Stuck with the Q: How Quackle Redefined My Battle Against Charnwit Sukhumrattanaporn
Talk about an absolute endgame nightmare! In Round 24 of the 2002 King's Cup, I finally got my chance to go board-to-board against Charnwit Sukhumrattanaporn. I first met him at the Asia Pacific Scrabble Championship back in 1998, but never got to play him. Charnwit is widely known as one of the toughest Crossword Game players in Thailand—and he's a good-looking guy who could easily be a matinee idol if he ever decided to join an acting workshop!
In this matchup, I was fighting hard despite missing a few early bingos. As the tile bag emptied, the tension grew because we both knew that whoever drew the Q without a U or an I on hand would be dead in the water.
Hoping to seal the match on Turn 20, I leveraged a blank tile to drop a beautiful bingo of TREEInG at B2 for 76 points, pulling ahead 352-335. Unfortunately, the gamble backfired when I immediately pulled that unseen Q right after, suffering a heartbreaking 439-393 defeat as Charnwit choked off the remaining lanes.
Have a look into our game sequence below!
Post Notes:
For years, I remembered Charnwit's post-game advice that I should have played GRIsE(T)TE at 2g instead. I had avoided it at the table because I worried about opening up a fresh Triple Word Score line.
When I put this position into Quackle, the AI completely vindicated my defensive caution! Quackle ranks GRIsE(T)TE as a mistake with a mere 29% chance of winning. My play of TREEInG was actually superior at 43%. But if you want to see what flawless computer play looks like, Quackle’s top choices were TIGERE(Y)e at 3f or fIGTREE at b1—both yielding a peak 47% win chance.
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