From: Edward Neugroschl <edneug@snet.net>
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 17:20:40 -0700
Subject: Your recent posting
Message-id: <3432E8D8.68B7@snet.net>
References: <199710011922.PAA26468@coxeter.math.toronto.edu>

John J. Chew III wrote:

I personally believe that we in Canada and the United States should start using SOWPODS for tournament play as soon as possible. If it is more palatable to some to pass through an intermediate lexicon, such as the Minipods lexicon used at the last Canadian WSC qualifying tournament, I am not opposed to that process. Given that the WSC is a SOWPODS tournament, I see no good reason to continue to handicap Canadian and American representatives by making them play most of their games with a different lexicon.

John,

Are you seriously saying that we should alter the dictionary used by all tournament players (c2000) so as not to "handicap" the handful who choose to play in the WSC? Why restrict ourselves to only adding British words? Let's open it up to all words used anywhere on this planet. After all, why should French speaking people, as one small example, be "handicapped" by not being allowed to use words they consider perfectly normal.

Wait, better yet, why restrict ourselves to playing words? How about any combination of letters? (Oh, forget that one. It's been previously suggested and discarded.)

There have been many postings on this topic. Some of them provide good reasons why SOWPODS might improve the game. I personally choose not to play SOWPODS, but that's just me. But, please, don't tell me we should all change our word source so a miniscule percentage of players would not be handicapped. Anyone who chooses to play SOWPODS is welcome to do so. If they therefore don't play in OSPD tourneys it will weaken the field, but tournament scrabble will survive. Other than making a few players happy, however, I don't believe tournament scrabble would survive a conversion to SOWPODS currently.

But that's just my humble opinion.

Ed Neugroschl