(Link to video)
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  • Aims for the fastest time
  • Manipulates luck
As a fan of tournament-play Scrabble I wanted to try a run of this game, but my dreams of a speedrun showing off crazy vocabulary for tons of points was dashed when I realized the best speedrun strat is to play no words at all.
Basically, four passes in a row ends the game immediately. Fortunately the dumb AI never seems to exchange tiles and will simply pass when it can't play anything. When the game ends, each player with remaining tiles gets the point total of those tiles subtracted from their score. In order for this strategy to work, I needed to wait until I got a game setup with 1) an opponent with an unplayable rack and 2) for that rack to be worth more points than mine. Amazingly I only needed to wait 2 frames for this exact situation to show up.

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: The Vault rules state that board games are ineligible for the Vault. This movie falls in the same boat as the recent Othello submission. While Scrabble, unlike Othello, has an intrinsic element of randomness in the run, it still depends on terrible decision-making by the AI to work. The random aspect of the gameplay is not visibly pronounced in the run either, nor is this, as Nach put it with Othello, "a run which portrays TASing mastery over regular game playing", as neither player even successfully makes a move. As such, rejecting.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4551: Jigwally's GBC Scrabble in 00:15.39
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Huh. Well, I laughed. Vault it?
Eszik
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It looks like there are several AI levels (you chose Novice here, I guess it's the lowest one), maybe a run with higher AI levels would be closer to your dream? :p I imagine it would be much harder to optimize though. Anyway, voted yes because it's fast, and it's quite funny to see the AI just giving up. But the "theorical" part is kinda poor here, it's a pity :/ The Monopoly run is much more interesting on this aspect, for example.
I problably made mistakes, sorry for my bad English, I'm French :v
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Joined: 6/30/2010
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The vault will like this :) But would it be possible to make some sort of playaround with this? I really like Scrabble and I feel a TAS could go crazy with it.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Twisted_Eye
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maybe my mind is messed up but that may be the single most unintentionally erotic congratulations screen i've ever seen Only thing I didn't like about this run is that it goes by too quickly to really see what even happened. Pressing the buttons up to the champagne bottle is by rule the proper way to go with the TAS, sure, but I just wish there was some way to show the (-9) > (-20) screen
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The game is supposed to end at 6 consecutive non-scoring turns, not just 4.
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I'm sorry, but I have to vote No for the disastrous music alone.
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A playaround is probably the best for word games.
Spikestuff
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In-case you cannot: A. Pause fast enough. B. Check with the emulator yourself. In the scores of Scrabble and not Golf. Congrats, I vote Meh.
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Warepire
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The flow of cutscenes in this TAS was quite ... inappropriate? Other than that, this game is probably more interesting as a playaround. I vote no.
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Fortunately the dumb AI never seems to exchange tiles and will simply pass when it can't play anything.
You played on "Novice" setting. Is that still true for higher?
AMReese
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I know this is my first post, but I've been watching TASes for a while, so I hope you tolerate it. I, like others, don't see the point in making a TAS of a game like this unless it's a playaround. Nothing about Scrabble is about being fast, but instead being creative. There isn't anything creative about simply skipping turns until the game is over, especially on Novice difficulty. In this case, it's like resetting a game about blackjack until you get it on the first turn, and then ending the video. Not really what I consider entertaining.
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Joined: 11/23/2012
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I disagree. I think it's a really awesome and funny quirk of the AI that it won't exchange tiles when it can't make a word, and that one can take advantage of this (with good RNG) to speedrun the game. It's just so unexpected. Still, the non-TAS is better, IMHO, because you get to see the results screen for longer, and because IT HAPPENED IN REAL TIME.
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I'm reminded of the TAS with family feud. You could have a lot of fun with a Scrabble playaround. :)
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By default the hardest difficulty should always be chosen in any game, and there ought to be a justified reason to choose anything else. "It makes the run faster" is not usually a valid reason (if it's the only one). Was there a reason in this case?
mklip2001
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This is an amusing strategy, but it makes for a bad watch. That's the way these things go sometimes. I think a YouTube comment said that they actually had to watch this at 50% speed to appreciate what was going on, which makes a lot of sense. I would certainly like to see more of a playaround involving challenging words, but for right now, I'd say this is a good Vault run on the game. Welcome to posting, AMReese! I was in your boat once of watching runs for a while before deciding to comment.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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Voting No for Vault since it doesn't play on hardest difficulty. If the AI still behaved this way on the hardest difficulty and a nearly identical movie were submitted I would vote Yes.
