Just the fact that there are multiple people who compete at a high level in both should speak to the crossover between the two

4:50 idk why, but "Enchantment - Pizza" gave me quite a chuckle

"Scrabble can't offer the same dopamine rush of opening a pack of cards and finding something valuable" I guess I'll never experience the mtg lottery myself, but I do get a rush when I play a rare bingo. One of my favourites is FOGGAGE. When else am I ever going to get to play a bingo with 3 Gs? Actually, I like to think of the words we've played as our collection.

If your goal was to spread competitive scrabble to a wider audience, it certainly worked on me, and I find myself talking about the game and its legends to other people as well. Thank you for showing me this facet to a game I never knew would intrigue me so much

You could think of the collectable aspect in scrabble in terms finding opportunities to play obscure words, where the collectability happens over the board instead of outside of the game.

Thanks for bringing Scrabble to a wider audience!

I think your idea of the collection aspect in Scrabble correlates more to how you discover synergies in card games. When a new card comes out, players immediately try to figure out how to what deck archetypes it will fit in, and what other cards in the set it is meant to work with. Similarly, when you learn a new valid word or the dictionary is updated in Scrabble, you have to figure out how it "synergizes," or more accurately what board states you can fit it into to either score big or get rid of unwanted tiles. For me, this detail remind me most of competitive Pokemon (video games, not TCG) since that is the competitive game I am most familiar with. When new Pokemon are released with new games and DLC, whether they are old Pokemon being brought back, new versions of old Pokemon, or brand new Pokemon, it's always a blast finding fun or viable ways the new Pokemon fit with team archetypes. An example is Groudon coming back in the most recent DLC of Scarlet and Violet, who is a notoriously top-tier restricted Pokemon in the VGC format, and the best Sun setter. It synergizes greatly with the Past Paradox Pokemon due to their Protosynthesis ability, especially the FIre type Gouging Fire.

“Rizz” is gonna break the game in 10 years

A comparison with go would be interesting, especially the endgame seems to have a lot in common. Both players have several plays, on several places on the board, and have to compute the best order in which to play those.

The obvious comparison is Words With Friends but did you know Discord has a Scrabble-like also called Letter League? I would love just a huge overview video going over all the differences between the Scrabble-like games (Upwords anyone?)

5:57 My 2 cents on that card design, just for fun: -Cool idea for making Scrabble into a Magic card, 50 points equating to 50 damage feels quite natural -Having strength/toughness on a non-creature card ("Legendary - Game") seems a bit off, I'd probably suggest making it a (Legendary) Artifact and removing the stats - it's interesting enough as-is, and matches better with other cards (Unfinity represents carnival games as "Artifact - Attraction") -I'd guess this is reasonably balanced to maybe a bit weak, 40 mana total and all five colors is a good bit of effort. Could be a cool payoff for a proliferate deck or some infinite mana combo maybe? -To rebalance, I would have it start with 3-4 alphabet tokens, but then require 5 mana + tapping, so you need to take a few turns. Also maybe make it cost 5 colorless mana instead (maybe making it playable in Affinity decks)? And for the proper pedantry: -The wording on "gains 7 alphabet tokens" is slightly ambiguous and could let you repeatedly bingo after the first time. I would rephrase it to "Remove 7 alphabet tokens from Scrabble: Bingo (deal 50 damage to all opponents)" -And the flavour text should be italicized :P Note: used to play a good amount of Magic, but I'm rusty, and may well have overlooked cool combos/decks this would work with :) Please take my armchair card-designing with a grain of salt

When I read Word Freak many years ago, I immediately connected competitive Scrabble to competitive Magic. Not necessarily based on reasons you outlined in the video, but because of how players in both games act and react, as well as tournament structure/length, etc. I gave up competitive Magic years ago and have never actually played competitive Scrabble, but my connection to the former has greatly informed how I view the latter.

WHAT A CRAZY EPISODE! I love MtG man. Can’t believe you also play! What a sweet video to watch, can’t wait for more :)

Fantastic video as always Will! I think more than just calculating probabilities, calculating competing moves is a huge similarity between the two games. In scrabble you often have several moves that score similarly, and you have calculate all those competing moves before you factor in other strategic elements. Similarly in Magic, you have to calculate many different permutations of attacking/blocking as well as factoring in the various tricks your opponent may have. Lots of fast math make for skilled MTG & Scrabble players. Great video!

Thanks for covering this like I and other people requested, and I'm glad to see that my comment was featured! These were all interesting points, and I think it's cool that you were able to interview people who have played at tournament level in both games. I can certainly see the parallels between scrabble word definitions and magic lore, and specifically I think that definitions are analagous to flavor text. Both are trivia that you don't actually need to know in order to play the word or card, so many professional players skip over them.

