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Words, Dyslexia, Scrabble - STOP OPTS and Order.

posted May 24, 2008 - 8:55pm
Words, Dyslexia, Scrabble - STOP OPTS and Order.

Words, Dyslexia, Scrabble&#174 -- STOP, OPTS and Order.

by Les Porter

Is there an order to things? Does dyslexia have any thing to do with innate order? Or innate dis-order? Scrabble?

To those versed in English and conventional spelling, the wrong words in the following are obvious. Or are they? To you?

POST, TPSO, POTS, PTOS, SPOT, OSTP, SOPT, OPST, TOPS, TOSP, SPTO, STPO, TSOP, SOTP,OTPS, PSOT,OTSP, PTSO,TSOP, PSTO,OPTS, OSTP, TSPO, STOP

Below, of course, I have underlined the "correct" group of words these 4 letters can make in English. Other adaptations of the alphabet to other languages would yield perhaps many more or fewer words than what I have selected here.

Dyslexia

Dyslexia occurs around the world, associated with reading/writing difficulties--with a frequency of about 5%-10%. At present, dyslexia seems to be most clearly defined as a brain wiring variation, or conundrum, the depth of which is totally unknown.

From the humorous Spoonerisms, (The Lord is a shoving leopard. or "Let us glaze our asses to the queer old Dean" ("Let us raise our glasses to the dear old queen")) to such things as what we consider improper ordering -- in the spelling of words, dyslexia often may be at root, but the humor or angst of the construction misleads one into the improper or ignorant formation away from the perceptual illness. The meanings of spellings and context of the words impart depths that the phrase "dyslexia" does not clearly demarcate. The variation in brain wiring that is associated with dyslexia plays over the concepts of "proper order" or "proper perception."

My wife for example, innocent and unknowing participant as well as subject in/and/of my observations of order and meaning, [proper sequences and the selection of left and right, or correct and incorrect], too often seems to get two equal choices wrong -- far exceeding the probability of so doing. That is, she somehow consistently turns the valve of 50/50 propositions the wrong way on the first try. Wrong, more than half the time. In words, that is not the case.

But she does have dyslexia and cannot "read" bouncing or moving along in a car for instance. Some motion tasks, for example pulling things off a conveyor belt make her physically sick, as seasickness or motion sickness does many people.

Polish Polish furniture as you would the French furniture.

Scrabble &#174

Scrabble&#174 is sold in 121 countries and 29 distinct languages around the world. Since I am hung up on English and left to right reading, I have no idea how other languages with right to left order would be to play -- and I would admire those who could do both.

If you have ever played Scrabble with a person who has mild or even severe dyslexia, but is well versed in the English language you may only be able to depend on the "luck" of your letter draw to get high scoring letters and words. You would think dyslexia and Scrabble would interfere with each other. I suppose they do, but what I have experienced makes me wish I had the ability to jumble the letters, to rearrange them mentally, in a manner that would allow my focus.

Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence -- from below average to gifted. If the fellow or gal playing the word game Scrabble, with you has dyslexia, for some it is an advantage. Instead of a lazy susan or rotating the board for the player to see the words and letters rightside up and left or right, my wife just reads it from any position, and can play and score respectably; competitively.

If you play social Scrabble with a time limit of say two or three minutes for each player to position and lay down a word on the Scrabble&#174 Board you do get an idea over the course of several games just how good your opponent/s is/are with the language. That said, many new writers here on Xomba are only learning the maze and mess of English. Many of those posting here are recognizably clumsy with the English language, and even those raised in it (yours truly) encounter areas which are difficult to scale. Scrabble&#174 and the dictionaries of words recognized officially by ardent players of Scrabble are interesting adaptations to both the game and the various languages.

While playing, it is common for me to analyze and shuffle the 7 letters sitting on my Scrabble&#174 Rack, re-arranging them constantly to build a higher scoring longer word, often getting inspiration for a longer word by shuffling them and holding letters I might otherwise play to make a small word and hope the draw gets me the E or T I need; gambling, betting on the "come", just like I might do with seven card stud poker, betting on the probability say, of finishing a four card flush in two draws. (I usually stay, I usually call.)

