fake words ("phonies") in Scrabble is allowed, but very risky, as you lose your turn if your opponent challenges. So it's always a big blow when your opponent calls you out on a phony. At least... normally.
But this is no normal position. Here, an expert missed an amazing opportunity: if he phonied, he could've pretty much won a game INSTANTLY after his opponent challenged it off! Wait, losing a turn would've been a GOOD THING? How??? You'll have to watch the video to find out!
I initially liked welmoce as well but the issue with welcome is that it gives back the s-hook so the opponent might be suspicious of why he would "block" mocs but give up "welcomes/welmoces"
Will might think Steve didn't think about the noun version of the word WELCOME. Though I admit this is a flaw. I think most of the other ideas have worse flaws, and that long-term WELMOCE* should work the most, since all the possible outcomes are very favorable to Steve. Maybe ILEA/MOCA* is "better", since no matter what phony you play, you are giving Will partial knowledge of a rack that could triple-triple through the G of GLOTTIS. The best part about this position is that it's pretty much a free canvas, a blank page of sorts. Let your creativity run free and find something that might be better!
I think I'd play QAWLI if I had it to do over. Close enough to QAWWALI. Thanks for the video!
@@stevegrob9840 Nice, and somewhat close to QIBLA too. I like that!
@@axcertypo WELCOME as a verb also takes an s though "he welcomes her" I agree that MOCA* is better
@@axcertypo The noun version? It's a verb and a noun. No chance that opponent thinks he doesn't know it takes -s.
Now here's an interesting idea, if Steve didn't have the bingo, what would happen if he passed? Would it fool Will into not playing the bingo?
That was my thought too. Would love to see a video summarizing some fake-out plays like this that have actually occured.
This is why I love Scrabble. This isn't fully unreasonable. The thing is, without an actual threat, if opponent does summon the courage to play GLOTTIS, there isn't an upside with most racks. If winning the game is your top priority, you shouldn't make a play that gives a reasonable shot at GLOTTIS getting played, and the board being opened with no potential way of seizing victory immediately afterward.
I think he could exchange some tiles
@@jakestiles2721Nigel Richards has done something somewhat similar by obvious aggressive set ups for an x bomb or something similar, putting his opponent in the uncomfortable position of whether or not he has it, if he should sacrifice scoring to block. This could be very bad if he doesn’t actually have it, but of course could seriously backfire if his opponent had it.
That's a great question. So let's say Steve's rack was something like AAEEILW, very similar and more or less equally bad as his actual rack but of course no WEIGELIA threat. He still can't block MOCS (with a valid play, at least) and there's no upside to the ridiculous phony tactic as Steve has nothing great to come back if Will plays GLOTTIS. Really your two options are make a "normal" play like AWEE in the valid spot or try the pass tactic as you said. You can actually approach this from a somewhat mathematical standpoint and figure out how likely you think passing needs to be to cause your opponent to forgo GLOTTIS to be worth it. AWEE scores 29, but the leave after AWEE is way better (AIL versus the full rack of AAEEILW), plus you'll have first crack at two triples after GLOTTIS. So you probably average at least 40 points more in the two turns combined after AWEE than you do after passing. Meanwhile, if you pass and he does take the bait and forgo GLOTTIS, he's giving up 50 or so equity points as GLOTTIS scores 75 and his next best play (probably SIGLOI for 27 or something short through the E in RIFE) has 25ish equity. So that means passing and him not bingoing is 10 points better than AWEE, but passing and him bingoing is 40 points worse. So if you think he takes the bait and doesn't bingo x% of the time, the equation is 10*x >= 40(1-x), which comes out to x needing to be at least 80%. That is, you should only pass if you think he passes up GLOTTIS in response at least 80% of the time. If hypothetically AWEE were 50 (or more) points better than passing in the event he plays GLOTTIS (which it may actually be given how bad your rack is), you should not pass even if you think he's definitely going to pass up GLOTTIS. In sum I think it probably wouldn't make sense here with a comparable rack to Steve's that didn't hit WEIGELIA. But I could see it in some cases where your non-passing option is way worse than AWEE is here. Great idea!
Under no circumstances would I ever have the board awareness to phony here on purpose, but if somehow I did, as a csw player, I would play Evoe/Aweel, have played an unintentional double phony, and then asked myself why am I playing with nwl, when I don't know the nwl dictionary at all.
The real question is, after Will challenges the phony, how would you react so as not to arouse his suspicion? You'd have to play it off like an accident, might require some acting skills :)
Good point about acting-skills. I feel as if Scrabble needs acting-skills more often. Suppose you see that your opponent's play is invalid. Then, until they announce their score/press their clock, you must act poker-faced as if you think it's OK. If they suspect you know it's invalid, they'll just take their tiles back and go on to think of an alternative play.
