Shan used ChatGPT (I have heard a lot about this thing yet don’t even know what it is) to do the pairings last night and this so-called artificial “intelligence” paired me with three fine, yet much weaker, opponents. That said, my three wins were no walks in the park. So maybe there was some intelligence there after all. In none of my games did I take a commanding lead right from the start. I had to struggle through garbage racks and trades before I could do anything. In my first two games I noted that I drew not a single S.
My record so far is 20-2:
493-258 against Ramona. I played CLEARAGE (105) £, DINNERs (74) and TARTLET (82). I had doubts about CLEARAGE, but the play was worth 105 so I had to attempt it. It sounded reasonable–it is, after all, in Collins–and had I withheld such a lucrative (and acceptable) play because of any timidity I surely would have been angry with myself for not chancing it. A common refrain when I play this game, that is. I should just go for it because I know I can deal with a word being challenged off better than I can deal with keeping a valid word on my rack out of fear. Even so, I had FERMATA on my rack, wrote it down, questioned it, and there was a place on the board for it, but I didn’t play it. Why would an oddball word like FERMATA occur to me if I hadn’t seen it before? I should have just laid it down.
370-343 against Richard. Richard played first and opened with RESHAPE (76) and that was the only bingo in the entire game. I was struggling through garbage and by the time I took the lead it was only by four and then five points after which time I fell behind again. It was about three-quarters into the game that I “surged” ahead 300-271 yet with both blanks still out I could not open any lanes so my strategy was then to close the board down. With one easy bingo lane open, I opted to block it by playing JEE (23) which I knew would give Richard a snapback score of 36 (by playing JIRD or some other 4LW starting with J using BDIORT?). I did the right thing because Richard did have DeORBIT, hooking OP to make OPT. I don’t know if he knew that word but I risked him bingoing out and winning if I left OP open.
435-293 against Charles. The beginning of the game was a curse of bad racks, as I played first yet had to exchange (for the first of two times that game). I did get down INCITERS (72) and RELAUNCh (72). Charles played INSIdES (67). Charles has been playing in the Club for thirty years so I know he is familiar with the rules regarding using the blank, but when he played INSIdES, he announced his score and hit his clock, not writing or even saying anything about what the blank was. So I did the dicky thing–yet permitted in the rules–to put the clock back on Charles’s time until he indicated in writing what the blank tile was. I did explain to him what I was going to do, as it says so in the rules. Imagine if I had just hit his clock back and said nothing at all about why. After I exchanged tiles Charles opened the game with GLEN (10). My new rack was CEFIOST and while COMFIEST was easy to find, I had an 8LW staring me in the face through that G, ECOGIFTS. I did not know the word, but it sounds freaky and has the flash factor.
The blank designation rule is below (emphasis mine):
IV.F. Playing the Blank
IV.F.1. How to Designate the Blank
a. If you did not designate the blank in writing, your opponent should request that you do so and restart your clock. You MUST then record the blank and position the slip to complete your turn. No other changes may be made.