Some simple words can be made out of the a group of four letters but by enforcing the rule that ALL of the letters must be used, limits the number that could be composed.(4! Factorial Four = 24)

POST, TPSO, POTS, PTOS, SPOT , OSTP, SOPT, OPST,TOPS, TOSP, SPTO, STPO, TSOP, SOTP,OTPS, PSOT,OTSP, PTSO,TSOP, PSTO,OPTS , OSTP, TSPO, STOP

Above I mixed them up, but here they are in an array:

OSTP, SPOT, TSPO, POST
OPTS, STOP, TOPS, PTSO
OTPS, STPO, TPSO, POTS
OSTP, SOPT, TSOP, PSTO
OPST, SPTO, TPOS, PTOS
OTSP, SOTP, TOSP, PSOT

There are many words for which you may take all the letters that make one word and rearrange all of the letters in the word to make a different word. These four make six valid English words.

In Scrabble, it matters which letter is place on which space for scoring. So shuffling the letters on your letter rack is often helpful.

Here is a history of scrabble that may surprise you!

http://scrabble.mattel.com/en/adults/history/index.html

Here are some references that have much information about dyslexia.

http://www.dys-add.com/symptoms.html

http://www.dyslexiamylife.org/wb_signs_dsy.htm?gclid=CPCaxpTPv5MCFQkmIgodmlaRCg

Next time you think that dyslexia is life stopping -- realize there is a range and there are some real advantages to being able to think outside the box, or in some other order.

Championship game and scores:

http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/tourneys/2005/nsc/build/player/1/064.html.

http://boardgames.about.com/od/scrabble/a/2006_US_open.htm

http://live.wscgames.com/2007/index.html

Somed 2008 Scrabble championships!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS240US240&q=scrabble++championship+2008&btnG=Search

Author: Les Porter
-A +A


Comments

Great Post

Freeseo - Mon, 2008-14-7 6:56 pm
I love Scrabble. I have played Arabic Scrabble when I was a student of the language and I must say, it was much more difficult (to me) to grasp the concept of playing Scrabble right to left than learning to read and write from right to left. It was quite a challenge and, as I recall, very frustrating! (I do not like Arabic Scrabble) I also love Scrapple, but since most people do not know what Scrapple is, I may have to write a piece on the delicious grey pork product... Come to think of it, I believe that I have, when I was a young'un, played Scrabble while eating Scrapple. Scrabble 3 Complete FREE Webmaster Resources FREE Cell Phones with Great Plans - Compare Carriers

Xombytes

Top Notch

Nydeas - Sat, 2008-7-6 10:05 pm
All these other comments are so long and in depth. Im just going to say simply. I really enjoyed the article. Im into psych, and that sort of thing, so anything that gives me a better understanding of the mind is great! It was well written, and very easy to understand. High Five! lol Try to always be more than what you are, not less.

Try to always be more than what you are, not less.

Suzuki

Antonella - Sun, 2008-25-5 4:17 pm
Hey... I teach piano through the suzuki method and my pupils have not so many difficults as other.

Yeah I did mean north,

SaraJoy - Sun, 2008-25-5 3:10 pm
Yeah I did mean north, south, east, west, direction. I literally have to find the sun to know, and that still doesn't mean that I can find my way...lol. One time my mother asked my what direction I thought my school was in from our house, and after living there for 5 years, I still somehow had it wrong. It certainly can make you feel quite dumb at times to not know stuff like that, but hey, I can put a computer together, so I guess I shouldn't let that get to me...lol Ironically, despite my dyslexia, I have played the violin since I was 7. I was lucky enough to learn by the suzuki method, and was already playing quite well before I had to read music. Once I hear a piece once I can usually play it. And I have through the years became quite a good music reader, but mainly because I think more in the context of fingering that I do numbers, if that makes sense. (It's far less easy to confuse the 4th finger, if I know where it is on the scale, than it is to actually transpose the music) Oh yeah, it also helps with instruments when you are ambidextrous. Somehow my hands are quite independent, so when it comes to playing the violin, I have never had a problem with the left hand/ right hand coordination. Thanks for the encouragement with my writing. I really love to do it, and I think when people really love something they should never let anything, even a disability, keep them from doing it.

http://www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com/challenge/15147

About Rubinstein

Antonella - Sun, 2008-25-5 2:22 pm
He was a wonderful pianist! Thank you for sharing your experience.

Observe...

