We were able to see the Scrabble board while we did the Zoom lesson, but the recording only showed the camera shot of me. This video only contains the beginning of the lesson. I am slowly recreating the game from the audio. When I am able to finish it, then I will post it here.
In the meantime I can still answer some of the questions that came up.
When we were discussing the cartoon I didn’t hear someone mention “misusing”. I think it was Adele, but thinking that she was referring to something else I misunderstood. I checked 'gonna' and 'misusing' and both were acceptable.
In fact all of the words in the panel are legal Scrabble words if you play with the Honolulu Scrabble Club. They use the Collins Official Scrabble Words list. “Pwn” is not in the OSPD, but it is in Collins.
Re. time clocks. There is no grace period. That's how they do it in backgammon, but not in Scrabble. All of the timed tournament matches that I have watched so far all give both players 25 minutes on their clocks without any grace period.
Discussing the first move. We drew DIINNNR. Debbie and Carol suggested throwing them back. You can exchange any or all of the letters as long as there are 7 letters remaining in the bag. At the start of the game you have to wait until your opponent has drawn their checkers. Exchanging all of the checkers is indeed worthy of consideration. What are we trying to get? We are hoping to get 7 letters that give us a Bingo. When computer simuations were done to determine what the chances of drawing a Bingo randomly at the start of the game are they came up with numbers around 10%. I suspect that Collins with a larger collection of words the chances might be a little higher. So let's assume that we have an 11% chance of drawing a Bingo if we exchange all tiles.
If we played a word, then the most points we could score is if we play INDRI - the largest of the lemurs. We could score 12 points and leave NN.
We could play RIND scoring only 10 points and leave INN.
Carol's first suggestion was to exchange only INN leaving DINR and hoping to get three other tiles that played better with DINR.
My guess is that we would have a better chance to draw a Bingo prone rack if we exchanged only INN instead of exchanging all 7 tiles.
The only question is whether we exchange INN or do we play it for 6 point and take the double word square away from our opponent. I don't know which play is better, but I would do one of the two to leave DINR.
I think this answers Jane's question. I wouldn't play RIND nor exchange all tiles. I would get rid of INN either by exchanging tiles or playing it to leave DINR to improve the chances of making a Bingo. Carol was correct to suggest exchanging INN. Though letters like I, N, R, D, and even S are good tiles for creating Bingos, having two of any letter makes getting one a little more difficult.
Again, expert Scrabble players say they will exchange tiles one or two turns in a game.