Carcassonne 84

Here was a map Christine and I built by hand back in January 2010. It uses 72 basic tiles + 12 river tiles. The perimeter is all farmland.

variations on a theme

there, this is my favorite.

Synthetic Art

I was curious about creating some synthetic art. I like patterns that vary only a few parameters in a design ... it might have been inspired by some mugs I recently saw. This pattern varies only 4 shades of brown and 4 shades of blue and draws little washers.

Tada!

I'd like to dig up my old image processing code and try some more advanced concepts, like trying some abstract filters on photographs. I really liked Vik's recent images of Christmas lights and other lights way out of focus in the background.

Carcassonne 198

We've accumulated many expansions, and are now up to 198 tiles. I used my software for creating tilings for Eternity II to put together a 18x11 map of all 198 tiles. There are an odd number of farm edges and road edges, so the perimeter has all farm except for one road.



Pierre, how many tiles are you up to?

Happy new year to all,
Juraj

6-6 in Calgary Scrabble Marathon

I just played in the "Calgary Marathon", a 12 round scrabble tournament all in one day. Here are some of the highlights from my games

Results at our Calgary Scrabble Club website.

Greed Kills

With a rack of CDEIIL?, after Wayne's bingo of HINDERS, I greedily tried CHILLIED through the H, as a triple triple. He challenged it off. My regret was I had two playable bingos through the I. Can you guess what they are?

Opening Dilemma

I was holding ADEIPTU. I wasn't sure what to do, whether to play UPDATE, keeping I, for 24 pts or play PIU, leaving a much more potent ADET, for only 10 pts. Turns out taking the points was better and I made the right choice.

Missed Bingos

Holding DEEFIT?, I missed two easy bingos. Holding CCEILO?, I missed two bingos as well. These are obscure however, COELIAC, or ECBOLIC. I had just studied ECBOLIC a few days before, and would have found it for sure if I didn't have a blank. But it was too new for me to recall.

Brilliant Opponents

My friend Eric, mentioned in previous posts, (where I played out to an I with PARCHESI last time) played phenomenally. He won the tournament with 11/12, which is a nearly impossible record in scrabble. But against me he had a great move. The board was very locked up but some dangerous letters were out. I was holding ? + NG + some other good letters and the one bingo line I was eyeing was through TI. I was threatening the nine REMIT(TI)NG. He correctly blocked that line, making TIL and dashing my hopes. Any lesser player would have just scored for points, and then ended up losing after I bingoed out. I did have a nice play after though, extending CELEB to (CELEB)RATING, an eleven, which is extremely rare to see. Was worth 48 pts when I hit a triple. Lost by 17 to Eric and by 14 to Shannon, who finished 2nd.

Odd Verbs

I remembered that SQUID was a verb, to fish for squid. It came in handy when, down by 20 points in an ending, holding 6 tiles, two of which were low scoring blanks, and an opponent that would easily go out next turn. I extended SQUID to SQUIDDED, using my blanks for a pair of D's, hitting a triple word score and getting 48 pts. That sealed my win. Blanks are normally super valuable, but late in the game, if you can't bingo with them, they can sometimes keep you from scoring.

Unwinnable

Some games you just can't win. I bingoed three times with SCHEMER, MATELOT, and RETAPING, but my opponents' SP(R)AYING, triple triple scoring 203 dwarfed my whole effort. Excellent win by Wendy, 567-373.

ANSWERS

1. CDEIIIL? = FILICIDE, SILICIDE
2. DEEFIT? = FILETED, FEINTED

14x14 Framed Puzzle solved

I finally achieved a major milestone with Eternity II, solving a framed 14x14 puzzle. I had it running on Christine's machine, and it took about 8 hours.

(Here's an online EII you can try, just to see what it is
http://uk.eternityii.com/try-eternity2-online/)

A framed puzzle is one that uses the EII pieces and is bordered by grey edges, just like the real puzzle. To date, the best solvers have been able to get this, but no one has reported success in anything bigger.

Unfortunately, a 14x14 cannot be used to get a 16x16 solution, but it does give you insight into the larger version.

Juraj

Western Canadian Scrabble Ch

I just played in the Western Canadian Scrabble Championship. It was 37 rounds of scrabble of 5 days, the longest tournament in North America. I played in three separate tournaments of 8, 8 and 21 rounds. I played ok but finished somewhat below my expectation.

My highlight was coming back from being down 169 pts against my friend, and one of the highest rated at our event, Eric. I scored 81 for LATEX (with a 9x X) and then had to bingo out with ACEHPRS and my word had to be 8 letters and end with and I, that was on the board. I plunked down PARCHESI, and was still behind by 2 but then won after adding the 18 points for his rack of Y, blank, and 5 vowels. Was an incredibly lucky finish.

Excellent tournament, but I'm exhausted and need some rest. Not to mention dishes, laundry, etc etc.

I lost one game by a point, and my three highest losses were from 459, 450 and 435.
Geez, what do you need to get to win in the top division???

Juraj