Antonella - Sun, 2008-25-5 2:07 pm
Yes, you're right: music is to listen, not to read! You could find another way (with little pictures for example) to write music and I'm sure it would be easier. And people with dislexia are really good in improvisation and they are very musical. I just like to observe children: I think I don't teach just piano, but I try always to teach something for life.:-)

rawnak, Antonella, SaraJoy -- all thanks!

Les Porter - Sun, 2008-25-5 12:50 pm
rawnak, Antonella, SaraJoy -- all thanks! rawnak, I am pleased that you did dig into the area of dyslexia more deeply to form your response. Knowing the difficulty my wife has in reading, Antonella's musical observations clearly have application and relevance to the overall perceptual mechanisms built into our bodies and the mechanisms which also direct that from our brains and minds outward to the world other people seeing us inhabit. Others may not see the world you live in from your means of communicating the information. All of us, dyslexic or not, have great challenges in communicating what we think, see, hear or understand -- or experience without the added warp or difficulty of dyslexia-like abberations or alterations produced. Meaning, one can screw-up (mangle) the notes of a perfectly read piece of music from the score to the instrument and the noise or painful tonal sequences that are driven into the air from a flawed effort, excrutiating to the trained ear. To go a step further, I do not know if I could be "taught" to read music or arabic like I do written textual English. I play the piano by "ear" and when I screw it up I know it, but never could I discipline my self to learn the reading of music nor the timing which I have as an intenal knack, Still. To digress slightly. I can still "improv" at the keyboard. I have my piano in storage, but doubt that I will ever hear the quality of music it could produce. (It is not a grand, it is a mere upright, over 100 years old, in need now of serious adjustment and tuning sprucing-up, ivory glued back to the keyboard -- Oh! But what an instrument! when tuned and played! Magnificent, like Rachmaninoff and Gershwin or Beethoven.) --------------Celia. Hmmm look up on Xomba, "Celia, your orange gloves". Celia had (likely still has) perfect pitch. At a concert exhibition I escorted her to in college, we attended a permormance by pianist Arthur Rubenstein. It was to me exquisite. Brahms mostly, I recall a Chopin, but this was a long long time ago; However, I am a poor clunker when it comes to the highest levels of musical endeavor, and my ears (now ear) though tonally close enough to identify the correct notes in a bar room are levels lost when a great pianist plays, the virtuosity is mostly wasted on me. I could tell the difference between a tablespoon of salt but not between one dash (grain) or two, to use a non-musical metaphor.. After the performance, Celia, a pianist herself, but mainly flute, piccolo (also oboe and cello.) led me to the stage, where we met and spoke with Arthur Rubenstein. It was an honor for me. Celia too. And after praising his choice of pieces, Celia stated, "Your piano was a touch "sharp" all night..." "Most people wouldn't notice!" he said brightly. "But you're right. It is the environment," He smiled broadly. "When we set it up here on the stage, I noticed it right away. Mr. (College music director) and I tested all the piano's available, and as sharp as this one is, the others had worse problems at one end or the other. . .You have a good ear, Miss . . ." They walked a bit around the piano, and carried on about music while I smiled as an unnoticed wart nearby. Maybe I was noticed. . . Rubenstein actually smiled and twinkled when he handed Celia "back" to me, "It was a pleasure to meet you." We shook hands in parting. I asked what she was saying to him. "The piano was tuned slightly "sharp." Celia told me. "You couldn't hear that, at all?" Another occasion. . . We spent time backsage with Judy Collins on another occasion, I was then educated a bit about Judy's equisite musical education, by Celia. (Judy's Classical and voice-pure rendition or "Amazing Grace" is still to my ear the perfect performance of that music, as are "Send in the Clowns" and Chelsea Morning, And Joni Mitchell's "Both sides now." http://www.judycollins.com/soundbits/grace.wav http://judycollins.com/timeline/ Hope all ye to live long. ============ SaraJoy, If you mean sense of North South East West direction? That is not uncommon.(I have as good a sense of direction as a human can have, so I do not get geographically lost.) Socially I might get lost or sit on it. For many years, my science job forced me to record numbers and to be sure not to transpose any digits. Now retired, I once in a while catch myself, something mathematics can check, like a bank audit. I can see the artist words, and the strokes you describe. In the course of time I have seen my transition form handwriting to poking the keys of a computer. Just keep writing. I hope I can live long enough to train my voice recognition programs to actually dictate the prose articles or poems I still have in me. Just keep writing! It is like when I write,"right" or or "write" when I mean the other. It just gets by me -- and spell checkers won't help. rein and rain and reign. Scrabble. Yeah, me too. but when you look, or when I look at the championship scores -- I am impressed. Keep writing keep up the bit of Muse or giant share you have; all of them. Antonella, I envy your ability to read and teach music. Obviously you play as well, and still piano is the archetype instrument -- now only surpassed with the electronic manipulations of sysnthesizers. One thing certain. Music has been made and heard and felt for centuries prior to the electronic means we have now. If CO2 removal does not occur over the next 100 years, we will only do music in analog form as our existence on this planet's surface ends. Electricty will be in form of natural lightning without us on this planet, and only the controlled purview of electric eels or a few remaining fireflies. RTVS NDL;NDVHKS NCBHFJNVDHJBCVHDMX BVCJS;NX I could not decode this, above &#11014. My right hand is good, left hand not so good, but I can highlight it melodically. rawnak again, Yes. I must have dyslexically transposed mamamia07 post to your attribution while from Pub's misbegotten post and edit. Apologies. Thank you all!

