How to be a Scrabble champion

How to be a Scrabble champion


David Cheshire/Loop Images/Corbis (Credit: David Cheshire/Loop Images/Corbis)David Cheshire/Loop Images/Corbis

(Credit: David Cheshire/Loop Images/Corbis)

The week’s best arts and culture reads – including Leonardo da Vinci’s CV, the economics of Thomas the Tank Engine and how to achieve literary immortality.

In praise of Irvine Welsh, whose novels and stories contain “some of the densest slang writing one can encounter outside a glossary”. A gold-mine for the lexicographer. Welsh is “good for 1,300 unique slang terms”, among them keelie, cludgie, pagger, jammy, pish, stoat-the-baw, schemie, ganting, Jambo and swedge – though it is not always clear which words are slang, which are dialect, and which are Welsh’s invention.   (Jonathon Green, The Dabbler, 1,120 words)

A study of Scrabble champions show that the necessary skills are mostly acquired, not inherited. Good working memory is important; so is the ability to visualise patterns; but the main requirement is to know at least 200,000 words from the Scrabble dictionary – not the meanings, just the words. “Competitive Scrabble players devote an average of nearly 5 hours a week to memorizing words.” (David Hambrick, Scientific American, 1,200 words)

 “The place to start is with the railway company itself. It’s pretty clear that it is not a listed entity. The company engages in all manner of pursuits but few of them seem focussed on shareholder value. It could be state owned; I can’t rule that out but it raises bigger questions as to the nature of the state on Sodor. It’s most likely that the company is privately held, but closely entwined with the political forces of Sodor.” (Duncan Weldon, Bull Market, 1,206 words)

What ensures literary immortality? Talent is only a starting point. Taking Wordsworth as a template: it helps to write in a variety of forms, so that your canon will accommodate changing tastes. Live the sort of life that biographers can argue over for centuries. Get along well with your family, who will shape your posthumous reputation. Die somewhere pretty  – your “shrine”. Leave unfinished work for later discovery. (Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 1,320 words)

Poetry | What great poets sounded like

From 1962. “Had the history of technology meshed a little differently with the history of literature I might now be able to lay reverently on my turntable a thick black 78 rpm with a Globe label reading ‘Will Shaxsper: Sundrie Sonnets (recording supervif’d by my Lord Veralum)’.” Very well, we missed Shakespeare. But what a shame nobody thought to record Thomas Hardy or D.H. Lawrence reading when the technology was available. (Philip Larkin, New Statesman, 2,240 words)

Affectionate portrait of Ringo Starr at 74, skinny and fit, sober for 26 years, still on the road, still defined by the band with which he played for eight years a half-century ago. “The death of Lennon put an end to all the Beatles reunion talk. One of the reasons that the Beatles stopped touring was they couldn’t hear each other among the screaming girls. Modern technology would have changed that.” (Stephen Rodrick, Rolling Stone, 5,700 words)

Art | The greatest CV of all time?

The young Leonardo da Vinci made his career as a designer of weapons. In 1482 at the age of 30 he wrote to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, seeking patronage. His letter is probably the most stupendous CV of all time. After listing his skills in blowing up forts and building catapults, Leonardo mentions, almost as an afterthought: “I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.” (Marc Cenedella, 1,030 words) 

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