Nigel Richards' Most Godlike Move
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- čas přidán 3. 02. 2024
- Welcome to Episode 21 of Scrabble History, a series where I break down some of the most incredible plays, epic rivalries, and amazing moments in Scrabble's rich competitive history.
Regular viewers of this channel already know all about Scrabble GOAT Nigel Richards. But in case you needed another reminder of his incredible abilities, he gave us a moment to remember at the KSSA Indian Open in January 2024. In his round 3 game with Rajiv Antao, he made a move that nobody else in the world would find, reminding us that he truly is in a class by himself.
Sometime soon, I plan to resume streaming on my Twitch channel:
/ wanderer15
I also have a weekly show on the official Scrabble Twitch channel (Tuesdays 3-5 PM ET):
/ scrabble
Play Scrabble at playscrabble.com! - Hry
Will, this is the 7th week in a row you've shown Nigel Richards' most godlike move
He has many of them
Why do you think they call making a good move "Niging around super Nige style"
THATS WHY HES YHE GOAT
THE GOAUT
When you're a god that's just how it is.
Does anyone know where i can study words that only end in the letter "S"
Otherwise known as a Sticky S.
For example, "Kans" is valid. But "kan" is not. Tried Google, but that didn't help. I need a scrabble expert! Plz 🙏 😊
Dropping Pernoctated and getting +5 for a failed challenge is the equivalent of dunking over someones face and then getting the And 1 free throw...
its the equivalent of doing a one hand no looking full court shot
+5 is barely even a punishment.
@@Annihilator_5024…and then getting a free throw😂
@@Annihilator_5024you're bad at metaphors and you should feel bad. Like a toaster on Christmas.
@@davidf2244 L troll
Props to Rajiv for not flipping the table over.
he should've at least blocked that L lane....
@@ohtani2024 If Rajiv blocked the L, he might have won this game.
Nigel had set up near a triple on the other end of the board - he would be locking himself out of opportunity to get points back the next turn. Nigel having the tiles to play in that spot himself was chance.
@3:43 "Nigel does have one playable bingo here."
I like how the video never even mentions that Nigel found that bingo. It's just assumed.
Yeah, that’s a problem in this video. Should have been shown on the screen.
@@Benjy52 huh? Bro its literally the next word in the sentence; Eruption.
@@Benjy52it was though. Nigel’s point counter flashes green and shows the amount of points he increases by. Besides, it wasn’t a very big deal because pro scrabble players find bingos all the time, not just Nigel.
@@Benjy52 It was shown immediately after. E(R)UPTION was the playable bingo, which he played.
Before this game, I was looking forward to playing Nigel in that event. After his insane 11-letter find, that enthusiasm quickly evaporated. Sadly, I did get to play him eventually, a game I lost by 90-odd points. The GOAT for a reason! 🙌
I think mentioning a 90-point loss to Nigel counts as a humblebrag 🙂
Lol, I'm only proud of the fact that I got to play him, which is a massive privilege for any Scrabble player :)
Always count yourself lucky for playing the GOAT!
2:19 "Man this rack EFIN SUX!"
😁😁😁😁😁😁
Definitely not in this case lmao
You know, I’m starting to suspect Nigel knows all the 16 letter words too.
Just in case!
Just in case he goes to Germany, where the words are so long you put boards next to board next to boards, so you kann spell:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
The most impressive thing about that 11-letter find, as Will mentioned, is that he even thought to look in that “lane” to begin with, considering the other excellent bingos he had available. Amazing.
That and it was a Collins only word.
Let's give his opponent some credit - the recap wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for him publishing the game protocol. People probably don't realize that most tournament games aren't recorded for posterity.
Just to reiterate how crazy the word is, the same is true for it as was for CHLORODYNE: playability lists, which include several hundreds of thousands of words ranked by their frequency in engine autoplay, don't even include the word at all because it literally never showed up in the millions of self-play games.
That’s just disgusting holy crap. I’m glad to see Nigel finally playing in tournaments again :)
My jaw dropped with the triple-triple "influxes," but when Nigel played "pernoctated," my jaw hit the floor, detached from my head, and burrowed six feet underground.
In that order😂
Get you someone who loves you like Will Anderson loves Nigel Richards.