I know it's an in-name-only adaptation, but as a big fan of the Scrabble game show that ran from 1984 to 1990, I'd love it if you'd do a video on that. Chad Mosher should have all the episodes you need. I recommend starting with the August 15, 1989 episode, the start of Jacqui's reign. Seriously, the show is great, with some of the wittiest writing you'll ever see. It's proof that just because something is an adaptation in name only, that doesn't mean it can't be awesome in its own right.

Great video as always! I think you'd enjoy this year's Galactic Puzzle Hunt, which has elements of both MtG and Scrabble!

Ive been thinking about how your framing of “tales from the one percent” applies to Pokemon TCG as I’ve been playing the past few weeks, glad to see others appreciate the skill crossover between genres

Great comparison of word meaning and card lore. Personally, I find words much easier to remember when I know their meaning or origin. But I'm sure it's different for other people, evidently so for many scrabble grandmasters. I guess memorizing words is sort of like memorizing digits of pi at that point.

Wow, what a great confluence of interests! I actually used your video on inference to help a newer Legacy player understand the way that your Ponder/Brainstorm use can give an opponent information on your hand.

Two of my favorite games. I’m pretty bad at both!

What an awesome video. Missed out on your content for a couple months while my computer was out, but this is a treat. I've played Magic since I was 10. I turn 30 next month

Thanks for the cameo in the beginning, Will 😁

Hey Will, great video as always. I know it’s a bit outside of your normal content, but I’d be really interested to see a play through if bookworm adventures deluxe

hi Dude! I am the guy who asked for a video where you could show cursed words played in Scrabble. I love your channel so much that lately I made my wife to watch one of your movie and she was in awe. I thought tho - many of your videos shows Nigel as a "god" while - as you also show - many of his game are lost. Maybe it would be nice to show a video that would show some of loses from Nigel. Nothing against him or him being best ever. It's just because many of watchers could think that he is unbeatable. Loses come to everyone and I think it would be nice to show people that even legends make stupid moves. I believe many people could believe that if even someone like Nigel can lose, they can also not to stop trying and master Scrabble. Not sure if I wrote everything correct (english is not my mother tongue) but hopefully you get it. ;)

Nice video! I liked the arguments and counter arguments for the collection aspect. Also aaaaaaaaa, you're so based for mentioning Word Mojo (and Bookworm)!

I know next to nothing about Magic so this was interesting. Can someone explain to me how there can be 25,000 _different_ cards?! Are there many that essentially do the same thing and just differ in the backstory / artistry? That would be a bit of a parallel to anagrams in Scrabble.

I think you can say that MTG here represents a decent number of card games in general - I was thinking about Yu-Gi-Oh and a lot of the points are very similar between MTG an Yu-Gi-Oh, in some things I think Yu-Gi-Oh is more similar to Scrabble, like a low barrier for casual play (with yugioh - very old yugioh that people played back in the day and watched in the anime and still cling to, fan formats using older, less powerful cards, rush duels and with scrabble - the whole "scrabble as a word game" thing that people play casually) that people compare constantly to the entirely different game, you could say, of both competitive Scrabble and Yu-Gi-Oh, that take a lot more dedication to enter the scene compared to most other games, as well, which alienates a lot of people. Edit: Also, there are different formats (and the differences in how they play is significant for both) in both games arising pretty much only from differences in available cards/words (TCG vs OCG in Yugioh and North American scrabble vs international scrabble)

Been a pretty serious magic player for about 10 years, since I was a teen. I think you've nailed it! Definitely not a connection I've made before, but I love what you've laid out here.

I went back and forth between competitive M:tG and tournament Scrabble for a couple decades. I won a PTQ, but I did better at Scrabble. Got my scrabble rating up to 1980 at one point (this was before they adjusted the ELO formula). Highest I ever got my Magic rating was around 1840.

I've been playing Magic for nine years now and I hadn't considered its similarities to Scrabble - nicely argued. I enjoyed your QI and ZA cards. One thing I found with playing Magic was that my chess improved after I started playing. I don't have a Scrabble play group at the moment; time to go and find one and see if my game there has improved also!

Can you compare Scrabble with competitive Pokemon? (Maybe even collabing with a poketuber?)

LOVE this video, really well explained

Your notifications are easily some of the most exciting ones to get

Lord Wanderer 15!

I believe strategy also evolves over time. I see this with yugioh for example. Certain winning formulas are beaten by other strategy's. As it required ones anticipation, remembering and looking for hits in other peoples strategies

The scrabble board at 1:29 is so epic

If you keep this up, I do suggest comparing against Mahjong. Both are complex tile games where players fish for complex setups and payouts while trying to avoid giving opponents the tiles they need to do the same. One of the bigger issues would be that Mahjong has a lot of different versions, with a lot of different rulesets, and some even having different tiles involved. At least in the anglosphere, the choices for people who want to treat it as a serious competitive game seem to be American Mahjong, Chinese Mahjong Competition Rules (A.K.A MCR), and Japanese Riichi Mahjong. I'd recommend the last one, Riichi. Despite it's complexity, it's also the ruleset that has the most readily available online infrastructure, and seems to have the fastest growing playerbase.

