How to Win at Playing Scrabble by Guessing Countries?

At the very begining of this year 2022, I published the quiz I'm probably the most proud of: Play Scrabble by Guessing Countries. If you don't know it, the goal is, in only 2 minutes and 30 seconds, to get the most points, each country making the score increasing by its Scrabble value.

However, I read many times in comments under this quiz that it was too difficult with this short timer. As I promised to some of these commenters a few months ago, I have written a blog to help everyone who would like to increase their score on this quiz. All the stats below, with a few explanations, should reach this goal.

First idea: longer is a country name, and more it will be valuable. There are already quizzes talking about it on JetPunk, and that's very easy to make a first table:

If you know at least a little beat about the awesome game of Scrabble, you may have understood that the previous part was actually completely useless. During a game, by using only a "S", you can earn more points than by using six of your seven letters. Excepting the bonus cells, which aren't present in this quiz, of course, it's due to the fact, which makes all the interest of the game, that each letter doesn't have the same value than the other ones. We can build a new table, taking this fact in consideration:

But... By thinking about it a bit more, you easily understand than shorter is a name to type and more efficient it will be. We can combine the two first tables to dress a third one, showing the average value by letter for each country. It gives us a first order to type countries by priority, based on this ratio.

We can go further a last time: JetPunk has auto-type-Ins for every country, and some of them are shorter than their original name. Changing more than 30 letters in an acronym of only 3 is just a huge advantage in a quiz like this one. We can finally build a last table, ranking countries by the value by letter of their shortest type-Ins. It becomes the final and best order to type country names and maximize your chance to get an excellent score at this quiz.

Note that for some countries, several shortest type-Ins exist, but only one has been written in the table, for reasons of visibility.

Here are only the 20 best ranked country type-Ins, but you can type many others in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Make sure to check this spreadsheet to have an access to a more complete list.

Just note that if you really follow the order given by this document, a change have to be done: although Guinea's value by letter is inferior than the Guinea Bissau's one (1,17<1,36), you have to begin with Guinea for evident reasons.

After all this thoughts, the true question is: does it really help to win at playing Scrabble by guessing countries? I have to be honest: you won't win by using this technic. Considering that the very best record on the COTW quiz is 2 minutes and 33 seconds, 2 minutes and 30 seconds is clearly not enough to finish the quiz. But keeping it in mind, you will clearly improve you score a lot. I have decided to show you several examples of progressions on my quiz helped by this blog. They are classed by initial level and progression on this quiz in particular.

•First category: users with an initial score which wasn't excellent. I thank Phytox and FauneMimi for having accepted the utilization of their data. At this level, some would say that improve our score is really easy, but we are all different, and we don't all have the same typing velocity and geography knowledge. We can contast that the result is very clear: the augmentation is just exceptionnal! The x1,5 for Phytox, and x3 for FauneMimi show that, with a bit of help and method, we can do awesome things. Not that these two users are French, and type-Ins aren't the same in French and English, so it could explain a part of the first results and the huge efficiency of the help given.

•Second category: medium takers. In this category are generally JetPunkers with a good geography knowledge, but maybe some difficulties in fast typing (but once again, it completely depends). The results that I collected for this one are pretty weird.

First, I used mines. And the result is the one I was expecting for: a sensible rise, of around 15%, so a satisfacting score. I was mainly limited by my poor typing skills. Also note that I'm the creator of the quiz, so for my two first tries, before the elaboration of this document, I already knew some of its stats.

Then, Elboy's ones. And that's... the exception that proves the rule. After a little increase (3-4%), he got results lower than his original ones. But he found an explanation:

"I was thinking so hard about the list of the most "efficient" words that it totally broke my concentration."

It show an interesting thing: we all have different brain, and sometimes, for some of us, instinct works better than method. You just have to know how you like to work.

•Third and last category: serial fast typers. We are not equal in typing, and some of us, thanks to training or exceptionnal natural skills, are able to type more than 160 countries in only 2 minutes and 30 seconds. My dear Luni was my example for this category. After a test of the quiz (yes, 1703 was just a discovery), they scored an incredible 2258 thanks to the document. Despite the fact that this is incredible, analyzing the sheet help them a lot: they finally scored 2460, beating rawe, probably one of the most famous fast typers of the quiz. This 9% improvement shows that, regardless of your level, having a look at this list can help you in getting a better score.

I really hope these stats will help you to improve your score. If it's the case, how many points did you get before your reading, and after? If not, how do you think you could explain it?

I would like to thank all the kind JetPunkers who participated in the elaboration of this blog. Check their accounts, you should find hidden gems. Particular thanks to Luni for having helped me in fixing some mistakes in the document.

Don't forget to nominate the quiz if you like it, and to ask for another blog like this one for other quizzes in the series if you enjoyed this kind of help.

If you want more information about this quiz in particular, feel free to ask me in comment. I have many data about it, and maybe some of them could interest you.

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!