I see Nigel I click
We are simple humans.
Ok
Your graphics are fire. Letters floating around before forming into a word and so on. Must be a lot, or at least some work. It's cool, keep it up.
6:45 the fact that this assumption must be made seriously is simply bonkers. Nigel is such a threat.
Happy theres a new "Nigel in deep thought" pic for 2024.
i have literally never played scrabble why is this such a good video to me?
Watching greatness explained by one of the best in the world is always great to see.
Hey mate, huge fan of your content.
(I don’t play Scrabble but love following your analyses)
Also your sense of humour is on point :)
Best wishes!
Thank you very much!
The fact that only 5 of 46k games had 11 letter word played doesn't mean there are not 10k more of them where one such word could be played but wasn't since nobody learns them or just didn't spot the possibility.
That's true. In large data sets of AI vs AI games, eleven letter bingos are seen once in about every 6,500 games. Keep in mind that human players will often spot the possibility of a bingo of this type and repeatedly fish for it / actively try to manifest it, which computer players are unlikely to do, so that balances things out a bit.
In a sample size of 10 million games of two high level scrabble AIs playing each other, an 11+ letter word was played once every 5200 games. A bit more common than the one in 9000 on Crosstables, but still incredibly rare!
@@wanderer15 I had a game on Scrabble Go where my opponent played STAnDING on the bottom row from under the first TW square. I fished by playing a single letter, keeping DELNU?, and next move played UNDERSTAnDINGLy for 204 points :D
@@Cloiss_ Then another question is if AI plays it like the most optimal move, how many times it appeared as the second, third, ... best and just wasn't played because of that.
Most of such words are probably in the middle of the board and therefore ordinary bingos hitting TW at the edge will score better.
I played an 11-letter bingo (MISTREATING to the triple, from MIST) at the 2007 Players Championship, but it's not on cross-tables! I have no idea where that game is now. :(
After watching so many Scrabble videos from you, I have made the realisation that bingo is not a bingo in Scrabble and that makes me quite sad.
But bingoes are bingoes.
It's weird that we even use that term. In fact, in the UK, they're called bonuses, which makes much more sense.
I'm in the UK - I call them bingoes @:@@@wanderer15
@@wanderer15wait so you guys don’t shout bingo when you play scrabble?
Gotta start spelling it bingeaux
Pernoctate is a common verb in Spanish, modern use for hotels and such. Very impressive showing
Holy shit add PERNOCTATED to the goat moves list like damn 😂
not going to lie that is freaking insane
I’m almost willing to bet the other recorded 11 letter plays were all something like easier to find compound nouns. This has to be one of the greatest plays ever.
The ones I know are ELECTRI(CITY) and INTERVI(EWER) but there was also ASTROBI(OLOGY) a 12
Hey, I remember that last one 😀
It's been on my to-do list for a while to make a video covering some of these other moves!
@@wanderer15 If you really wanna get an 11-letter word down, play DEMO and get one of these racks:
• ABELNTU (for DEMOUNTABLE)
• ACCEIRS (for DEMOCRACIES)
• ACEIRST (for DEMOCRATISE)
• ACGHIPR (for DEMOGRAPHIC)
• ACILLNY (for DEMONICALLY)
• ADEILRS (for DEMORALISED)
• ADEITTV (for DEMOTIVATED)
• AEGHPRR (for DEMOGRAPHER)
• AEILRSS (for DEMORALISES)
• AEISTTV (for DEMOTIVATES)
• AENRSTT (for DEMONSTRATE)
• BDEIILS (for DEMOBILISED)
• BEIILSS (for DEMOBILISES)
• DEIINST (for DEMONITISED)
• EIINSST (for DEMONITISES)
• EHILRSS (for DEMOLISHERS)
• GHIILNS (for DEMOLISHING)
• IILNOST (for DEMOLITIONS)
(Any tile can be replaced with a blank tile)
I could watch Nigel Richard videos by you for the rest of my life. The amount of passion I get for an eleven letter word is ridiculous
Great video, Will! We need more of these! keelp em coming! Love it!
Just a great job, so thorough and the graphics are spot on.
You just gotta love that humility: NO MERCY - because this obscure combination is the best logical play and is both dumbfounding and uniquely humorous.