I love magic, Scrabble, and chess so this is my favorite series by far!

I can kinda see the comparison if in Magic you had an infinite deck, since you don’t have to just know the few hundreds of cards relevant to a meta or even the few thousands of cards in rotation, but instead…all of it. Any one “card” out of 90,000 can pop up in your rack and you have to know how to play it and when and how it’ll affect any of the other 90k “cards” your opponent could cast 😵‍💫

This made me realize how many similarities there are between scrabble and competitive Pokémon. There’s different formats you can play in. Games consist of passive and setup turns followed by knockouts. Looking for winning lines given the worse case scenario. Unnecessary to know a Pokémon’s backstory. Differences I can see off the top of my head are, both players take their turn at the same time. And each pokemon can be trained to have different stats and moves prior to the game, unlike words that stay the same.

idk if anyone actually cares, but here is the list of all 88 cards that appeared at 1:20 in order. this list took about an hour to compile Scion of the Ur-Dragon Ao, the Dawn Sky Atarka, World Render Dragonmaster Outcast Drakuseth, Maw of Flames Dragonlord Dromoka Immersturm Predator Keiga, the Tide Star Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury Miirym, Sentinel Wurm Minion of the Mighty Nicol Bolas Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind Dragonlord Ojutai Piru, the Volatile Ryusei, the Falling Star Scion of Draco Silumgar, the Drifting Death Teneb, the Harvester Vorosh, the Hunter Bladewing the Risen Dragon Mage Dragonlord's Servant Dragonspeaker Shaman Korlessa, Scale Singer Lozhan, Dragons' Legacy Savage Ventmaw Thrakkus the Butcher Utter End Arcane Denial Brainstorm Despark Negate Sarkhan's Triumph Swords to Plowshares Austere Command Crippling Fear Crux of Fate Earthquake Eerie Ultimatum Patriarch's Bidding Vindicate Rampant Growth Diabolic Tutor Farseek Fearsome Awakening Nature's Lore Dragon's Hoard Orb of Dragonkind Arcane Signet Carnelian Orb of Dragonkind Commander's Sphere Dragon Arch Jade Orb of Dragonkind Lapis Orb of Dragonkind Sol Ring Debtors' Knell Frontier Siege Palace Siege Temur Ascendancy The Kami War / O-Kagachi Made Manifest Curiosity Garruk's Uprising Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner Exotic Orchard Arcane Sanctum Command Tower Crumbling Necropolis Frontier Bivouac Jungle Shrine Mystic Monastery Nomad Outpost Opulent Palace Path of Ancestry Sandsteppe Citadel Savage Lands Seaside Citadel Temple of the False God Tranquil Cove Dismal Backwater Bloodfell Caves Rugged Highlands Blossoming Sands Scoured Barrens Jungle Hollow Thornwood Falls Swiftwater Cliffs Wind-Scarred Crag

Good one Will.

Some of your MTG info is technically wrong, but it doesn't change the larger points being made. Very cool video and thanks for making it! Coincidentally, I've always loved MTG and chess, and stumbled upon your channel months ago, and was curious about the competitive Scrabble scene (I don't play often, even casually). It's pretty wild you've made 2 comparison videos for my 2 biggest nerdy passions to begin this series. Thanks for the content!

Funny to see 90k words instead of 27 letters but 6 chess pieces instead of a googol of chess positions :-) great video!

Make a video comparing Scrabble and Pokémon!! That would be awesome

I will forever think of definitions as "word lore" now

Always hyped to see MTG content 🔥🔥🔥

I appreciate the Eric Rosen shoutout

Hands in poker are more similar to words in scrabble than the 52 cards. Holdem has 169 possible starting hands (with 1326 combos, 6 for pairs, 12 unsuited unpaired hands, 4 for suited hands). PLO has to 16,342 possible unique starting hands.

I'd never even heard of MTG. That's amazing, Will

Will, I like your videos before you start even talking. I want to see you growing, man! Let's go!

I’m a competitive Pokémon player and I came to scrabble very recently but I thoroughly enjoy both even if luck is a big factor. I feel it’s just as much skill based as it is luck based however and i’d like to know your thoughts if you still play pokémon. Are there any inherit differences between probability?

