Mental Challenges – AI Scrabble Compared to AI Chess
Lately I started playing scrabble against some AI bots called VernBot, FinnBot, and AnnaBot. What I have found, is that the bots play the most obscure words no one has ever heard of, because they have access to the entire dictionary. However, they do not play strategically, so they are fairly easy to beat, even if you set it to the expert level challenge.
So far, after playing about a hundred games, I have won most of them, and lost about five by a few points. So I beat the bots in 95% of the games so far.
What I have since learned, is those general AI scrabble games are set up so they are easy to win for the average person. They call it “nerfed” for the unlearned I guess. No feather in the cap for those games!
As it turns out, there are more advanced games that are much more difficult to beat called Quackle, Maven and BestBot. So far I have not tried those. I will have to brush up on the two letter words. Quackle is open source so I think when I am ready, that will be my choice
Is it good for vocabulary building? I suppose it is, but if you have never heard of the word, or cannot pronounce it, and its meaning is some kind of fungi in rust, or the flora and fauna in East Asia, the likelihood of retention when it comes to words you never use, is pretty slim.
From today’s games the following are just some of the obscure words played by the AI bots, along with the definitions:
vox – latin word for voice
vara – unit of measurement or in Spanish and Portuguese it means rod or shaft
jennet – female donkey or a small historical riding horse
nisi – legal word a mandatory waiting period
ceil – covering ceiling or walls with plaster
yonis – Sanskrit for womb, origin or source
phut – dull flat muffled sound
azukis – South Asian beans
ryots – tenant peasant farmer in India
coquito – eggnog like cocktail from Puerto Rico
amrit – Sanskrit for immortal
azide – chemical compound with three nitrogen ions
ulan – this one is questionable and has different meanings, slang, red in Turkish or rain in Filipino
vugs – a hollow space inside a rock or mineral vein
Being a bit of a wordsmith, I place language above all other disciplines, which many might disagree with, especially for the mathematically inclined.
Chess and scrabble are among the most widely known board games. Chess is considered a mathematical game because it “operates as a finite deterministic game governed by strict logical rules, and zero hidden information.”
With chess, there is no element of chance, nothing is hidden. The possible pathways of the game creates a massive decision tree. A famous mathematician Claude Shannon estimated the number of game variations at 10 to the power of 120, which they claim is more than the number of atoms in the observable universe.
However, many chess masters believe the game relies more on pattern recognition, intuition, and psychology, as opposed to being strictly mathematical skills.
When it comes to the grand masters in chess playing the top level AI programs, AI beats them pretty much 100% of the time.
When it comes to scrabble, mostly because the letters are hidden, and subject to chance, the AI programs can only beat the world champions in about 50% of the games.
Scrabble involves massive lexicon combinations, randomized tile configurations, and many different strategies, such as whether or not to hold or wait to play the high scoring tiles, how to maximize all the double and triple letter scores, as well as when to block an opponent from using a high scoring slot.
To top it off, when you manage to use all seven letters, there is a Bingo, with a 50 point bonus added to the score for the word used. On the nerfed games I have managed several Bingos, and single word scores between 85-120 points. When I start playing the more difficult bots, those might be much more difficult to get.
The beauty of scrabble though, is the fact that AI cannot determine what letters you will get. If you get really good letters, and the board remains wide open, chances are you can beat them.
In the old fashioned way of playing scrabble, you could not look a word up in the dictionary. The fact AI can crawl the entire dictionary for every play does seem a bit unbalanced. In my opinion, if you can beat those bots at the highest level, it pretty much proves that AI is never going to take over the world!
Not that I believe in some of the hype about AI taking over, but after embarking on the bot challenge in scrabble, I find it oddly reassuring.
All thought begins with language. Einstein envisioned himself riding on a beam of light when he developed the theory of relativity. He did not envision an equation, or a string of numbers to figure it out, but rather a language oriented thought process.
This is why I place language at the top of all disciplines. Mostly it is because as a believer, it is also how the universe was created. God’s word spoke the elements of creation before they were created.
Genesis 1-3
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Psalms 33-6
John 1-1
The earth and the universe is filled with science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, social structures, psychology, and the hearts, and beliefs we all hold dear.
Scrabble is not comparable to the word of God of course, but it does reinforce the possibilities contained in words. Every word has a meaning. It sparks recognition in our brains.
The more we listen to, and read the word of God, the more we understand the nature of God.
The love of language, the power of language, and the embodiment of God’s word in all living things, is above all disciplines.
Computational power is very limited, even though it can theoretically arrange possibilities to the power of 10-120. It cannot understand the human mind, the human heart, and nor can it supersede the word of God. It never will be able to. Not a chance!