Zowee! It truly is amazing to see such brillliance -- and your narration, Will, is - as always - exquisite!
I wonder whether just for completeness' sake Nigel also knows all the 16+ length words, despite the fact that they won't fit on the Scrabble board at all.
You say that now, but just wait for Will's next recap where Nigel somehow manages to play a 16-letter word
I'll never forget that one time long ago where, thanks to absolutely perfect circumstances, I was able to play a 13-letter bingo, by playing my X and attaching to ALLY.
I have never been that good at Scrabble again.
The word, fittingly enough, was PARADOXICALLY.
That is an incredible play!!!
It's even more amazing when you notice that it was probably played as (PA)RADOXIC(ALLY), meaning both ends of the word were connected to chunks of multiple letters.
@@lucas29476 I don't remember the exact board layout, since it was about 25 years ago--just that ALLY was already there near the edge, and that I was sad I couldn't get the X onto a special square. Plus one of the Double Word Scores it would have crossed was already taken, though I got another.
It was either the fifth or sixth row from the top.
But when I saw the opportunity to play such a long word, I knew I had to pounce, because I might never get that chance again--and I never did.
That was awesome. I keep thinking there must be an end to the amazement, yet here we are
Another great video that illustrates how awesome Scrabble is.
Would love to see other examples of 11-letter bingos being played, maybe even longer ones! These extremes always fascinate the most.
The frequency of 11 letter words in tournament play understates their significance because the players don't know them. A better indicator is how often they happen in computer vs computer play. For what it's worth my wild guess is they're something like ten times as common there, which still is hardly anything.
Yes, this is true. The answer I got on this point is one 11 letter bingo in every 6,500 AI vs AI games. Keep in mind that there’s another factor - some of the instances of humans playing 11s are the result of multiple turns worth of fishing/attempting to draw a particular play, which computers do not typically do, driving their rate of playing 11s down slightly despite their flawless word-finding ability.
@@wanderer15 Is that because computer lookahead doesn't go that far or because they assume their opponent is also a computer and will successfully block such craziness?
Lookahead does go far enough to detect possibilities like this, but many large AI vs AI datasets are generated by much faster play selection algorithms than the more rigorous techniques available, just to increase the total number of games in the set. I would agree though that a slower-paced, deeper-lookahead series of games would feature a lot more blocks of these plays by the all-seeing computer than a human being, who would have to be extremely clever to detect such a non-traditional threat.
That is just amazing. Thank you for the video as always, Will! :)
I love everything about your videos. The graphics and commentary are top quality. Fingers crossed you can pass 100K subs this year!
Thank you! I’m just looking to stay consistent and release something new that I’m proud of each week.
Absolutely amazing video cheers mate
Nigel Richard’s should be a national treasure here in NZ! It’s a real shame he gets no recognition here :(
This was an amazing video. Thank you
excellent game, excellent analysis
his memory must be photographic, otherwise it really would be insane to learn 20,000+ words just to score 3 extra points in one game of scrabble
Do you know if he speaks other languages? "Pernoctar" is relatively common in Spanish.
@@sebastianbardon391I’m guessing probably not, or at least I’ve never seen anything regarding this. He did famously win the French tournament without speaking any French !
@@aidench3.14 Wow, I thought it was clickbait! I will investigate this guy further. Thanks!
Mighas try to drop a cheeky Pernoctated whilst playing scrabble with me dad for the next week or so
Good luck! :)
@@wanderer15 I hooked lute under Slayed, close enough ay !
Great video! Not someone who plays scrabble but I've found your videos so entertaining I might give it a try.
I do have a suggestion though: do you think you could make a video about the AI people use for Scrabble predictions, how it stacks up and compares to human players, what limitations it has (if any), and how it compares to things like Stockfish for chess? Thanks!
This is a great suggestion for a topic. (And thank you)
Nigel Richard brain is full of amazing words. Such memory!
