I want values and quantity of tiles for letter frequencies in my language

by Dione
(Curacao)

Hi,

Let's say I want to know what value to give the tile and how many tiles of it, i need in a game; e.g of letter A (is on top of list) in my language. PAPIAMENTU IS MY LANGUAGE. The frequency is 3999. see below:

a - 3999 (11.9000148787383%)


i - 2979 (8.86475226900759%)

e - 2777 (8.26365124237465%)

o - 2675 (7.96012498140158%)

r - 2312 (6.87992858205624%)

n - 2239 (6.66269900312454%)

s - 2165 (6.44249367653623%)

t - 2100 (6.24907007885731%)

k - 1584 (4.71358428805237%)

l - 1413 (4.20473143877399%)

m - 1158 (3.44591578634132%)

u - 1140 (3.39235232852254%)

d - 1098 (3.26737092694539%)

p - 976 (2.90432971284035%)

b - 946 (2.81505728314239%)

h - 861 (2.5621187323315%)

g - 511 (1.52060705252195%)
á - 452 (1.34503794078262%)

f - 450 (1.33908644546942%)

c - 267 (0.794524624311858%)

v - 234 (0.696324951644101%)

è - 208 (0.618955512572534%)

ò - 204 (0.607052521946139%)

í - 143 (0.425531914893617%)

ó - 132 (0.392798690671031%)

y - 122 (0.363041214105044%)

é - 115 (0.342210980508853%)

ñ - 80 (0.238059812527898%)

w - 77 (0.229132569558101%)

z - 62 (0.184496354709121%)

j - 47 (0.13986013986014%)

ù - 31 (0.0922481773545603%)

ú - 28 (0.0833209343847642%)

ü - 17 (0.0505877101621782%)

x - 3 (0.00892724296979616%)



33605 letters sampled.

Hi Dione - thank you for your very interesting question.

In relation to letter-frequencies, I would start out by simply rounding the percentages up and using that value as the number of tiles. In your case, that would make 9 I's, 9 E's, 8 O's etc. down to 1 tile of each of all the rarest characters.

There is no strict rule about how to assign values to tiles based on their frequencies. Alfred Butts (the inventor of Scrabble)started off with a rough estimate of point values (1 for the most frequent letters, 10 for the rarest letters) and then experimented with the game over and over again, adjusting game parameters each time to try to improve things.

I suggest you also follow this strategy. Having said that, I've never had anything to do with the translation of Scrabble into non-English languages so I'll open this one to readers who may have a better idea.

In the meantime, can you please explain 'what and how' you sampled exactly in arriving at your figures? It might be helpful in attempting to answer it in more detail.

All the best.