Copyright, 1989, 1991, by the Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA Phone (703) 385-0273 lojbab@lojban.org All rights reserved. Permission to copy granted subject to your verification that this is the latest version of this document, that your distribution be for the promotion of Lojban, that there is no charge for the product, and that this copyright notice is included intact in the copy. SCRABBLEtm for Lojban After several issues of promising it, I'm finally managing to get this into this one. JCB first wrote up some rules for playing SCRABBLEtm back in The Loglanist, Volume 2, in the late 70's. No one ever reported playing the game other than JCB. his rules became obsolete around 1980 with GMR, when he remade many words as well as the rules for making lujvo. Certainly, letter frequencies did not stay constant through this change. When we again rebuilt the gismu list for the Lojban version of the language, we also changed these frequencies. Since we've now baselined the list of gismu, that portion of the frequencies should not change. The cmavo list isn't baselined, but we know that 90% of all possible V, CV, VV, and CVV combinations have a meaning; the holes are nearly random, except for the xVV cmavo, reserved for experimental use. So we can estimate the final letter frequencies with some expectation of validity. lujvo are harder to deal with, since there isn't even a list of them yet. However, in developing and tuning the rafsi assignments, I had gathered statistical data from several thousand tanru proposed over several years by JCB, the old Word Makers' Council, Eaton project volunteers, contributors to TL, and our own gismu list workers. This data reflects no actual set of words, only word proposals. However, its statistical size suggests that it can't be too far off in representing the eventual letter-frequency distribution for Lojban. I did these letter frequency estimates right after the gismu list was baselined, and in November, converted them to SCRABBLEtm frequencies. Nora and I also talked about some rule modifications we think are needed to practically play the game with Lojban. I'll report my conclusions on these in a moment. First the letter frequencies, which I give both including and excluding the lujvo data: Letter non-lujvo frequencies with-lujvo frequencies occurs Lojban/points English/points occurs Lojban/points a 991 12/1 9/1 2949 10/1 e 496 6/1 12/1 1560 5/1 i 1045 12/1 9/1 2678 10/1 o 395 5/2 8/1 1046 4/2 u 642 8/1 4/1 1755 6/1 y 19 0 2/4 5553 8/1 ' 316 4/1 - 1012 4/2 b 212 2/5 2/3 865 2/4 c 360 4/2 2/3 1040 3/3 d 219 3/3 4/2 862 2/4 f 149 2/5 2/4 616 2/4 g 146 2/5 3/2 589 2/4 j 249 3/3 1/8 1008 3/3 k 285 3/3 1/5 1107 3/3 l 348 4/2 4/1 1395 4/2 m 254 3/3 2/3 1048 3/3 n 563 7/1 6/1 2047 7/1 p 203 2/5 2/3 872 2/4 r 460 5/1 6/1 2979 7/1 s 339 4/2 4/1 1363 4/2 t 361 4/2 6/1 1359 4/2 v 119 1/8 2/4 490 1/6 x 108 1/9 1/8 532 1/6 z 87 1/10 1/10 359 1/9 blank 2/- 2/- 2/- h 2/4 q 1/10 w 2/4 Total 100/184 100/187 100/190 I've given separate statistics for non-lujvo words so that you can play without lujvo. The significant occurrence of "y" only in lujvo requires different statistics. Read the rules notes following to decide whether you want to include lujvo or not. Thus, to turn a standard set of pieces into a Lojban set you need to make the following changes (presumably by marking them in pencil or pen on the English pieces): Without lujvo: 3 e's changed to i's 3 e's changed to a's 3 o's changed to u's with remaining o's changed to 2 points 1 r changed to n 2 w's changed to ' with score changed to 1 point 2 t's changed to ' with remaining t's changed to 2 points 1 g changed to m with remaining g's changed to 2 points 2 y's changed to c's with 2 points, other c's also changed to 2 points 2 h's changed to j's with 3 points, other j also changed to 3 points 1 q changed to u with 1 point 1 d and 1 v changed to k's with 3 points, other k also changed to 3 points remaining d's changed to 3 points, remaining v changed to 8 points Change scores on all p's and f's to 5, on all l's and s's to 2, all b's to 3, and the x to 9. With lujvo: 1 e changed to a, 2 e's changed to u, 1 e changed to i, 1 e changed to n, 1 e changed to r 1 e changed to c with value changed to 3 points 2 existing y's changed to 1 point 4 o's and 2 t's changed to y, with remaining o's and t's changed to 2 points 1 q changed to ' with value changed to 2 points 2 d's and 1 g changed to ', remaining d's and g's changed to 4 points 1 v changed to m with value changed to 3 points, remaining v changed to 6 points 2 h's changed to k with value changed to 3 points; other k also changed to 3 points 2 w's changed to j with value changed to 3 points; other j also changed to 3 points Change score on all b's and p's to 4 points, on all l's and s's to 2 points; change x to 6 points and z to 9 points. Now for rules changes: Since there is no standard dictionary that can be used as a reference, as in the English version, we have to have a way to verify that words that are made are valid. Since this is presumably also a teaching tool, we want to eliminate wild guesses, which is a problem for cmavo. Let's handle each word type separately. gismu may be verified on the standard list, although optionally the person may be required to give the keyword, place structure and/or to make a sentence that reasonably uses the word as a sumti or as part or all of a kunbri; these are thus relatively easy. Challenges can be easily resolved; mis-spellings are the most common mistakes to watch for.