I just think it's great that there's a game out there which has a *truly* uncontested GOAT.
what an insane game
also as an aside, I just wanted to say that I've literally never played a game of scrabble but your videos are still extremely interesting to watch, which honestly is quite a feat when it comes to this style of game. you do a great job of making something that is pretty dense/obtuse very clear and explaining what makes the things interesting
Really appreciate this, thank you!
hi, i love your content!
itd be cool if you can made a video about the longest scrabble words played (like 15 letters or smthn)
that would be cool to see, anyway good video!
im spanish and ''pernoctar'' isn't that stange of a word and I only played scrabble like twice so maybe thats how he knows it
11s are nuts
I don't give a shit about scrabble but I've watched all of these videos. Totally fascinating
Nice find!
Man, I would've loved to see a live recording of this game. The reaction from the commentators would have been lovely.
God I love Nigel plays
props to Rajiv to not quit the game after getting hit by so much devastating plays
I don't play scrabble, but I love your channel
6:53 Dude I cant even dream of those feats Nigel is beyond me
Absolutely jaw-dropping play! What's the level above "godlike" because I think Nigel has officially passed it. Love your videos!
Consecutive moves in a row! Impressive!
Yeah, somehow didn't hear the redundancy when I said this...oops!
At what point do these moves stop being godlike and start being nigel-richards-like?
I feel like, when it comes to word-games in general, one of the best ways to be comfortable enough with large awkward words to spot them in a game context is to have hobbies that put you contact with unusual words on a regular basis. If you happen to enjoy reading a lot of fantasy fiction, you might encounter a variety of obscure older words, while an interest in science-fiction literature would expose you to various technical jargon that is outside the normal experience. Just about any field of interest, be they among the arts or sciences, has its own sort of dialect in which unusually flowery words pop up and which the discipline asks you to be comfortable with. I myself have drawn more than a couple plays at the casual Scrabble board from things that show up in tabletop roleplaying games or collectable card games (the latter of which often have to reach deep into the thesaurus for things like 'yet another word that means it sets you on fire' :P).
Things stick in your head much better when you have experiences and stories to attach them to.
Great points. It's kind of a litmus test, too - does exposure to those more obscure words unique to particular fields of study annoy you, or intrigue you? If the latter, Scrabble might be for you.
Really cool play, it would be cool to see casters reaction if they had casters overwatching that board.
The magnus of scrabbles
Your content is so damn good. Do you have a channel that’s just you playing games like the old scrabble go tournament winner matches? I would watch all of them
Thanks! I wonder if a separate channel with gameplay videos might be best? I have kind of taken things in a different direction on my main channel here with the game breakdowns and narrative-style content...with a little more time on my hands, I'd envision doing live gameplay on my Twitch channel as well.
After seeing this game, I'll spend the night pernoctating!
Nigel!!! 🎉
Born too late to explore the world, too early to explore the galaxy, just in time to watch Nigel Richards tear shit up.
Yo hi Will, love your videos, hope you reach 50K subs soon!
Thank you! Just trying to stick with it, release something each week, and improve my skills!
thats actually insane
2:18 Hey Will, did you arrange the tiles to say "EFIN SUX" as an Easter egg? Or was it just alphabetical? If choice (a), high-five.
I literally spotted ANON on the board as a beginner player!
Class !
I won the Under 18 at this tournament (then called the iGates tournament) about a decade ago. I met Nigel (who actually signed the board I won as my prize) minutes after he extended Alistair Richards' phony opening bingo of KARYOTE* to PRO(KARYOTE) lmao
Wow! He didn't challenge KARYOTE*?!?!
Does anyone know if there’s a link to see the commentator’s live reactions when Nigel played Pernoctated? Would love to see if it exists!
This game wasn't livestreamed, sadly, but nearly immediately after it was completed, word started to ripple through the tournament community that something crazy had just occurred.
Just wow
certified Nigel moment
I would love to know, how long did Nigel take before making this move? Did he think about it long?
I couldn’t say for sure, but having played Nigel 10 times now in my own career, I can tell you that it’s exceedingly rare to see him take more than a minute on ANY move, no matter how complex.
When you find checkmate, look for a better move!
for half a second i was like “wtf scrabble has actual serious competition and strategy” and then i realized literally every game has some extremely dedicated community to pushing the game to its limit
Very true. Scrabble is a weird case, as it's a universally known game, but the vast majority of people think of it as a casual game like Sorry!, Battleship, Connect Four, etc. I once got a comment on another video that Scrabble has "secret complexity," which I think is the perfect way to describe it. Unveiling that wonderful complexity for more Scrabble fans to appreciate is a major focus of my videos.
