Emperor Howdy
03-13-2002, 10:40 AM
Look who's malfunctioning crap is in the news again?
Hand-held Scrabble game cheats, says frustrated player
A scientist has discovered his electronic Scrabble game cheats him out of vowels.
It should deal letters in a completely random way but fails to give enough vowels out.
The game's manufacturers don't dispute the claim but say they didn't design it that way.
Retired US geologist Charles Robinove worked out the frequency of vowels his electronic version of the game after he found it difficult to make words from his letters.
He compared the first seven letters drawn from the hand-held game with those of his PC version, 100 times each, and calculated the frequency of drawing each letter.
Of the 100 letters used in the game, 42 are vowels - giving him a 42% chance of picking a vowel.
With seven letters chosen each round he should have got 2.94 vowels per hand. His PC version gave out an average of 2.84 while the Scrabble Express game averaged just 1.36.
Hasbro says it has since withdrawn the hand-held version of the game but only because of poor sales.
Mark Morris, director of public relations for Hasbro Games, said: "Anybody who plays Scrabble has one common lament and that's getting lousy tiles."
Nelson points and says: "Hya~hya!"
Hand-held Scrabble game cheats, says frustrated player
A scientist has discovered his electronic Scrabble game cheats him out of vowels.
It should deal letters in a completely random way but fails to give enough vowels out.
The game's manufacturers don't dispute the claim but say they didn't design it that way.
Retired US geologist Charles Robinove worked out the frequency of vowels his electronic version of the game after he found it difficult to make words from his letters.
He compared the first seven letters drawn from the hand-held game with those of his PC version, 100 times each, and calculated the frequency of drawing each letter.
Of the 100 letters used in the game, 42 are vowels - giving him a 42% chance of picking a vowel.
With seven letters chosen each round he should have got 2.94 vowels per hand. His PC version gave out an average of 2.84 while the Scrabble Express game averaged just 1.36.
Hasbro says it has since withdrawn the hand-held version of the game but only because of poor sales.
Mark Morris, director of public relations for Hasbro Games, said: "Anybody who plays Scrabble has one common lament and that's getting lousy tiles."
Nelson points and says: "Hya~hya!"