As someone who barely dabbles in scrabble, watching this was awesome. Josh and Joey are amazing, and the commentary from Matt and Jared was fantastic. Thank all of you for letting me see into the thoughts of 4 truly great Scrabble players.
After Joshua played EAUX he had, unless blocked by his opponent SIDELINE on his next turn. I am not even using a program (I have one though) and figured it out almost instantly but for some reason the commentators did not. Also, they criticized his EAUX even though it ended up enabling a bingo on the next turn.
I can say with certainty that 999 times out of 1000, even while commentating (not heckling), Jared and Matt will find a playable word faster than almost anyone. When you commentate, you gather your thoughts, and then you speak about those thoughts. Jared was a bit less critical of EAUX, and Matt didn't even enter the play into the engine to help analyze. If he had, he would have realized that EAUX was not so bad after all. Cut these guys some slack, they did a fantastic job calling these games!
Commentator dude here: It's sort of become my calling card to say it like I see it too.... I'm sure Josh had (excellent) reasons for doing what he did but I didn't see it. Also, you should not judge whether a play is good or not based on the draw you pull. Is playing IT out of a first rack of AEIIOTU correct? Absolutely not, even if you draw SQ and bingo with SEQUOIA next turn