I was going to mention poker in a comment even if you hadn't brought it up. One similarity I'd note about poker is that, like Scrabble, it involves an element of bluffing: It's not even that people bluff *that* often, but better players tend to be better at sussing out bluffs, much as stronger Scrabble players tend to have greater word knowledge. Another similarity is the luck factor, which is essentially absent in chess but is present in most other games. As for the number of 'pieces', I'd argue that poker has far more than 52; that seems like an odd error on your part given that you correctly note that Scrabble words are, themselves, game pieces. If we look at Texas hold 'em, for example, where each player starts with two hole cards, then there are 1326 different 'pieces' (or, depending on how you look at it, at least more than 52!). It's also worth noting that many top Magic players have gone on to become top poker players. The same can be said about backgammon. Finally, I'll note that back in my Scrabble tourney days, there were after-hours poker games most nights, and I really wish I'd joined in. I didn't start playing poker until many years later.

I feel like a big difference you failed to mention was the asymmetry of magic. Your opponent can have have "pieces" that you never will have no matter if you play a best of 3, 5, or whatever other insane number of games. This I would assume makes magic less volatile than scrabble because certain matchups can be so lopsided that outside of draws that are by far an outlier, the disadvantaged player is always playing an uphill battle. Scrabble does have "matchups" like this but you know when faced with a bad draw in scrabble that next game it could be your opponent instead. I'm not a scrabble player so I can't say for sure this is true. For example if competitive scrabble is often played best of 1 then your opponent's draws may as well be their "deck" and your draws are your "deck"

Funny coincidence, both games’ creators went to University of Pennsylvania. Richard Garfield and Alfred Mosher Butts

Interesting comparison. The biggest difference is in the economics. One can build a business selling MTG products and singles. Not much of a market for used tiles ;)

Re: the collection aspect, for Scrabble, isn't the real dopamine hit similar to opening a pack actually finding an amazing word to play, and then playing it IN game? Simply memorizing and "collecting" words may be analogous in a sense but not exactly the same thrill.

giving pokemon that '?' is a bit unfair. The PTCG is only 3 years younger than Magic and has repeatedly out sold it over the years. I realize it doesn't change anything about the video's narrative, but still.

Turns out Leyline Binding is a hard counter to Scrabble. 🤔

Also that swords to plowshares might be worth a few 100 dollars if it's alpha or beta

2:21 cavern of souls is not a new card, it’s a reprinted card

Seeing Scrabble on a magic card is intriguing. Anyone care to figure out how combine these two games?

omg I'm obsessed with the qi and za magic cards hahahaha

I have a weird suggestion for next episode but I'll go ahead : Scrabble vs Geoguessr. Now, what does a word game has in common with a game about finding where you are ? What made me think of that is when, about a year ago, Google StreetView announced they added Germany coverage after years of legal blockage. This move was made independently of Geoguessr, but impacted it in a dramatic way. And the only analogy I could think of is... our very own QI. The dictionary is just trying to describle language, not thinking about Scrabble, but sometimes words like QI get added and Scrabble is changed forever.

Great video but if you're going to count all scrabble words as playing pieces then you surely have to at least count all of the different hands you can have in poker rather than just the 52 cards?

JUSTICE FOR BOOKWORM ADVENTURES DELUXE!!!! I've made a few speedruns of it and think you would enjoy speedrunning it too! Also please compare Scrabble to Pokémon that would be so cool

That Za card feels like it could have come from an Un-set (Mtg's joke sets)

2:10 if we are gonna use all the words in the scrabble dictionary, then it would probably be more accurate to talk about tactical patterns etc for chess, or hand ranges/board position, or pocket combinations for poker. At the very least for chess it has 32 pieces.

Keep it up Will,😊

You should do Scrabble vs Words With Friends. I want to see you roast WWF as the inferior knockoff.

Fix the Scrabble site, I was in a game and it had two Qs so I swapped one out and it wouldn't stop giving me turns until I ran out of tiles and wouldn't regenerate them. Where do I file bug report

You should totally try to sell the NFTs for the QI and ZA cards.

I wouldn't say MtG is easy to learn, there are many nitty-gritty rules.

Okay you know this means you have to do a collab with Magic The Noah

Hi

Make Scrabble vs Ruzzle!

Not sure about the 6 pieces comparison with chess.

"Constant upkeep"

Sorry to bother you, but isc down for you?

Constant rule/dictionary changes.

I appreciate the competition, but let’s be real, the “collecting/dopamine rush” aspect of magic style games is based solely around getting you to keep coming back to buy more cards and more merch. They play off your love of it to pad their pockets.

“New cards” *shows a reprint* 2:19

SCRABBLE VS POKEMON VGC WHEN

umm at least give Posty the credit he deserves for spending $2 Million on the 1.1 The One Ring

Magic: The Scrabbling

FWIW, you summon "creatures" in Magic, not "monsters." That's a Yu-Gi-Oh thing. In fact, most Magic creatures are just people.

Pokemon TCG has plenty of staying power. The competitive scene has double the players of the video game side.

e

First!

They share the highest percentage of player mental illness lol