Preface
I don’t have much to say for this article except enjoy some of my fun moments from season 24.
Game 1: ADEEIMNT
It’s Biyo’s turn and I’m sitting with the rack of BCIORST, holding a small lead here:
While waiting for Biyo to make their move, I’m shuffling my tiles on the rack and I eventually found my bingo of STROBIC, which plays hooking (DWARF)S for 100 points. I wrote down the bingo in my notepad and went on with my day.
I checked the game later while I wasn’t home and saw that Biyo had played 2B OXIDE for 41.
Here, I made one of my strangest bingo misses. Notepads do not save across devices, so not being home, I completely forgot that I had a bingo in this position. I saw the scoring hotspot under the X in OXIDE and played 3B BITO# for just 43 instead, 57 less than the bingo and losing me 14.9% winning chances. Most of the time, with the board so poor for bingoes, STROBIC is just game over immediately.
I did eventually wind up winning the game narrowly, but this miss was completely inexcusable.
Game 2: Trying to Squeeze Water From Stone
In the preendgame against kfraley, I’m feeling like I’m nearly dead.
kfraley is leading by 77 after making a nice comeback in the middlegame, and there is just 1 tile left in the bag.
I do have a few bingoes available, the highest scoring of which is J9 TOURNEY alongside HEIL for 64. The problem with this is that this will never be enough to win. I’ll only draw 1 tile in the endgame, and kfraley will easily outrun me with even short plays to the Y in TOURNEY or with plays like N10 ACINI for 23.
The logical next step is to look for good 1 tile fishes to try and bingo out and catch tiles on kfraley’s rack. This will empty the bag, so I need to draw bingoes in multiple spots. The obvious spot is to draw bingoes from the Os in AGIO and HELO, which are high scoring and on opposite sides of the board.
One option to look at is fishing either the N or the U to try and draw the A for (O)UTWEARY or (O)RNATELY, which both play for 80 points from the O in AGIO and 83 points from the O in HELO. However, if I draw the A as the final tile in the bag, kfraley necessarily must have CEIIINT. With that rack, kfraley can safely play J10 INCITE for 16, unloading 6 tiles including the high point C, and this option yields no higher scoring bingoes than the original (O)UTWEARY and (O)RNATELY. Either way, kfraley will outrun my bingoes by under 5 points.
The next logical tile to consider fishing is the Y, and there is a decent spot for it at N2 making (B)Y for 14. Drawing tiles like the A will give me bingoes such as (O)UTEARNs for 74 in both spots. The problem is that with the C on kfraley’s rack, they will outrun me just a single point by playing 14A (I)NCITE for 20, which gives me a better bingo of 15D NATURaE# underneath it for 78, but still causes me to lose 477-478. With other racks, kfraley often has the aforementioned play of N10 ACINI for 23, solidly outrunning my bingoes. Seeing as the C is a problem for me if kfraley has it to score, and that drawing the C would increase the score of my bingoes, I looked to see if I could win if I drew the C.
With a C draw, I have CENRTU?. This threatens the bingo of (O)UTRaNCE in both spots for 80 and 77 points apiece. Without the C, kfraley’s rack is also considerably clunkier, being AEIIINT. kfraley’s best option would be K9 ANTI for 20, after which (O)UTRaNCE wins 481-478 after getting 6 points for kfraley’s unplayed EII.
After looking over my options for a while, I found this idea of drawing the C after fishing the Y and played (B)Y. Macondo confirms this is the only play that gives me a chance to win, and it only wins if I draw the C.
Unfortunately, the final tile in the bag was an E, and after kfraley played their best move of ACINI, my top scoring bingo of (O)UTpREEN still lost by 11, 470-481.
Game 3: A Perfect Game!?
For the first time this season, I managed to play a game that Macondo gave a 0.0 MI (Mistake Index) to. As far as I can tell, this has only happened a couple of times in league (played by jellomochas, surprising just about nobody). Although it does help that most of my decisions in this game were not particularly close, where I couldn’t pick up a small error with a barely inferior play, there were some decent plays that I think are at least a bit instructive.
4 turns in against bnjy, trailing by 26 points, I have a wealth of bingo options available.
My 3 top scoring bingoes are D1 MISDE(A)LT for 80, and 5F MILDEST or MISTLED#, both for 78. I opted against MISDE(A)LT because it’s a poor defensive play. It places the flexible M into the triple-triple lane, offering bnjy easy opportunities to score from clunky racks. It also floats 4 good tiles that bnjy could use to hit me right back with a bingo to retake the lead. Between MILDEST and MISTLED#, both seem pretty similar at first, but MILDEST is actually solidly better. MISTLED# puts the S at H5, which allows bnjy to make a variety of easily scoring plays to the triple using almost any scoring tile, placing high point consonants on the double letter score, even the Q with plays like CINQ(S) out for massive scores. MILDEST is a bit harder to overlap along the double word score, requiring either starting with a vowel, or having 2 vowels in a row. MILDEST does put the E above the triple letter score, but it’s not that scary with the X already played.
With all of these in mind, I went with MILDEST for 78. Macondo suggests on average, bnjy’s average play after MILDEST is just 41.7 points, compared to 46.8 for MISDE(A)LT and 45.5 for MISTLED#.
Later, after landing a few more bingoes and scoring plays, I’m already leading by 101, faced with this position.
The board isn’t great for bingoes or scoring plays, and the unseen pool is not great either, with all 4 S’s having been played and clunky tiles such as the QUVYY unseen. There are not a lot of great options of here, but it’s always good to be proactive in these positions. I went with 13J BUNN, untripling my Ns and taking out the only realistic line for 7 letter bingoes under bATTERO#. Another benefit is that this saves my best scoring tile, the H, for another solid score on my next turn.
In the preendgame, bnjy opens a desperation triple-triple line with L11 DI(N)GY.
I didn’t see any triple-triples in the unseen pool (AEEILNOV), but I figured I might as well be safe, so I played my top scoring play of 15H HAND(Y) for 36, emptying the bag. The O was the final tile in the bag, and although I didn’t see that bnjy had a bingo with AEEILNV, sure enough, bnjy spots their only available outbingo of ENVIA(B)LE for 76, ending the game.
This is a pretty cool milestone that I didn’t think I would achieve out of nowhere. My best games in league before this were 1 or 2 games at 0.4 MI. As stated before, this definitely takes both some luck and some skill, so I’m looking forward to seeing other players play some brilliant games in league and join the 0.0 club.
Afterword
This was a pretty good season for me, finishing 4th with a 9-5 +389 record. I did draw a high 1.29 average blanks per game, but there were a couple games where I could’ve made better use of them. It was a pretty tough season for me in the endgame department, with a pretty interesting blown endgame where I missed a tie against shafiquet.
Stay tuned for Kh1108 and Inverse’s article about Season 24, and my commentary on our games together!
Stats
Lost Endgame Points: 204 (6/14 Perfect Endgames, 1 Blown Endgame)
Missed Bingo Turns: 6 (3 Word Knowledge, 2 Playfinding, 1 “Forgot I wrote it down” incident)
Suboptimal Bingo Turns: 11 (4 Word Knowledge, 1 Playfinding, 6 Strategy)