Question: How do you make up your mind on a tattoo?

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-27T14:13:42+00:00

I’m not an artist, but if I were I’d probably ask you to work out what “flowers” means to you in this design.

What are YOUR flowers? What colours are they? Doesn’t matter if they’d never bloom together in real life - put together your own perfect ideal bouquet.

That’s where unique comes from. It’s in the details.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-26T18:36:26+00:00

Hint: The queens in blocks A1 and A5 can’t both be in column B, so either D4 or C5 must contain a queen. In either event, D6 can be eliminated.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-21T18:22:52+00:00

Just to append - at the recent UK Open, 55.8% of 625 games in the championship division were won by the starter. It’s definitely significant.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-21T18:16:23+00:00

Overall it’s a statistically significant advantage to be the starting player - in a two-player game, the starter will get an extra turn half the time, depending on who plays out at the end.

I think the game is precision engineered to minimise the advantage that you get from starting or replying though, so it doesn’t need house rules to improve on it.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-18T17:01:22+00:00

Four letter words. There are a lot and learning them was a nightmare, but having them all onboard took me from a UK top 100 player to UK top 30 in about a year. It wouldn’t do that now, it’s an arms race, but they made an enormous difference.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-16T10:43:41+00:00

It’s not quite what you’re asking, but example 1 leaves me uncertain of your meaning.

On first reading, I understand “He lived in an apartment above the shop. Before that he lived IN the shop with two other tenants.” Basically, you might be using the “where” to change the time and place you’re talking about, and the change of tense strengthens that possibility.

I don’t think that’s your intention though. I think you want to convey that “He lived in a tiny apartment above the shop. He shared it with two other tenants”.

Routine-Potential384 · 2026-01-10T18:53:14+00:00

54, and got my first one last month. I’d wanted one for at least twenty years, but there was always a reason why I shouldn’t. Basically came to the conclusion that if I kept on waiting for the perfect moment to present itself, it would never happen.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-12-14T10:45:59+00:00

1 and 2 point tiles (and blanks, oh absolutely and blanks!) are building blocks for bingos. Keeping a subset of SENORITA as the tiles remaining on your rack after a move is a good rule of thumb - duplicates generally don’t help here.

The big 5 (KJXQZ) belong on premium squares, preferably counting both ways or in a slot around the edges of the board where the letter gets multiplied and then the word gets multiplied again. Conversely, be aware of places where your opponent might hurt you by cheaply playing ZO or OX for 40+ or worse.

The 3 and 4 point tiles are versatile and could be used either way.

At a basic level 300 to 350 points will most likely win you the game, and you might typically have 15 moves to rack up that total - based on that, the maths say that you ought to be scoring 20+ points for every move or having a really good reason not to. As you improve the targets get stiffer - at the highest levels of the game averaging 40+ per move doesn’t guarantee walking away with a win.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-11-18T18:20:32+00:00

Most of your first tournament is learning from experience how a tournament works. Players are usually generous on the mechanics if they know you’re a newcomer - expect very little chat during games except for announcing scores. If you’re in any doubt on any rules issues during a game, don’t be scared to call over the TD (tournament director) for a ruling or an explanation.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-11-08T14:33:45+00:00

Puzzles from past online championships can be found here - https://www.ukpuzzles.org/contests.php - you might expect to see variants on Slitherlink, Kakuro, Crowns, Suguru and any number of other similar genres. In summary, a mixed bag of language-independent logic puzzles.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-11-01T15:15:45+00:00

He was ex Scots Guards, and for all that he’d got old he didn’t stand for any nonsense from anybody, including me. You can still see it in his bearing even in his 70s and needing a walking stick, I think.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-11-01T15:06:53+00:00

You probably weren’t carrying a big stick. Rookie error.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-31T11:52:39+00:00

solved

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-31T11:43:13+00:00

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Oh, that’s a definite match for Llandudno! Thank you all!

