Guide To Griefing: Literati

Scrabble, or called "Literati" by Yahoo Games, is a classic crossword board game. Literati allows you to play online for rating points, which allows you to gauge how good a player is. Winning games gets you a higher rating, and losing games lowers your rating. As expected, most players hate to lose rating points.

The purpose of griefing in Literati is to lower your opponents rating while raising your own. Of course, this is what everyone is doing by playing the game, but you want to achieve this with as little effort as possible.

To do this, you don't actually want to win a game by playing it all the way through, you want to make the other player resign and forfeit rating points. I am going to show you how to do this by walking you through a few common-type games.

Game Type 1: The Cheat and Trash Talk Combo

The first thing to do in any game type is to load up Yahoo Literati, then create a table with only 2 players, and make it rated. Once you are in the game, go to the "Set Timer" button and then disable the 3 minute time limit. This is crucial to any victory, as will be shown later.

The second thing to do in any type of game is to load up a Scrabble Word finder, like http://www.scrabblewordfinder.com or http://www.puzzledepot.com/wordfinder2/scrabble.html. These web-based programs allow you to type in the letters you have, and it will spit out a winning combination for you. What you want to go for here is using all your letters so you get a 35 point "bingo" bonus.

So start a game, feed your letters into the unscrambler program, and make those giant words that tear great chunks of points off the board. Pretty soon, if you did it right, you'll be 100 points ahead of your opponent in only the first 3 turns. However, the point is to make your opponent quit before the game is actually played out. This is where taunting kicks in:


It is important that the taunting only occurs AFTER you made big gains on the board. Taunting too early in the game before points are made will only anger your opponent and increase his resolve to play the game through. Taunting after you are clearly winning is like stabbing a gunshot wound. Your opponent has just realized that he's walked into the lions den, and to avoid further humiliation, will have to quit:


Mission accomplished. Granted, I only got one point out of that, but the guy was a 1474 point chump. Taking him out took only 5 minutes. By that time I was leading by 120 points. He had no chance. As for trash-talk methods, go nuts. Insult his name, his score, his mom, do anything to unnerve him. The more responses you get, the closer he is to breaking down and quitting. See you later.

Game Type 2: Waiting it out

Sometimes you don't want to bother with loading up word unscramblers and all that BS. In this type of game, all you need to win is time. This is ideal for situations where you need to do something else, and want to rack up the points with zero effort. To win, you don't even need to play a turn at all.

All you need to do is create a game with the same parameters as before. Once your opponent sits down and you start the game, DON'T DO ANYTHING. Yes, it is that easy. Simply do not play your turn and the game is stalled. This is why disabling the time limit is crucial. In the meantime, you can study, watch TV, or anything else, while your opponent sits dumbly at the computer screen.

Sometimes, your opponent will get impatient and offer to cancel the game:


Whatever you do, do not click "Yes". If for any reason you must leave the game or forfeit because waiting him out is taking too long, you can click "Yes" and then leave the game with no penalty. By giving you this option, your opponent has guaranteed that either you win or nothing happens.

One important thing you must do in the wait game is to go into Iron-Man Mode. What this means is that you do not speak or make any actions AT ALL. This aids in the psychological effect in making your opponent think that you are an unmovable, unrelenting force. If you talk or make any moves, it only humanizes you. I cannot stress this enough.

Game Type 3: Play Until Start Losing, Then Wait

This game type is a combination of Types 1 and 2. However, in this game type, what you do is start playing normally (using word unscrambler), but at the moment you start losing, you switch into wait-mode. Let me make this part clear: no matter how much you use the word unscramblers, you can still lose a game due to the skill of your opponent and the letters given to you. The luck factor will confound your cheating factor all the time.

This is why Game Type 3 gives you the greatest chance of success. You start off by blatantly cheating, then if due to luck, you start losing, you have another chance to win by waiting. Here is an example:


In this example I started losing even though I was using the hacks. At this point I switched from cheat-mode to wait-mode. About one hour later:

Textbook success. Always remember the Golden Rule of Waiting: the more your opponent talks, the closer he is to folding. In this situation, my opponent tried to fake me out by saying that she was working on the PC all day. Of course, by using the Golden Rule I knew right away that this was a lie.

With that victory in hand, let's check back in with the Game Type 2 that I left open:


This one was funny because the person from the Type 3 Game came into this room to complain about my waiting technique. Her efforts were wasted.

This covers the 3 basic types of games that you will encounter while griefing.

Other notes:

You can tell a lot about your opponent from the icon that he/she chooses:

Says: Average adult male
Tactic: This is the basic, normal opponent with no clear weaknesses or strengths. For these, I like to start out with straight-up taunting in order to gauge what kind of player he is.

Says: I am a girl, please take it easy on me =P
Tactic: Easy pickings. Any of the 3 tactics will win.


Says: Old granny at home
Tactic: Be cautious. Grannies are either your worst nightmare or easiest target. Waiting them out will be futile. However, taunting may break their osteoporosed bones easily.


Says: Word d3v1l 666 killa X69
Tactic: Probably a 10 year old kid. Taunting will be ineffective, but waiting will go over their alotted computer game time, or cut into their DBZ show.


Says: Delicate flower
Tactic: Free win. Demolish at will.

Other tactics include starting a game and talking in a different language to confuse your opponent, pretending to be a Yahoo Games admin, etc. There are many other psychological games you can play. Let your griefer imagination flow, and you will soon be the king of Literati.

Next: Guide to Griefing Warcraft III