Scrabble's Best Player Knows No Limits

I recommend "Word Freak" by Stefan Fatsis if you're looking for a non-fiction novel about the world of competitive Scrabble. It's one of the most entertaining and well-written books I've ever read. Almost impossible to put down once you've started it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142002267

This article talks a lot about Nigel being better than AI. Is that true? It seems that with a quarter million words and a fairly limited search space a bot would pretty easily be able to find the best word for any play. It might get a bit more complicated if you are also planning for future moves but it still seems like a bot should be able to out-play the best humans pretty easily.

Don't get me wrong, Nigel's skills are hugely impressive. But I feel this AI talk was more pandering to the current hype than and actual claim that he was better than a computer solver.

> He is widely believed to have memorized the entire international-English Scrabble lexicon, more than 280,000 words

Definitely helps.

> Nigel extended ZAP to ZAPATEADOS

My problem is I try to extend the word rather than create new words. So I'd look for zapped, unzapped, zapping, etc. Actually, if I had 'ATEADOS', I would waste my time looking for a 7 letter word ending in S.

> Nigel placed all of his letters between the P and TED, spelling out PERNOCTATED and turning NON into ANON. The play tallied 92 points.

Now that is genuinely impressive.

I wish scrabble had platforms as widely available and free as chess does.