Totally valid points by both of you. It's a bit of a fine line since you're not allowed to talk or otherwise behave in a way intended to throw off your opponent (that's called "coffeehousing") so I'd try to act as nonchalantly in possible in both cases. I've never been in the situation Steve was in here, but I've been in the situation of waiting for opponent to hit their clock after an invalid play many, many times. I try to just behave exactly the same way I do after they lay down a valid play (i.e. going through my usual routine of writing down their play and adding the score up in my head to confirm it matches what they say), which both doesn't give anything away and can't be construed as any sort of abnormal behavior. If I used the tactic in this video, I'd probably do the same thing I do when I get a phony challenged off, which is more or less shrug it off and calmly take it off the board. I definitely would NOT say anything like "good challenge" as that could easily be construed as intending to throw them off given I actually want them to challenge.
I prefer 11D ILIA. First it forces the opponent to challenge (unlike plays such as E5 WALIE; since Will can choose not to challenge WALIE if he suspects Steve is up to something). Second from Will's POV, playing ILIA suggests three or more I's on Steve's rack.
Very good point -- ILIA seems 100% better than ILEA if Steve were to go with something in that spot
Another option is for Steve to give a shoutout to his opponent and play WI(L)L in the same spot he played WILE. Or with WYER* and KL*, but I have a slight preference for the placement that forms RL*. That would have made the best story. Shouting your opponent out (and shouting out another Will in the same breath), as well as making a phony two that may seem inadvertent, as it is reasonable to assume that Steve meant to place an E instead of an L. But once again, WELMOCE* is probably better because it actually blocks GLOTTIS if it stays on.
Hahaha nice... definitely funnier but agreed it's worse than WELMOCE as it doesn't block GLOTTIS if it stays on, and also keeps 4 vowels
I thought this was one of your Scrabble variants. Can you play a blitz or bullet match vs another top player where if you phony (and your opponent doesn't challenge) you automatically win the game?
same. I was like oh great variant, this will be fun
Yes please!
Same! Bullet would be great because it will be harder to challenge
That's a great idea!
i was sitting right next to this game as it happened!! i heard will talking about accidentally placing it in the wrong spot and thanking steve for being nice when he didn’t block the MOCS spot, not knowing steve couldn’t block it
Same! The most shocking part was hearing Steve reply "You're welmoce."
@@whitesoxMLB hahahaha
and not knowing Steve shouldn't have blocked it even if he could, which thankfully for Will Steve didn't realize in the game either! Truly wild situation
the real big brain play is if you're in this position but with a different rack, you just hard pass and scare out the opponent from playing a bingo at all hahaha
That's a really clever idea! Not sure it's actually optimal in most cases, but it may be in some and it's absolutely worth considering -- see my response to Firefly's comment above for more detail
These phony metagame spots are fun.
I like "WA" down from K13. It's a phony that Will should not challenge off of the board because it allows him to play Glottis over a triple, meaning 80 points in total. Sometimes the most ridiculous phony is the one that is a complete throw.
I'm wondering about ILIA rather than ILEA with MOCA. To me it seems ILIA might appear to be a rack cleaning move for a terrible rack.
Yep, 100% -- ILIA is definitely better than ILEA if you were going to go with something in that spot
This was incredibly fascinating
Thanks, I think so too! Never seen such a clear and easily-explainable example of this, and I've seen tens of thousands of games
Very interesting position, pretty cool that phonying is the optimal play. I'd definitely phony with a W to keep suspicion low.
Would it be best to play ewe making evoe with the first e? It blocks the bingo so makes it more likely to be challenged. Otherwise they may suss out what is happening and not challenge on purpose which then leaves them a good chance to make that bingo without a triple triple following
Exactly, the problem with AWIE and the like is Will may not challenge and play GLOTTIS (though that's still a better outcome than WILE, as you score 10 points more and use one more vowel). So it's between WELMOCE and EWE/EVOE. But even though EWE is better equity if unnoticed, WELMOCE baits the WELMOCES hook so that's better. Though WELMOCE looks like a very weird play even ignorieng the fact it's a phony, so Will might notice and worry of something...
Yeah that was my thought as well, especially after Mack said that EVOE is valid in Collins but not in North American. It's a believable play that, having seen the bingo, he's trying to block it, and it either doesn't get challenged off and he blocks the bingo, or it does and he gets WEIGELIA.
Yeah, agreed with all of you guys -- Steve should absolutely phony with something that blocks GLOTTIS so that Will can't decide to let it go and just bingo, and is forced to either challenge it off or accept it and not have a spot for his bingo. I think EVOE/EWE and WELMOCE are both very reasonable!
