<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>For years, I considered making a Scrabble AI engine that could beat anybody. After all, I thought, if you get something that has access to a dictionary file, you're unbeatable.
Well, I've learned that it's a lot more complex than that when I started making my own. My initial run was an engine that would pick words based on whats on your rack and some random letters on the board. I tested it out with players on Yahoo's Literati. I didn't factor in double/triple word/letter scores, which ends up mattering more than the words themselves. My little Perl script was great at picking starter words that gave you bingo bonuses, but it was kinda piss poor with the normal game itself. I ended up playing only decently well against the opponents who were better at little words and bonus square combos than I (or it).
I was thinking of creating a better engine, but I looked up info on other engines out there. Turns out that I was reinventing the wheel. There were a bunch of <a href="http://www.gtoal.com/wordgames/scrabble.html">different engines</a> out there which were pretty much what I was planning on coding.
One stood out, though. <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2483/ ... html">Some guy</a> was working on one back in the 1980's, and this dude spend years perfecting it. <a href="http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/aba ... ">Maven</a> is the end result. The program is fucking U-N-F-A-I-R! It is the Deep Blue of Scrabble. Actually, it's probably better than Deep Blue because it doesn't really lose, even to Grandmasters. The AI engine is currently in the official Hasbro version of the PC/Mac Scrabble game.
The program itself is very old (Win32 type shit), but it still works great. You can program where the 3L, 3W, etc. tiles are (which in Literati is different than Scrabble), as well as map the positions of everything and then have it give you the best move, which is what I wanted.
So, I tried it tonight on a few unsuspecting players on Literati. The AI was just sick. It's 1000 times better than my little script, the dictionary is perfect, it imploys strategy on which tiles to use/keep, and it completes all of this logic literally instantaneously (unlike my script which took 2-10 seconds to finish). I was getting bingos about three or four times a game, if you could even call them games, because everybody forfeited when I was getting 100-200 points ahead of them.
I stopped playing because yes, it was cheating, but it was mostly in the name of scientific curiosity. Overall, I'm impressed that somebody has created something of this sort, which is the one thing that I've wanted to see ever since I've heard of the game.</div>
Well, I've learned that it's a lot more complex than that when I started making my own. My initial run was an engine that would pick words based on whats on your rack and some random letters on the board. I tested it out with players on Yahoo's Literati. I didn't factor in double/triple word/letter scores, which ends up mattering more than the words themselves. My little Perl script was great at picking starter words that gave you bingo bonuses, but it was kinda piss poor with the normal game itself. I ended up playing only decently well against the opponents who were better at little words and bonus square combos than I (or it).
I was thinking of creating a better engine, but I looked up info on other engines out there. Turns out that I was reinventing the wheel. There were a bunch of <a href="http://www.gtoal.com/wordgames/scrabble.html">different engines</a> out there which were pretty much what I was planning on coding.
One stood out, though. <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2483/ ... html">Some guy</a> was working on one back in the 1980's, and this dude spend years perfecting it. <a href="http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/aba ... ">Maven</a> is the end result. The program is fucking U-N-F-A-I-R! It is the Deep Blue of Scrabble. Actually, it's probably better than Deep Blue because it doesn't really lose, even to Grandmasters. The AI engine is currently in the official Hasbro version of the PC/Mac Scrabble game.
The program itself is very old (Win32 type shit), but it still works great. You can program where the 3L, 3W, etc. tiles are (which in Literati is different than Scrabble), as well as map the positions of everything and then have it give you the best move, which is what I wanted.
So, I tried it tonight on a few unsuspecting players on Literati. The AI was just sick. It's 1000 times better than my little script, the dictionary is perfect, it imploys strategy on which tiles to use/keep, and it completes all of this logic literally instantaneously (unlike my script which took 2-10 seconds to finish). I was getting bingos about three or four times a game, if you could even call them games, because everybody forfeited when I was getting 100-200 points ahead of them.
I stopped playing because yes, it was cheating, but it was mostly in the name of scientific curiosity. Overall, I'm impressed that somebody has created something of this sort, which is the one thing that I've wanted to see ever since I've heard of the game.</div>
Rosalina: But you didn't.
Robert: But I DON'T.
Rosalina: You sure that's right?
Robert: I was going to HAVE told you they'd come?
Rosalina: No.
Robert: The subjunctive?
Rosalina: That's not the subjunctive.
Robert: I don't think the syntax has been invented yet.
Rosalina: It would have had to have had been.
Robert: Had to have...had...been? That can't be right.
Robert: But I DON'T.
Rosalina: You sure that's right?
Robert: I was going to HAVE told you they'd come?
Rosalina: No.
Robert: The subjunctive?
Rosalina: That's not the subjunctive.
Robert: I don't think the syntax has been invented yet.
Rosalina: It would have had to have had been.
Robert: Had to have...had...been? That can't be right.