Dyslexia and music...

Antonella - Sun, 2008-25-5 4:27 am
Children with Dyslexia have not only pronlems in reading, but also in music reading and coordination right/left at the piano or violin. I have had at the time many pupils with dyslexia: they have mostly a bad hand position at the beginning and difficult to coordinate at the piano r. and l. hand (r.hand alone very good, l.h. alone very good and together a very disaster:-). I teach them mstly in another way: we build the piece directly with both hands, note for note. For music reading I don't show the whole page, but just the note they have to play. Or for children it seems like this: RTVS NDL;NDVHKS NCBHFJNVDHJBCVHDMX BVCJS;NX Can you read it?:-)

Thank You For This Article

SaraJoy - Sun, 2008-25-5 3:36 am
I appreciate you shedding some light on Dyslexia, as I do not feel many people understand what it is really like to have it. I actually have Dyslexia, and before wonderful things such as spellcheck were invented, I suffered from it quite badly. With me, I tend to swap numbers around when I need to remember them or am transferring them etc. I have absolutely NO sense of direction, and I even draw and shade things the opposite that they should be unless I am looking at the object itself. (And then I still sometimes do.) My greatest problem though has always been spelling. I stink at spelling. In fact, my husband usually chuckles when he reads things I have not edited yet that I have written and tells me, "I just would never have thought to spell that that way." I have tried to learn to laugh at myself and just realize that spelling is something I will probably always suck at. When I was younger, I always aspired to be a writer, but was always told that although I wrote very well, that my spelling was too bad to be able to do it successfully. Luckily with technology has come a lot of things that have helped my Dyslexia to not be as much of a problem and have finally allowed me to live my dream. Anyway, very interesting article. You've made me want to break out Scrabble again... (although I cheat and use a dictionary to look up word spellings...lol)

http://www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com/challenge/15147

Intelligent people with dyslexia......

rawnak - Sun, 2008-25-5 3:05 am
You are welcome.. You always provide some fodder for thought in all your comments that force me to look up things on the internet and learn something new. The recent Hindi movie "Taare Zameen Par" is supposedly based on these dyslexic children. (I haven't watched the movie yet, though I plan to sometime). You are right about there being many bright and intelligent people who suffered this ailment and yet were very successful in their lives. "There have been many dyslexics that have made tremendous contributions to mankind. They include famous entertainers, designers, architects, writers, athletes, jurists, physicians, scientists, and political and business leaders." The whole list of these famous people include names like: Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, Keanu Reeves, Albert Einstein and Tom Cruise. The whole list is here: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2130.shtml Even our own Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan is suffering from this ailment, which was pointed out in the movie mentioned above, as an example to the children. http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood/news/abhishek-taare-zameen-par-191207.html Wow, That's some list. Guess they do have a totally "different perspective" to all things than what we "normal" people do. No wonder, it took us so many years to understand their brilliance. And still we haven't got it all figured out, I am sure! Thanks for the insight...Guess we all need to educate ourselves more on this subject...! As for Pub's post; I didn't really pay much attention to his article and have not commented on any of them. So, no I have not noticed anything different, cos I wasn't looking.

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