Thai Scrabble ace's supporters say UK's Daily Mail is talking rubbish

[Stupooey]

No surprise that he Daily Mail is 'talking rubbish'. Some of their distortions of facts and statistics in the UK referendum build-up beggared belief. Unfortunately many believed them, which contributed to the tragic outcome.

Regarding Scrabble, I used to enjoy pitting my wits against my peers. One very sensible "rule" we employed was that if your opponent used a word you did not recognize, you could challenge them to define the word, with a standard dictionary to hand to resolve disputes. Regrettably, this no longer seems to apply, as many social (or should I say anti-social) players seem to have memorized at least all the "official" two-letter words, with no idea of their meaning, but which, armed with an iPhone, they can justify using. By emphasizing memory over skill, much of the enjoyment has gone from the game, although it is easy to see why Thais, brought up on rote learning, are successful. Perhaps there should be an "amateur" version of Official Scrabble Words" restricted to words in everyday use, to return enjoyment to the game.

[HHTel]

I'm not going to read this entire thread but I must make some observations. The English language has more than 1 million words as of around 2009. The average person will know around 20 or 30,000 words. An educated person will probably know 50,000 words. Even a professor of English is accredited to know up to 100,000 words.

This 'scrabble champion' is said to know 90% of the English language. That comes out at him knowing more than 900,000 words.

I can't buy that.

[Bangkok Barry]

Actually the daily mail can be accessed here in Thailand.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html

However the content is usually nonsense, as in this case.

Actually, it can't. So I suppose it depends on who is pressing which buttons, both the PC's and the government's IT police end. They are no doubt more alert than the BiB. And I have encountered the problem more than once in the past, as has my son, who is quite IT literate, with other media pages.

Why do you say the DM can't be accessed in Thailand after several others, including myself, have said that it can, I guess we must be imaging it. It has nothing to do with being IT literate, except in knowing how to use a VPN, which none of us that access it do. It has everything to do with the Thais not doing the job properly (what a surprise!), so that some can access it and others not. I believe that TOT is government-owned, so one arm of the government blocks it while another arm of the same government lets it through.

[NongKhaiKid]

"players like Komol who have encouraged so many youngsters in Thailand and around the world to take up the game and improve both their English and their mathematical skills."

Can't see where mathematical skills are involved?

By the way - love the game!

Maybe counting the points scored, no doubt with a calculator.

[Winniedapu]

"players like Komol who have encouraged so many youngsters in Thailand and around the world to take up the game and improve both their English and their mathematical skills."

Can't see where mathematical skills are involved?

By the way - love the game!

'Arithmetical' would be a better word I suspect. Adding, multiplication. Hardly what I would refer to as mathematical though...

Winnie

[cumgranosalum]

THe DM is a paper thaat specialises in stirring up racial hatred, so any story it can get and twist to follow that agenda is meat for its editorial team.

they also don't seem to understand the basics of competition scrabble.........same as chess etc it requires a certain level of Aspergers/Autism to compete.

[Eneukman]

Given Thailand has blocked the Daily Mail website, then frankly this is a nonstarter for most readers.

Not blocked, you can read the article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695715/Man-letters-Thai-computer-programmer-ranked-world-Scrabble-despite-speaking-NO-ENGLISH.html

Can't. It is blocked

No it isn't. I was able to access it from Jomtien,

Daily Mail, creative use of fact

The DM did not conduct an in-person interview, or even by phone

Their story was based on a Facebook conversation

Full transcript here (yes, in English)

https://www.techtalkthai.com/worldwide-3rd-rank-scrabble-player-komol-shows-what-he-said-in-an-interview-with-dailymail/

Sample:

I can understand what he wrote, which is more than I can say for an email I received from a native speaker (American) who used to live in the same condo as I do.

Alan

[dick dasterdly]

The Daily Mail certainly used to be blocked, but as its FAR from my choice of newspaper I had no reason to check whether this was still the case until today, when reading this thread made me curious.

The online newspaper was accessible today, so perhaps its no longer on the list of blocked websites?

[gandalf12]

"players like Komol who have encouraged so many youngsters in Thailand and around the world to take up the game and improve both their English and their mathematical skills."

Can't see where mathematical skills are involved?

By the way - love the game!

Presumably in adding up the word score

[sambum]

"players like Komol who have encouraged so many youngsters in Thailand and around the world to take up the game and improve both their English and their mathematical skills."