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Accept for publication, but condemn to the depths of the Vault. The only argument I can see for not publishing is that this plays on easy difficulty - but the rules do state that in the case of a movie that skips to the end you don't have to select the hardest difficulty. Whether you consider this skipping to the end is debatable, though - you technically never actually play any Scrabble.
AMReese
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Thanks, mklip. I appreciate the welcome. thatguy, there's no actual "skipping" involved. He technically played the game all the way through. It wasn't a glitched run, but rather something the game was programmed to do. Like I said, it's no different than the blackjack analogy. The chances of getting blackjack are 1/21. So, if I play a game that revolves around it, get it in my first draw, and thus win the game, does that mean I just did a TAS simply because I quickly skipped through the menus?
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AMReese wrote:
Like I said, it's no different than the blackjack analogy. The chances of getting blackjack are 1/21. So, if I play a game that revolves around it, get it in my first draw, and thus win the game, does that mean I just did a TAS simply because I quickly skipped through the menus?
What it sounds like you're talking about is manipulating luck to get that 1 in 21. If so, then yes, it does, IMHO. The Clue TAS is very similar to this one, and it got accepted.
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Quite frankly, I find the concept behind this run to be rather hilarious. The mere idea that you can win at Scrabble with neither player doing a darn thing is unexpected and, to me, interesting. I can see this being published alongside a more conventional playaround at a higher difficulty.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Post subject: Scrabble Playaround
Joined: 11/17/2005
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I've got some ideas for a TAS playaround. Because I'm sure this high budget* GBC port of a traditional board game is flawlessly programmed* and contains an accurate dictionary*. - First check for dumb bugs. Can you wrap words around the board? Are the left and right edges of the board considered to be touching for purposes of building off/around words? There must be something very wrong this game. - Can you challenge words in this game? How poorly programmed is that feature? Maybe if you spell RECORD above and to the left of REST such that the two letter words OR, RE, and DS are formed then the play will be regarded as legal since "RECORD" and "OR" are in the dictionary? (Assuming "DS" is not word.) - I once programmed a version of Upwords which originally did not acknowledge perpendicular words on "both sides" of a word when extending an existing word on both sides. Who would think of that? - Extract the game's dictionary and make plays which demonstrate how terrible I'm sure it is. Spell QUIJIBO and manipulate the cpu into allowing it. Then spell a common word like TILED and manipulate a successful challenge from the cpu. - Blank tile hilarity. FeCK. (Spoiled if this game implements blanks by drawing on them.) - Never let the cpu make a play. And if they do make a play, then it should be LENT or MULE which you extend into CROMULENT. (I'm sorry for the crimes that The Simpsons has inflicted against your sport.) - And if possible, in addition to all of that, make the shape of the board into something interesting. Maybe all squished on the right, fill the entire perimeter, treat the bonus spaces as solid walls, or make pixel art of something. - Can you corrupt memory by spelling 8 words in a single play or by making a word longer than a certain length? That champagne cutscene is outrageous. I love it! Someone on the dev team was totally trying to get away with one there. I don't think it was unintentionally erotic. Why does Scrabble have full motion cutscenes anyway? Nevermind scenes with high resolution alcohol. Super Mario Kart had champagne but it was 8 pixels and very relevant to victory lane. What other cutscenes does this game have? Are any of the player animations funny?
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There's also that gambling game that was accepted too. I don't have a problem with that sort of blackjack TAS. If it keeps track of score with money you could even use it to max out the score with consecutive blackjacks. Or getting blackjack by hitting on a 20, etc.
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electricslide wrote:
There's also that gambling game that was accepted too. I don't have a problem with that sort of blackjack TAS. If it keeps track of score with money you could even use it to max out the score with consecutive blackjacks. Or getting blackjack by hitting on a 20, etc.
By definition, a blackjack is not something you can get by hitting: if you have 20 and get an ace, that's just a regular hand of 21 in 3 or more cards, and will only pay even money for a win, or return the bet if the dealer ties it. Even if you split 10s, and get an ace to come up on each hand, those don't count as blackjacks either and you only stand to win double the original bet, not triple.
Personman
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This is a great TAS. I showed it to several people who are not particular fans of TASes in general, and they laughed a lot. It should at the very least be in the vault.
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