Re: Announcing New Women Writers Online Scrabble Discovery Tool

Since it's not longer April 1 here, am I allowed to ask whether this is an
April fools joke?

cheers
stuart

--
...let us be heard from red core to black sky

On 2 April 2017 at 01:42, Connell, Sarah <[email protected]>
wrote:

> [With apologies for cross-posting]
>
> Dear all,
>
> It is with great pleasure that I write to report that the Women Writers
> Project has developed a new interface that will enhance the texts in Women
> Writers Online by allowing users to discover the Scrabble® scores for the
> words in each text. The Women Writers Online: Scrabble Discovery Interface
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/index.xhtml> (WWO:SDI)
> provides sortable lists for all WWO texts, making it possible for users to
> determine the highest- and lowest-scoring words in the collection. The
> chart also denotes words that cannot be played in a single turn because
> they are longer than seven letters and words that could not be played using
> the letters provided by a standard Scrabble® set.
>
> For example, the highest-scoring words in Harriet Cheney’s 1824 novel, *A
> Peep at the Pilgrims*
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/cheney.pilgrimpeep.xhtml>,
> are “characterized” and “philosophically,” both with 30 points—although
> neither could be played on a single turn. The highest-scoring word in Ann
> Yearsley’s 1787 *Poems on Various Subjects*
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/yearsley.poems.xhtml> is
> “whizzing” at 33 points, but this word would only be possible if a player
> smuggled in an extra “z” tile from another set. The highest scoring word in
> the entire *collection* is “quizzically” at 43 points from Sarah Green’s
> 1810 *Romance Readers and Romance Writers
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/green.romance.xhtml>.* The
> text with the highest average Scrabble® score is *The Latter Examination
> of Anne Askew*
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/askew.lattre.xhtml>,
> 1547, which has words like “quyckeneth” and “excommunycate” at 31 points
> and “pertycypacyon” at 30 points. For sheer number of words that could be
> used in a Scrabble® game, the winner is Judith Murray’s 1798 *The Gleaner*
> <http://www.wwp.neu.edu/research/projects/april1/2017/murray.gleaner.xhtml>,
> with 15,490 total playable words.
>
> This interface uses cutting-edge technology to exclude words that are not
> allowed in standard Scrabble® games, drawing on the detailed encoding in
> the Women Writers Online collection. For example, excluding the contents of
> <name>, <persName>, <orgName>, <placeName>, and <speaker> removes many
> proper nouns from the results. Similarly, the interface excludes dialect
> and non-English words. We have also regularized some archaic letterforms,
> such as the long s (ſ), and regularized some spelling, such as i/j and u/v
> substitutions. The interface displays expanded versions of abbreviations
> and corrections of errors, wherever these are available.
>
>
> We are confident that our readers will find WWO:SDI a valuable research
> tool, as well as a useful pedagogical resource. At long last, it is
> possible to compare texts by the important metric of their maximum and
> average scores in a Scrabble® game. We hope that this tool will
> revolutionize the study of early women writers and perhaps lead to new
> fields of word-game based literary scholarship.
>
>
> We hope to add additional functionality to this useful resource very
> soon–including the option to have two authors or texts play off against
> each other in a simulated game. We expect to add scoring information on WWO
> texts’ performance in other word games, including Boggle®, Upwords®, and
> Bananagrams®. Finally, we are investigating the possibility of developing
> a WWO Edition Scrabble set, which would include extra “u” and “i” tiles (to
> be scored at 2 or 8 points when used in substitution for “v” and “j”). The
> set would also contain tiles for: ſ, æ, œ, eye, ☉, and ☾ (these last two
> are essential in any serious gameplay for scholars of the
> seventeenth-century prophet Eleanor Davies
> <http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/texts/davies.benediction.html>).
>
>
> We expect to have these new materials ready for release no later than one
> year from today, April 1, 2017.
>
>
> We hope that you enjoy this valuable new tool!
>
> All my best,
>
> Sarah
>
> Sarah Connell
> Assistant Director
> Women Writers Project
> Northeastern University
> 617-373-3219 <(617)%20373-3219>
>