After being completely drubbed in a recreation of Scrabble on a current trip, I did what any well-adjusted individual would: let it boil in my mind matter like a scorching coal for the following 48 to 96 hours.
This led me down a Scrabble-related analysis gap. Particularly, I needed to know what the highest-scoring phrase potential is. That’s, after all, a sophisticated query since Scrabble gamers are reliant on the board already created, however I did monitor down the very best recorded, sanctioned, single phrase rating ever performed. Because the clickbait cliche goes, the outcomes had been stunning.
Do not Miss
Not due to the purpose whole itself. The rating was excessive, positive, however not outlandishly so. The phrase in query was slightly sudden. Largely as a result of it’s an precise, useful phrase related to the present English language, as a substitute of an antiquated jumble of consonants. Nonetheless, that wasn’t rather more than a pleasing discovery. What got here as an actual shock to me was the weird setting and the individuals. I had assumed that the document can be set in some world championship, organized between two Scrabble professionals which have lengthy changed useful elements of their reminiscence with lists of two-letter phrases from the 1800s.
Shutterstock
As an alternative, as documented by a journalist and Scrabble aficionado at Slate, this match befell in a church basement as a part of a easy membership recreation. The 2 Scrabblers on both aspect of the desk? A carpenter named Michael Cresta, and a grocery store deli-man named Wayne Yorra. Collectively, they broke three separate Scrabble information: 1) most factors in a recreation by one participant; 2) most factors on a single flip; and three) most whole factors in a recreation.
The aforementioned phrase that broke information was “quixotry,” an outcropping of the phrase “quixotic.” The phrase racked up 365 factors all on its lonesome. It touched on two triple phrase scores, and the eight-point X landed on a double letter rating. With the doubled X, the phrase was price 35 factors, after which by means of the 2 multiplicative modifiers, that quantity rocketed up with slot-machine-like velocity to 315. As a result of it was a bingo, a transfer that makes use of all of a participant’s seven letters, it earns an additional 50 factors, bringing the overall to 365.
Unsurprisingly, this single phrase rating additionally gave Cresta an eye-watering last whole of 830 factors. For context, the very best recreation rating ever achieved by one participant in a match is 770, a quantity spectacular sufficient that Mark Landsberg, who set that document, is now referred to perpetually as “Mr. 770.”
Tack on Yorra’s additionally very respectable 490 factors, and you’ve got the very best single recreation rating ever: 1,320 factors. Set in what began as a recreation for enjoyable between two aggressive Scrabble gamers who ranked squarely within the backside half of the rankings.
If you wish to see the sport move-by-move, Slate additionally helpfully included a hyperlink to take action.
