tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 25 12:31:04 1996

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Re: tlhIngan version of <Huchmay' Quj>

Donna writes:

> Actually I was playing Glen's version of "Warrior" Scrabble at about the
> same time the Matt's game got started on the KLI listserv.  I believe that
> the two began independently at about the same time.  The two sets of tiles
> differed a lot in my opinion, with rather different choices for the limited
> number of highest point ones (Glen's were tlh and Q for 10 points; Matt's
> were tlh and ng I believe.  Neither one of the games included anywhere near
> enough *'*s.)  The two biggest problems I saw with either of them was that
> there really aren't any letters that are used much less often in Klingon,
> as in English: Q, X and Z as opposed to t, r and s, for example.  In
> Klingon the letters are all used with about the same frequency, as far as I
> can see.  The other problem with both of the two (Glen's and Matt's
> original offerings) is that there are far too many three letter words (I
> count gh, tlh, ch, etc. as individual letters).  This makes it much harder
> to find opportunities to play off an earlier word on the board than it is
> in the English version (and I gather in most Earth languages as well).
> Neither of these problems, of course, are the fault of Glen or Matt. [I
> picture Dr. Okrand as enjoying Scrabble in it's *most* challenging form,
> which should be obvious by the way he designed tlhIngan Hol.]

Actually, I found just the opposite in some respects.  Given the plethora of 
suffixes available it seemed easy to me to always be able to put down a couple 
letters *somewhere*.  The challenge was to lay down a word that was a stem and 
one or more high-numbered suffixes (e.g., HoHDI') thus limiting the number of 
additional suffixes that could be added by your opponents.  The strategy is 
similar to hoarding the U's in an English scrabble game to hinder the person 
holding the Q, or to defacing clues in a treasure hunt to screw over the people 
coming behind you.

Lawrence


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