Brian White writes the following:
>
>> So I had both blanks in my rack, and the Q and enough good stuff to score big
>> with it, but it wouldn't let me.
>
>Odd. I've seen the computer play multiple blanks at once and so it
>should allow it for players, too. At what positions in the word were
>the blanks located? There's a restriction on computer play not to allow
>two blanks in the first three letters in order to keep computation time
>reasonable and I wonder if it got applied to the player, too.
I didn't keep a record of it, but it's happened twice. If we rigged the
random numbers, we could get 2 blanks and some nice friendly letters on the
first draw... Yeah, here we go.
me:0 T R E E A _ _ you:0
You go first...
Enter word as "YXd <word>" (Y=row, X=col, D=a/d) or "help" for other commands.
: 77a cheater
The word 'CHEATER' cannot be placed at location '77a'.
: 77a veteran
The word 'VETERAN' cannot be placed at location '77a'.
: 77a restate
The word 'RESTATE' cannot be placed at location '77a'.
: 77a earthen
You placed:
60 EARThEn
for a total of 60 points.
chEATER would have required both blanks in the first 2 spots, but vETERAn
and REsTAtE (or REstATE) would have required only 1 out of the first 3.
EARThEn, with neither blank in the first 3 spaces, was accepted.
Random side note: I feel like I should have the option of choosing where the
blank goes when I play a word like "restate" with a real T and a blank T.
Random side note #2: I didn't realize when I sent these bug reports that
scrabble is no longer in Debian stable and it was only installed because it
was left over from before my last upgrade. I don't see what it could conflict
with, so I assume it was removed due to lack of interest, and the
availability of xscrabble and quackle, although neither of those is in etch
either. Sorry to make you think about bugs in abandonware, if that's what it
is.
Here's the random number rigging patch I used to do the above test.
--- /usr/games/scrabble 2005-03-26 18:15:20.000000000 -0500
+++ scrabble.rigged 2007-09-25 14:02:18.000000000 -0500
@@ -358,6 +358,13 @@
printf " you:%-3d\n\n",$PScore;
}
+my @rigged=qw/80 70 17 17 0 94 93 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 1/;
+sub riggedrand
+{
+ return shift @rigged if @rigged;
+ return rand($_[0]);
+}
+
sub DrawLetters
{
@@ -367,7 +374,7 @@
$count = 7 - length($$rack);
while ($count--) {
return if ($LRemain == 0);
- $rand = int(rand($LRemain)) + 1;
+ $rand = int(riggedrand($LRemain)) + 1;
foreach $char (split(//,"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_*")) {
if ($char eq "*") {
print STDERR "Fatal: $LRemain letters remaining
but Reserve is short\n";
@@ -1234,7 +1241,7 @@
DisplayBoard();
$Board[hex("77")] = "-";
-if (int(rand(2)) == 0) {
+if (int(riggedrand(2)) == 0) {
print "I go first...\n";
ComputerTurn(\$CLetters,\$CScore);
DrawLetters(\$CLetters);
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