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With Big Mack a month away, I've been trying to get in some orienteering practice. Nowadays there are fewer events held due to threat of heat, humidity, rashes, bites, stings... So I've gone virtual.
An idea for a Scrabble score-O popped in my head when planning a trip up to Mountain Lake where 25 controls are identified by letters, not numbers. I've yet to get up to this course as it's a bit of a drive.
But the idea lingered: forming words on a similar course could make interesting route challenges. I wanted to try it, so I made a UsynligO course at Eno. Here are the guidelines.
The basic recipe is to set 25 controls on an orienteering map using Condes, randomly assign a letter to each with Scrabble board game letter value, print map and upload to UsynligO.
UsynligO's purpose is for route verification and not for scoring as it's not coded to register word scores. That's where a separate scoreboard comes in (linked from form).
Why no "Q" control? Good question. Maybe ask Mark. This is an artifact from duplicating the pre-existing Mountain Lake form. Future versions will feature the full alphabet.
For this v1 there is no time limit. It's probably the equivalent of a 2-hour. Visiting all 25 controls and clearing the course without making words would involve a route of about 13 km.
Per guidelines, clearing the course without any words would earn a score of 77. A good orienteer with a decent vocabulary could score over 100 points without traveling much further.
8/27 UPDATE: after some discussion on guidelines, I added a 50 point premium for "playing all 7 tiles" meaning each 7-letter word (and longer) earns an additional 50 points.
I first got out on this course on 8/5. My route was almost 14 km linking controls ZHOMAWCJINXDUB to form the words zho, maw, jinx and dub for a score of 97.
I lost about 5 minutes searching for controls O and M among the wrong cluster of cairns and rocks. Then I got too close to the control radius of W en route to A via boundary handrail.
UsynligO alerted me that I reached W out of sequence. Virtual orienteering isn't perfect. So it goes. I just disregarded this and made sure to return to the control after visiting A.
Another minor annoyance with virtual orienteering apps is the lag time with alerts. I've written about this before and have just adapted to it. UsynligO was actually running pretty fast.
Per a self-imposed 2-hour cutoff, I knew I had to be well on my way to control I by one hour. I was behind pace and decided to forego either F, or C en route to J. In my haste I chose F.
I felt like I jinxed myself with the word jinx. It took a lot of time and effort to piece together. But it was too late, I was committed. Once at X, I decided to go for dub with t-minus 20 minutes.
As always, Eno was a beautiful playground. I crossed paths with several black snakes and box turtles in the woods today. This Scrabble score-O is definitely a worthwhile workout!
8/27 UPDATE: utilizing new 50-point bonus, I was able to get out on an oppressively humid Sunday to break 100 points with ~15 km route DETOURSBYZIP in 2:08.
I had a pretty good run considering it was right after 3 hours of orienteering practice with Brian out at Brumley Preserve and Duke Forest in preparation for Big Mack!
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