From: jimgm@netcom.com (Jim Miller)
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 20:59:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: SOWPODS as a METAPHOR
Message-id: <199709240359.UAA21355@netcom16.netcom.com>

Stuart D. Goldman wrote:

Those who advocate SOWPODS are concerned with one thing only: getting the best possible game through the best possible word list.

...as long as it's the same one used for the WSC. Come off it, Stu. I've been reading the list.

Let me respectfully answer that all of us who play in clubs and tournamwents have learned words, and if we have been playing any length of time, we've had to learn and unlearn still more words. Learning OSW vocabulary is nothing more than an extension of the same thing.

254 British-only SOWPODS 3s      1236 British-only SOWPODS 4s
977 OSPD 3s                      3904 OSPD 4s
---                              ----
26% more 3s                       32% more 4s

I hope these numbers refute Stu's trivializing of the amount of learning new words that adopting SOWPODS would entail. For the 3s, I calculate 25% as about the percentage of 3s with which I, as a reasonably literate person, was unfamiliar before I started playing Scrabble. Probably similar % for 4s, maybe a little less. Roughly speaking, then, it's not just a simple extension of the same thing; it's doing the same thing, on about the same scale, all over again. To be well informed about SOWPODS, players should be very clearly aware of this fact (among many other facts). This would not be a simple little addendum to our word list.

Moreover, glancing at the British-only words, I am familiar with very, very few of them -- again, coming from the standpoint of a well-educated, literate North American. This isn't surprising, originating as they do in a dictionary published in a different culture across the ocean. The definitions, the meanings, and therefore quite frequently the inflectional patterns of these words are not readily accessible to, I dare to extrapolate, most people here, either in the physical sense or in the sense of capable of being inferred or guessed at. Again, cultural relevance matters, a lot. As Larry Sherman rightly pointed out, do we really want this to become even more of a memorizing game, even for the short words, further removed from the love of one's natural language that gets beginners interested in the game? And for the convenience of a very small percentage of people playing internationally?

LOne anti-SOWPODS argument that makes some sense is that learning those woirds causes confusion as to which words are good when OSPD only is played. This is true, but I belikeve to a surprisingly small degree. My guess is that something like 1 game in 100 would be lost by OSW vocabulary used when it was subject to removal by challenge. My sugestion is that people try it and see, perhaps taking some pains to distinguish those words from others that they study.

I would think it's quite a bit more than 1 in 100, or else there wouldn't be such hoopla and vehemence from advocates for the international standard. I've been reading the list!

And of course, there has been more than one very good anti- argument put forward.

-Jim