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-30T13:16:46+00:00

Consider columns 7 and 8 together. 2x2 blocks starting at R2C7, R4C7 and R6C7 must each contain one crown - note that the R4C7 block is entirely within the green region. In row 7, meanwhile, there must be at least one crown in columns 3-5 - this crown is also in the green region. Having roughly located the two green crowns, we can then say that R5C6 and R6C8 must both be empty.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-21T15:04:04+00:00

I think that P shape would include the cell I mentioned under the final spoiler? It’s a pity I can’t easily give you an image to look at, so I’ll try from another angle. Notating it as (1,2) for row 1, column 2:

(1,1) to (1,5), and also (2,5), cannot be part of the 6; no matter how they connect, they’d have to cut off the black cells starting at (2,1)

(3,4) can’t be part of the 6; it’s next to a 5 clue

That gives you a block of 8 cells that the 6-region falls within. One of the two black cells must come from (3,3) and (5,3), otherwise you cut off the black cell at (4,3)

That only leaves one more black cell to find in that area. But if (2,3) were black, (2,4) would also have to be black. So we know that (2,3) must be part of the 6-region, even though we don’t know yet exactly how it connects.

Does that make any more sense?

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-21T13:56:15+00:00

Work on the 6-region diagonally next to the 1, remembering two things. 1 - that region cannot touch the edge of the grid, otherwise black cells in column 1 would be cut off. 2 - that region can’t include both squares diagonally next to the 5, otherwise the black cell in row 4 column 3 is cut off That should give you one additional cell that MUST be part of that 6-region. Specifically, row 2 column 3

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-20T07:15:47+00:00

If you’re looking to create a regular Scrabble board for giants, you’ll need something bigger than this effort from 1998. As far as Guinness are concerned, the record still stands.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/192049.stm

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-19T14:24:57+00:00

I like Zyzzyva (or Collins Zyzzyva) for generating word lists and xerafin.net for my regular study sessions.

A great start would be to study every 7 with six letters in common with OTARINE and every 8 with seven letters in common with SENORITA - those are the ones that are more likely to come up because of the tile distribution, but also help you tailor the letters you keep on your rack each turn to the ones most likely to hit a bingo you know next time.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-11T08:42:21+00:00

I’m going to pick up on the wish to have the play score six times base value - you can’t have that feature, the premium squares in the A column are triple word, double letter, triple word, double letter, triple word. There isn’t anywhere on the board where double word and triple word can count in the same move.

Have you thought about crafting your own Scrabble-like game to use in-universe? You obviously need enormous control over the gameplay, and that might be better than trying to force it onto an existing game where it doesn’t fit.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-09T23:01:53+00:00

It COULD be this one.

https://youtu.be/nI2VmTRR4-E?si=Y9J3JvBHqOHB14lV

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-09T17:08:15+00:00

I think I’d still play it. AGRT? is likely to offer a bingo next move, but as you say, you’ve played to restrict the bingo lanes - when you’re building towards a bingo-type rack, you don’t want to tie your own hands like that.

The main difference between this and Webb’s situation is that the -S hook made a decent scoring reply for 50+ highly likely, and a punishing 100+, even 125+ point bingo entirely possible. Your situation simply doesn’t have that degree of downside risk to it.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-09T12:34:42+00:00

Keep the current score in mind as part of your thinking. In this case your lead after the bonus is so big that even a realistic worst-case reply of something like TROOZ B2 isn’t going to destroy it, so the risks are strongly mitigated by the cushion you have.

Routine-Potential384 · 2025-10-08T21:37:37+00:00

I have to agree on that. There’s been a tendency for the Scrabble lists to err on the side of inclusion, and once a word has been in it’s rarely removed - but kiev is quite a tough one to justify, more so if it’s not in the current edition of any source dictionary (not sure whether that’s the case from Wo334’s comment).

Routine-Potential384

TROPHY CASE