There’s also a chance that Will might think that GLOTTIS isn’t good after it got challenged off (assuming both RIFES and GLOTTIS were challenged) so he wouldn’t try it on the next move.
I can't believe the nationaly currency of Uganda, EQLWEAII, isn't in the dictionary. Smh
oh, I thought EQLWEAII was a unit of currency equal to 2 EKPWELE (and EQLWEAIII would be 3 EKPWELE, EQLWEAV would be 5 EKPWELE, etc), and EKPWELE is a currency of Equatorial Guinea. But you might be right!
I think that one other potential aspect to consider is that coming up with a plan to phony probably would've taken Steve a fair amount of time, which makes a lot of the more obvious errors like *AI or *AWEE more suspicious. But for something like *EVOE, the long deliberation potentially makes the error MORE plausible; I've seen plenty of players waffle for a long time on Collins-only words in NWL play. If I were Will, I wouldn't think twice about a player holding their head in their hands for a few minutes before playing a Collins-only phony.
Good point, and that's always an issue with any phony situation -- you often have to decide quickly to make it reasonable, but it's the type of decision that often merits a lot of consideration, so that creates a bit of a self-contradiction
I would try evoe since its valid in collins, its easy to confuse them or not know all the differences. That and ewe, looks like its legitimately trying to blocking glottis, or even hoping the opponent doesn't know the dictionary differences that it can be challenged off. And if they dont challenge it or catch it, then you still block the bingo!
didn't even spot that it was spelled WELMOCE in the thumbnail lol but the WELMOCE showcase is a nice followup to will's video on Josh Sokol :)
M11 EEW also pretty good as the S is actually a blank which would sometimes confuse players.
Very true. The one thing is I wonder if that exact point makes it too likely Will won't notice and it'll stay on the board, which isn't what Steve wants!
I'd be tempted with weal/korea* or ae/eyer/amoc*
play WEIL#/EVOE# because it blocks GLOTTIS and because AEI has positive valuation Kappa
EWE/EVOE is the best idea
Another reasonable option could be just playing (YER)E*, this looks like a plausible 4, and it really makes it look like Steve is trying to block the bingo but just errs in thinking that YERE is valid, or might be trying to bluff with it. That might arouse the least suspicion because it looks like a desperate attempt to block, not the very contrary
Ooh, that's a great idea too. And it has the similar benefit of WELMOCE in that Will maybe tries YERES* on his next turn, though it's doubtful as why would Steve make such a dinky play as YERE* if it took the S.
What about LWEI / *MOCI? It has the advantage to ILEA of showing the W, meaning bingos are less likely. Also if opponent had any doubt as to *MOCA’s validity, they will likely be certain *MOCI is invalid and feel confident to challenge. At the same time, they can still reasonably believe that their opponent meant this to stay on the board, because (a) the player was scrambling to block the bingo lane, and (b) maybe they were confused with MOCHI. In an intermediate level game rather than expert, there is a real risk that your opponent actually lets ILEA / *MOCA stand because they’re unsure of that hook themselves.
That's a great idea -- definitely like that better than ILEA, and also probably better than ILIA (another alternative in that spot that's been suggested as it suggests a worse rack than ILEA). But playing the W seems ideal here for sure. I didn't think about hooking MOC with anything but an A as other hooks seemed too implausible, but you make a good point about MOCHI. This is what's so cool about this position, there are so many fun and viable options!
Definitely play a plausible phony that also blocks. That way your golden no matter what. If you play a phony somewhere that doesn’t block, he could just go ahead and play his bingo.
Yep, agreed for sure
N4 WEAL: if CHINA and JAPAN are valid, why not try KOREA*? This one is bad because if accepted he's just stuck with a bunch of vowels and not a great score, but I thought it was funny.
ewe is way better than welmoce - actually blocks glottis, doesn't reveal the l, and is more believeable
Just to let you know - "Phony" is a noun NOT a verb; so "If he phonies..." is an incorrect usage of the word - even for Scrabble players!
MOCA might be the best
(MOC)IA but play the I sideways
Lol
if there's anyone to make the best suggestion about playing a phony, it's Josh Sokol
i recently played BARDICHE*. Which is a real word and not even a modern one
I think if I had saw WEIGELIA, I would have just passed and said "go again". Sure, it's coffeehousing, but in practice this never goes punished if you are quiet except in these key type of moments during the game.
Passing gives your opponent a really high suspicion, he would play something else
@@harraz7632 all of the phonies suggested in this video are even worse
Are they? One of my former clubmates once missed first place in a small tournament because he played BIM as his outplay, which got challenged off. He looked at the board upside down and thought he was playing MIB. IQ doesn't look all that different? @@asdfasdf4924