本期主题【语言大师最爱的桌游】
Wordsmith’s favorite board game
The King’s Cup, the globe’s biggest Scrabble competition, kicked off in Thailand on June 30, attracting some 6,000 players. The board game is popular in Thailand, and the best players commit up to 100,000 English words to memory. But most of the players in Thailand cannot speak English. “At the highest level, Scrabble is a math game. It’s all about probabilities and managing a rack (of tiles),” John Williams, former director of the US’ National Scrabble Association, told Yahoo News.
6月30日,全球的Scrabble拼词大赛在泰国举行,本次比赛共吸引了6000名选手参加。Scrabble在泰国很受欢迎,秀的选手们可能会在记忆中储存10万个英文单词。但是,大部分泰国的选手们并不会讲英语。据雅虎新闻报道,美国全国Scrabble协会前总监约翰•威廉斯表示,泰国选手的成功证明了Scrabble本质是数学游戏,游戏的重点是概率问题,以及如何管理你手上的字母牌。
马上学:后缀“-smith”表示某种大师、匠人。Scrabble是英语文字图版游戏,在一块15×15方格的图版上,参加者拼出词汇而得分。