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ANALYSIS ARCHIVE
Choice commentary from the list participants TURN 2:  Keiichiro Hirai: Hi. PITMAN seems a good play now that we picked AOSUWY with R on rack. In my first thought, WAY (F10a) 31pts, keeping balanced SOUR. Y on H10 is safer than W on H10 (y----- is less than w-----). Also S in our next move may be useful for PITMANS, TOWS or SWAY/---INS. (And possibly for STOW.) My votes(17) for WAY unless otherwise convinced. John Grayson: Seventeen tiles in view and still no E ! Possibly less to discuss this time. My initial thought is that ORSU has better synergy than ARSU , so it's a choice between YAW and WAY at F10. Should we be bothered at this stage that TOY hooks just O and S whereas TOW hooks N S T Y ? On the other hand a W at H10 would give better scoring opportunity to Maven down to H15 than a Y at H10, but possibly this is a minor consideration. Any other ideas on the relative merits and drawbacks of YAW and WAY? Lewis Mackay: My initial thoughts for move 2 of this game are inclined towards playing WAY f10a for 31 rather than YAW in the same position, because both the O and the U fit underneath the Y, thus making subsequent plays easier. Also, Maven will find it harder to play down to the H15a triple with a word beginning with Y, rather than W, which is what YAW would do. Potential 17 votes going in for this move, unless I am otherwise persuaded in the near future. Brett Smitheram: Shame the computer played VINO and not VINE. We'd have ROUTEWAYS$ through the -TE- then. Interesting that ORSU has been suggested to have better synergy than ARSU. My gut instinct prefers the latter keep. With that in mind, I'll probably end up voting for YOW f10a, unless someone offers a great argument to the contrary... Jackie McLeod: I definitely prefer a leave of ORSU. OU feels more comfortable than AU. Bonuswise it offers suffixes of OUS, OR(S), and prefix SUR. If you pick up duplicate vowels, as so often happens to me, I would rather have OO than AA. If the move is YAW, then RO.... goes under it, but RA... does not go under YOW. And O for TOYO. Especially if you get a nice J or Z next time. And so on. But actually I very much agree with Allan and Martin, re WAUR. Turnover of 4 rather than 3, scores OK, and shifts the nasty WU combo. There are different places to hook all 3 remaining tiles next time- OY for TOWY, O to slot in at i9 for NOR which might be useful, S on whatever. The Y retains scoring possibility even if the next pick up is all 1 point rubbish, and has quasi-vowel status if we get all consonants. Voting for WAUR. (And a rousing chorus from all, ala Sinatra: We did it OURWAYS) Stewart Holden: I'm far from convinced! I definitely believe that YOW in the same spot is better. It scores two points more and gives a better leave. I know that W and U are awkward *together*, but I really can't see any argument for preferring a rack leave of OSY to ARSU (even with the fairly poxy TOW-Y hook). I also disagree with the sentiment of "limiting useful floaters on the board", since it is extremely early in the game and will only serve to make it duller all round if we play so defensively from the start. I don't see that playing WAUR instead of YOW (and thereby being slightly more blocking by taking out the possibility of a bonus across from underneath the N on the centre square) will realistically make the computer any less likely to bonus next move. The board is already veering towards being more closed than open (no front hooks for PI or VINO) - do we really want to chicken out of a good scrap by trying to clinch a win on a closed, blocked board? Interest in the game (although clearly not a problem at the moment) will certainly diminish rapidly if we try to make the board closed up all the time. It's our second move, let's not be looking to shut it down right away just because Maven knows more words than we do! A leave of ARSU is better than OSY by a long shot, so let's play YOW (f10) and stand a decent chance of a bonus next move, rather than getting worked up about TOW-Y, which really isn't that much to get excited about, let alone worth sacrificing points and rack leave for. My vote is for YOW (f10). David Webb: YAW, YOW and WAY all score 31 points. The vowel/consonant adjustment is 0.5 in each case. The ARSU leave of YOW is 'worth' 6 points and the ORSU leave of YAW/WAY is 'worth' 4.5 points. OU has a synergy of 1.5 points and AU a synergy of 1 point. I don't know whether three and four letter synergies exist to a different extent for the two leaves. The equality of bingos containing the two leaves might suggest ORSU has greater three and four tile synergy but that is an argument for equality of leave valuation not one for superiority of ORSU. The sum of the above is that YOW is 'worth' 38.5 points and WAY/YAW is 'worth' 37.5 points. The TOY-O hook is not worth retaining the O for, in my opinion, because 1) the spot does not offer a massive score and certainly not more than the 30-40 points per move we expect to average in this game (witness the failure of of TRAMP-ING to slew the sim results in move 1); 2) opponent may well take the spot given the dearth of hot-spots; 3) a play by opponent down to the centre-bottom triple will leave us looking to words ending in O to use the spot. I therefore prefer YOW of these three plays but expect the equity difference between them to be close. WAUR scores 29 points and its leave of OYS is 'worth' 7 points. Vowel/consonant adjustment is 0.5 and synergy of SY is -1.5 (S and Y are not happy campers because they both like to go at the end of a word). The adjusted 'worth' of WAUR is therefore 35 points. It is, on this basis,inferior to the other moves considered. I vote for YOW (20 points).
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