53 vs 54 point word rarity in 5x5

[BoggleOtaku]

Hi Naboka,

When you mentioned excitement at finding 37 point words, I was confused as to why.
Then I started thinking about how excited my daughter would be at 67 point words.
And, finally, I realized you were obviously talking about 4x4 games.

Brutally faced with my ignorance of the most basic of facts regarding 4x4 and in abject apology at any mistakenly inferred slight, I present to you in meagre recompense a dynamic heat histogram of 4x4 words shown with and at same scale as the 5x5 plot.

Enjoy!

Wordtwist 5x5 Word Point Competition trends.png

[Naboka]

Hi Naboka,

When you mentioned excitement at finding 37 point words, I was confused as to why.
Then I started thinking about how excited my daughter would be at 67 point words.
And, finally, I realized you were obviously talking about 4x4 games.

Brutally faced with my ignorance of the most basic of facts regarding 4x4 and in abject apology at any mistakenly inferred slight, I present to you in meagre recompense a dynamic heat histogram of 4x4 words shown with and at same scale as the 5x5 plot.

Enjoy!

Wordtwist 5x5 Word Point Competition trends.png

Thanks. Definitely seem to be different universes, 4X4 and 5X5--and probably 6x6.

Long ago I concluded that playing the highest-point-value best words in 4x4 would require finding the q/z combination. Those two letters immediately truncate the board, resulting in a much lower number of available words. Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think a board exists in 4x4 where a player could reliably get 701 points, which are required to retire it. In other words, playing those boards wreak havoc on average total word scores.

Playing the lower-word-availability boards has opened a new world of possibilities. I keep finding boards with words used in chemistry that have to be the unique ones that you're interested in. Long words that it's likely no one has found before. Words probably even more rare than coelenterazines.

Your comments about your wife and daughter remind me of my life. Though my wife often finds me to be a tedious bore, (not that yours finds you as such) she's been hearing too many comments from friends about how much they or their husbands enjoy conversations with me. She's beginning to reassess the value of ideas that to her are utterly meaningless. She's a pragmatist and has little patience with the physics that belie our sensory grasp of reality. If she has no immediate practical use for it, goodbye.

Since I often have a reader's rather than listener's grasp on word pronunciation, my pronunciations can sometimes be off. English is a weirdly inconsistent language with spelling and pronunciation.

I remember a while back rolling my eyes when artistic types started pronouncing homage with a silent h. I looked through several dictionaries to see if that version of pronunciation was an option and couldn't find it. Nope. But that's the way so many people are pronouncing it now.

What's really interesting is to monitor the spelling of kindergarteners. When I first started working with my wife, a very smart kid had used chree in a written sentence. ??? Tree. Our tongues are positioned so closely to the same spots when making both sounds. Almost every 5 year old I've worked with has been shocked that tree begins with t rather than ch. Same with chrain and so many others. It's often how we speak, but not how we spell.

Because the schwa sound can be confusing, I often have the correct word on a board, but am frantically trying to spell it correctly. Mostly I'm doing educated guesses for long words from arranging word elements so I'm not visually following the letter paths on the actual board.

Do 5x5 boards follow the pattern of very high point best words existing primarily on boards with fewer words?

Time to get on the bike and enjoy beig physical.