Can't see where mathematical skills are involved?

By the way - love the game!

Maybe counting the points scored, no doubt with a calculator.

Possibly, but I thought that nowadays, the scores were calculated automatically - and where is the mathematical skill in using a calculator?

[louse1953]

1 simple video from the lad of him speaking English would put things to rest.

I am sure next month you will see that vdo! Just as soon as it is rehearsed and practised and edited. Isn't this kind of like YL graduatiNFL an English major in the USA but can't speak a lick?

I can't understand half the Brits i meet.

[Johnniey]

I last played in the Thailand scrabble competition in Bangkok, sponsored by, amongst others, the "other" Thailand English language newspaper, around 23 years ago..

I was knocked out in the first round, by a Thai, who went on to win the competition 2 days later. He seemigly knew every word in the English dictionary, but could not string more than a few words together to be able to speak to anyone in English.

That was the reason I never played again. How ridiculous having a champion who could not speak English.

I've played the version with Thai letters.

It's very hard playing in second language, this guy deserves respect.

[biplanebluey]

1 simple video from the lad of him speaking English would put things to rest.

I am sure next month you will see that vdo! Just as soon as it is rehearsed and practised and edited. Isn't this kind of like YL graduatiNFL an English major in the USA but can't speak a lick?

Stupid and rude comment....

AND BAD ENGLISH !!!!!!!!!!

[Bwazi]

The official scrabble circuit is a complete nonsense. How words such as "xe" or "uw" can be used by anyone while keeping a straight face and smidgen of respectability is beyond me. The Thai guy must have some serious knowledge of some of the longer words that do have appropriate usage though, and for that, fair play to him.

It would have been nonsense if your comment was true but XE and UW are NOT PLAYABLE words in ENGLISH scrabble.

The words that do get played all have meanings in a Dictionary but aren't necessarily "everyday words".

[kevc]

Daily Mail could you use him to write their stories, grammars always c*rap and the spelling as well.

[sambum]

Daily Mail could you use him to write their stories, grammars always c*rap and the spelling as well.

Yours is not all that clever either!

[Richard W]

I've played the version with Thai letters.

How does that work? Thai crosswords seem hard enough to lay out, without the additional problem of accommodating tones and vowels above and below using tiles.

[cumgranosalum]

The idea behind scrabble is to spell words so quite possible using
Thai characters - so long as it is a recognisable sequence of letters....eg. B-O-W - how it is pronounced or tone is irrelevant.

Edited July 24, 2016 by cumgranosalum

[Richard W]

The idea behind scrabble is to spell words so quite possible using

Thai characters - so long as it is a recognisable sequence of letters....eg. B-O-W - how it is pronounced or tone is irrelevant.

I'd like more detail, please. I can see all sorts of details that could be handled differently. For example, the posh word for 'which' is written so so, sara ue, mai ek, ngo ngu. If the word were placed horizontally, how many tiles would you use, and how would they be placed? Would it be 4 tiles in a row? Would the order be different to what I wrote? Some people order the marks from top to bottom, though computers generally enforce bottom to top for Thai. Or would this word be excluded because it had a tone mark or because it had a vowel above?

[gomangosteen]

Words from the man himself:

Would you say you speak no English at all?

I speak English. I can communicate in English well enough, but my spoken English is not all that fluent because I don't really use it much in daily life. The speculation started when an English media outlet sent me a Facebook message asking for an interview after the rating result. I told him I would prefer to converse via Facebook messenger because it felt more comfortable. After I sent him the answers, he assumed I had used Google Translate and broke the news to the entire world, because he thought I'd avoided talking to him and chose to write instead. My writing is not flawless, but it's not that bad and it definitely not something that has been through Google Translate. Soon everyone wanted to talk to me and to ask how I had managed to win without knowing any English.

Were you upset?

I was. Now everyone, including friends at work and people I know, think I know zero English. It's not that I'm very eloquent, but saying I know no English at all is an exaggeration. I earned a degree in communication arts from Chulalongkorn University and I've worked as copywriter for DTAC for four years, which required me to use written English extensively.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/life/Putting-words-in-his-mouth-30291599.html

[anotheruser]

Some of the people criticising this guy and his English proficiency wouldn't get further in a conversation in Thai than "sawasdee krub" and even some may not know what that means. Oh one more thing, they also suck at Scrabble.