OK, call off the D Magazine Words With Friends Tournament. We tried to fix this thing so that only our close friends and celebrities had a chance of winning. But here comes some “average joe” — Rich Goff, a promotions manager for television station WFAA — and he goes and spoils our fun. Goff beat D Magazine senior editor Zac Crain by a score of 395 to 383 to be the first to claim a spot in our Finally Four. I mean what’s the point of us carrying on, right?
Anyway, here’s what Goff has to say for himself:
This was a VERY tough game–one where you play your last tiles hoping your opponent has enough left on his rack to put you over the top. Zac played a great game–lead by more than 100 points early on. As anyone can tell you, though–luck plays a big role in this, and while Lady Luck wasn’t smiling on me in the beginning, she wasn’t smiling on Zac down the stretch. It seems I had nothing but vowels through the first third of the game, and he had nothing but consonants in the end. So yes, I give LUCK a lot of credit for this win, as it could’ve gone either way.
In all seriousness, congratulations to Rich, who will play in our live Words With Friends showdown the evening of June 9. You’ll hear more about that next week. Goff will want to spend between now and Wednesday practicing his speed game. Our semifinals and finals will be played in a one-minute-per-turn format.
Zac, what excuses can you offer us?
12 comments
I wouldn’t give all the credit to luck. Rich battled back from some pretty dreadful racks, and even though I ended up catching bad tiles, too, he obviously did a bit better with the hand he was dealt.
Jason, it’s obvious you’re having a lot of fun writing these posts, but as a previous commenter mentioned, why not move these to a special section of the blog for people who care?
Your previous excuse that there’s no post limit on FrontBurner misses the point. There’s still the annoyance of having to sort through all of the WWF posts to get to the real stories. And if you look at Internet browsing trends, very few people read beyond the first page of a blog. More WWF posts means more real stories get pushed to the dreaded “Older entries” pages.
I’ll offer three options:
(1) Publish one daily digest of the WWF tournament on FrontBurner to remind people where to go for their WWF news fix, and publish the remaining posts somewhere else.
Or if you can’t figure out how to do that, (2) Label the headlines of the posts consistently so people have a visual cue to skip the post. For example, “Words With Friends update: …”
Or at least (3) Only have a paragraph teaser and then jump the rest so the posts don’t take so much screen real estate on the front page.
Way to go Goff! I want to see you in an Old 97’s final!
@Hein: Thanks for your thoughts. We’ll keep them in mind for our next Words With Friends Tournament.
No problem. And you’re right; it’d be far too difficult to use any of those suggestions in the current tournament.
Hein, just be glad you were even allowed to comment on the Words with Our Friends and Favorite Celebrities Tourney.
@towski: I’m truly sorry that we weren’t able to include you in the 64 competitors in the tournament. As I noted before, with more than 400 hopefuls applying, we had to disappoint 90 percent of them. I’m sorry that your own personal disappointment continues to sting these many days later.
But don’t let those sour grapes skew your perceptions of reality: the majority of players in the tournament neither received automatic bids to participate, nor did they have any prior connection to D Magazine or employees here. And 5 of the Final 8 are regular folks, just like you, who were lucky enough to make into the mix, and who have played remarkably well. Either help us celebrate their impressive run, or move on.
No….More…Words…with…Friends…..postings….please. I’m sure its a great game and the designers are getting allot of good PR but there appears to be only 64 people interested in this. I don’t even like to play scrabble. I kinda have to agree with Hein on putting this in another ‘games’ section say with, “Operation with Friends” or “Rochembeaux with Friends”. I mean, I read the FB almost everyday but this is the first week I avoided it till now. I was kind waiting for this tournament thing to be over. IJS
Jason, let me handle this one.
@JB: I encourage you to think of this like Shark Week. Maybe you don’t like sharks. A lot of people are fascinated by them. But that’s fine. Maybe you’re more of a horse person. So when Shark Week rolls around, just don’t watch the Discovery Channel. It’s that simple.
In this case, you can either check out for awhile, till we’ve finished our tournament, or you can simply NOT READ the posts in which you have no interest.
Approximately 400,000 people in North Texas, by Newtoy’s estimates, have downloaded the app. And the Words With Friends Facebook page indicates that 124,945 people are interested in the game.
All of which is to say, JB, that a lot of people dig Shark Week. You’re probably in the minority.
@ Tim
A “Sharks with Friends” tournament….now that IS interesting.
JB, let me handle this one.
@Tim: Just because 400,000 people have downloaded the app in the area doesn’t mean that many are interested in reading about others’ games.
Let me put it simply: Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is entertaining; this tournament is not. That’s because only the two competitors get to watch the action as it unfolds. Anyone else who’s interested in the outcome watches only the end result.
It’s like seeing a bloody mess in the ocean and not getting to see the shark attack that caused that mess. It’s just not interesting.
<– actually scrolled down through some posts to find out how zac got knocked out.
IJS…