Rack Up The Points

[DrTom]

OK, it appears that even the trickle has stopped. I have two more solvers and I will soon be doing the reveal. Here are the last two folks:

38 KayW
39 Bird Lives

Including the test solvers 43 people solved this little conundrum. Not the best I've ever done but not the worst either; believe me I am delighted if anyone tries it. Reveal in about 30 minutes.

[DrTom]

Well, that was fun! OK, OK, fun for me at least and I hope for many of you. This was my most industrious puzzle and, judging from the comments, my most difficult. I think it was the fact that there several interpretations of Rack up and Three Point Plays. Well to put it all to rest, here is the graphic:

There were 18 three letter words in the puzzle and, of those, 14 were composed of all letters that would have a 1 point Scrabble value and therefore give you a Three Point Play. If you took the starting letters of each of those words, in their grid order, you get the phrase ALL TILES ARE OUT which indeed is how you know you are done accumulating points.

There were 43 Muggles (including testers) who managed to “rack up” a solve and a host of other interesting mechanisms. The impetus for this head scratcher came from the January 7, 2022 WSJ puzzle by Mike Schenk, Three Pointers. When I, unsuccessfully, tried to solve that one by making it more complicated than it was I saw many three letter words that were made of 1 point Scrabble letters. “AHA, Mr. Schenk, I have you now” I remember thinking. I’m sure that if he could have heard my thoughts he would have said, “But NO DrTom, I believe your thoughts are scrabbled!” Anyway, when it wasn’t the mechanism I quickly decided I could make it one.

Therefore, if you LOVED this puzzle, thank you for solving and all your support. I want to thank the test-solvers/editors (Meg, Wendy, Peter, Al) who spent a LOT of time helping me resolve many of the problems. Without their tireless work and great title suggestions this project would have never come together. To my wife who shakes her head and sighs when around 2 AM after countless hours in rewrites I come to bed, honey I love you. I’m sure I am forgetting someone, but I want to make sure all know how much I appreciate their tireless efforts. Puzzles make a man do crazy things!

But if you hated it and think it is cruel and demeans Metas and Scrabble at the same time and has moved you to a state of high agitation you are just going to have to blame Mike for giving me the idea. Just PLEASE don’t walk up and give me a slap!

[woozy]

The title was a subtle hint to scrabble. But "rack" alone was not enough for me to think of scrabble (pool uses racks doesn't it? And rack as a verb is... common, isn't it). I think if there had been one other very oblique hint to scrabble this would have made this excellent puzzle more perfect.

I recognized the reference to the "Three pointer" puzzle, and I figured the way nearly everyone attempted to solve *that* one was to find letters that pointed like arrows (V, A, K, Y, etc) to other letter or to find trios of letters that pointed to other letters. (At least that was the way *I* tried to solve it and to *me* that seemed the obvious attempt). So I figured that was obviously what was done on this one.

It wasn't.

Utterly stuck I went back to discussion of "three pointer" and found some people had tried scrabble tiles. I had no memory of this and my mind wouldn't have worked that way without some triggers. But I figure I'd give it a try and ... the answer spelled itself.

[Dplass]

I thought the motivation was the Pandora's Blocks meta with the Scrabble board overlaid on it...

[edestlin]

This was an eye-opener for me... the answer was much more "in the puzzle" than I had expected. I had the game right but gave up on any of my ideas. Also, I went down a rabbit hole about snooker which wasted a solid day. As a new meta *aspiring* solver, I guess it's a lesson to try and see what's in front of me. Thanks for the puzzle, I'll keep trying!

[vandono]

The title was a subtle hint to scrabble. But "rack" alone was not enough for me to think of scrabble (pool uses racks doesn't it? And rack as a verb is... common, isn't it). I think if there had been one other very oblique hint to scrabble this would have made this excellent puzzle more perfect.

I recognized the reference to the "Three pointer" puzzle, and I figured the way nearly everyone attempted to solve *that* one was to find letters that pointed like arrows (V, A, K, Y, etc) to other letter or to find trios of letters that pointed to other letters. (At least that was the way *I* tried to solve it and to *me* that seemed the obvious attempt). So I figured that was obviously what was done on this one.

It wasn't.

Utterly stuck I went back to discussion of "three pointer" and found some people had tried scrabble tiles. I had no memory of this and my mind wouldn't have worked that way without some triggers. But I figure I'd give it a try and ... the answer spelled itself.

'Scrabble' never popped into my noggin. And Google assured me that billiards has a 3-point play (and, as you said, uses a rack) so that's the fruitless orchard I wandered around in. At least until work got crazy and I never made it back.

[KayW]

Very clever, @DrTom - publishing this meta solution just in time for National Scarbble Day !

[Dplass]

Very clever, @DrTom - publishing this meta solution just in time for National Scarbble Day !

Hey that anagrams to Scrabble! Very clever.

[KayW]

Very clever, @DrTom - publishing this meta solution just in time for National Scarbble Day !

Hey that anagrams to Scrabble! Very clever.

the ONE time I would like auto-correct to kick in, it doesn't.