Will uses Nigel Richards like GothamChess uses Magnus Carlsen
Mr. Anderson, I agree with everything you said and am as amazed as you, except for the part about memorizing words of 10+ letters. I'd assume many extreme experts memorize long words containing common letters, especially those that contain shorter words where they could just add on to long words already on the board. No need to memorize long words that have too rare a set of letters, and there'd be only a couple thousand that contain really good letters. I played 2 or 3 very long bingos years ago when a computer-game version of Scrabble first debuted. After watching the computer continually suggest very long words as the best possible play, I learned how to spot them. And I'm not 1% as good as Mr. Richards. Are OCTATE, NOCTATE, PERNO, or other short parts of the word in the dictionary of record that was used?
You make a very good point here. Longer words with established short-word prefixes or suffixes are the only ones likely to see game action outside of even more infinitesimally unlikely circumstances. To answer your specific question, none of OCTATE etc. that you mention are valid words, but it's a good start that the word starts with PER and ends in TED.
Remember that such long words don’t show up in games that often partly BECAUSE people haven’t learned them, just a disclaimer worth mentioning when showcasing the deminishing returns of learning them in terms of ”fraction of games that include 11 letter words”
Very true - good point. On the other hand, large data sets of AI vs AI games suggest that even with perfect play finding, 11 letter bingos occur approximately once in every 6,500 games. And human beings are slightly more likely to repeatedly shoot for a specific possibility long in advance, knowing no human will detect such an unlikely plan and block, which slightly tips the scales back towards humans again.
2 letter words and names?! In Germany that’d be considered kindergarten championships 😂
LOL AWESOME my friend and i have an inside joke of using Pernoctate in very mundane sentences
is pernoctate that archaic? i already knew that word without grinding
If I'm the opponent, I'd probably challenge each word Nigel plays to give him more +5s to his record score 😂
I'd love to see a video explaining what a sticky S is and maybe a few examples. Like how "Kans" only takes an S and is valid, but just Kan without the S is invalid. Could do other letters with words like unfazed that only take a D. A sticky letter series of sorts or something 😅
Could you give us a Nigel playlist?
Just a question
Are there any plans to cover the game with the longest legal word used in a scrabble game during a tournament setting?
Very interesting topic, I would think
This would indeed be a great topic! A compilation video of the longest-known plays could be super fun...
Do you know what the longest such word is?
Damn, even when Nigel "evens the game" 1:53, he's still ahead!
When he had 420 that was so sick
I can't believe there's a tournament in my city and I don't even know where to find a Scrabble community here.
If you'd like to check out the Scrabble scene, let me know if I can help with resources/connections!
In a perfect world with perfect tiles on both sides what is the highest possible scores, or just on one side?
Plays like this remind me of the character Data from star trek TNG. I assume they couldn't figure out a good enough example for him to show off scrabble skills because Nigel Richards wasn't available as a writer. Not that his crewmates would likely feel like playing it more than a time or two after getting soundly defeated... Poker was a more suitable choice :)
Now Nigel in a Klingon language scrabble game against Worf might be good for some laughs 😆
Don't give Nigel any more ideas! ;)
It's funny cos "Pernoitar" with pretty much the same meaning is a quite common word in Portuguese. I guess that makes sense that it is older than the split between the languages, but in portuguese kept beeing somewhat used while in english not at all
edit: I'm aware portugues is latin and english is anglo-saxan mostly, but you understand what I mean, older than the split at the point when this latin merger into english happened
I’m a simple man. I see Nigel Richards, I click.
Frankly, I'm right there with you
So what were the 4 specific interesting things alluded to at the start?
I think I should’ve put “set a new high score” as second on the list. Play an 11 letter word, triple-triple with an X, and play 5 consecutive bingos would round out the list!
Out of curiosity, is it known how many of those five recorded 11 letter word tournament plays were played by Nigel? :p
This is the first one, but there may be other instances of Nigel doing this in the past that haven't been unearthed (or that I'm unaware of)
You need to show the racks. IE what tiles they have.
Semicrazy he’s still looking after the other two spots.