Food was fine. I wasn't starved! (Ensures, bananas, luna bars, snickers. Hamburger for lunch, although I forgot to bring the leftover fries back with me.)
Fours and fives. I really feel like I'm getting control over them. I got to steal a nickel from Dave on a five, which is always satisfying.
Things that went okay:
Sleep. One of the dogs had us up in the night, but I didn't have any insomnia. So I was probably slightly affected, but my brain was in there.
Bad:
The lighting was terrible for me. I can't think with glare. It was a beautiful space, looking out over Philly, just gorgeous. But several of the seats were extremely glary for me. So I need to do two things. Solve this mental problem (maybe just fill in the board on my scoresheet and do my thinking looking there?) and come up with a nonglare board and demand everyone use it.
Challenges: Uh, what was I thinking challenging DEODARA? That's not even collins. I swear, sometimes I challenge a word merely because I want it off the board. DEODARA was in my way. But I can't waste those points. I am not leaving phoneys on the board now, which is real progress. I have to calibrate better. Five-point challenge is not free.
Ugly: I also challenged PRIMI.
Beautiful: It is always great to catch up with other members of my tribe. It was also great to meet and play three collins players for the first time. I think I had some ways to fend off Jason's win, but I need to figure them out. It might be a good pre-endgame situation to put up, actually.
I love this game.
5 points isn't free, but it's not that far away. If you get one challenge right for every five you get wrong, it's still a net benefit for you.
ReplyDeleteI've had experts give me nickels on short words throughout my entire career. I used to brag, like "hey I knew a word better than Wiegand/Capp" but that's not really how it works. Short words just require a lot more effort to be 100% certain than bingos, for nearly everyone.
My certainty threshold for playing a word is most often lower than my threshold for challenging it in 5pp, and I've only challenged more aggressively in terms of certainty as my word knowledge has grown.
Cheers,
Quinn
Yeah, but DEODARA. :)
DeleteI think I'm getting pretty close to correctly calibrating it based on my "percent" certainty. I want to be right every time!