Good morning. Yesterday, federal agents shot and killed a man in Minnesota, setting off another day of intense protests and prompting more calls from officials to end ICE’s operations in the state. We have the latest on that story below. Then, we have an introduction to a game from The Times, along with a tool to help you do better at it.
Another shootingBorder Patrol agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis yesterday. The victim, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital. He was a U.S. citizen, the Minneapolis police chief said. Federal officials sought to portray Pretti as a domestic terrorist, saying he had approached agents with a “semi-automatic handgun” and the intent to “massacre” them. But videos analyzed by The Times appear to contradict their account. They show Pretti holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when agents take him to the ground and strike him. One agent appears to remove a gun from near Pretti’s right hip. At the same time, another agent unholsters his firearm and points it at Pretti’s back. Federal officials released images of a handgun they said Pretti was carrying. The Minneapolis police chief said he had a valid firearms permit. Open carry is legal with a permit in Minnesota.
Brain trainer
I am positively average at Scrabble. While I’m good with words, I don’t know the tricks. I haven’t memorized the two-letter combos that are never used in conversation. I can’t tell when I should try to make a little grid of short words versus a longer but lower-scoring word that opens up the board. I’m clueless about defense. Now comes Cross Bot, a companion to The New York Times’s game Crossplay. It’s the coach I didn’t realize I was yearning for, providing a succinct postgame rundown of what you did right and what you missed. Crossplay, released in the United States on Wednesday, is The Times’s first foray into two-player games. It’s a cousin of Scrabble and Words With Friends, with tweaks to the board, the dictionary and the rules. Plus, the miracle that is Cross Bot. The bot tells you how you — and your opponent — rated on a scale of 1 to 99 in strategy and luck, and who was more in control of the game at each turn. It walks you through four key moves in each game. Throughout, it’s encouraging: Though you didn’t win, you made strong moves. The best moves, like MAZIER and OOZE, played a higher-scoring Z. MOXIE was a better move. It scores the same points this turn, but helps you score more next turn. Darn, I love the word “moxie” — how did I miss that one? The humans behind the bot
A trio of Times journalists who are also computer programmers — Tom Giratikanon, Eve Washington and Asmaa Elkeurti — worked with the Games team to build Cross Bot over the past 14 months. Along the way, Eve had to teach herself a new computer language, Go, which sped up the bot 300-fold. Powered by 40 million simulated games and 20,000 lines of code, the tool analyzes 15 million possible moves for each game in three seconds. (It was made by humans, with no help from generative A.I.) After playing a couple dozen games — against my husband, my teenage daughter and strangers named Lynda, Slowige and Uncle Eli — I sat down with Tom to learn more. Jodi: How do you start on a project like this? Tom: There’s a lot of academic research about games like this. What we can do well is apply the theoretical research to your specific game as a player. It’s a lot of math, a lot of data. We can’t even actually look at every single possibility. But based on the letters you have, it is pretty good at saying what words you can form this turn, what words you can form next turn. Are you left with good letters or not, and what’s left in the bag. I’m fascinated by the 1-99 rubrics on strategy versus luck. If I lose and see that my luck score was way lower than my opponent’s, I feel better. Eve developed formulas to calculate luck. If you’re consistently drawing really tough letters, it’ll know. Same if you consistently get good tiles — all the blanks, all the S’s. For the strategy score, we use “chance to win.” Let’s say it’s early on and there’s a range of good moves. The worst gives you a 40 percent chance, the best, 60 percent. If you pick the 60 percent move, you get a strategy score of 99. Humans are actually pretty good at this game. There’s hundreds of possible moves every turn, and most people find a solid one. (The average strategy rating by Friday was 53.) Movin’ on upAbout one million people downloaded Crossplay in the 48 hours after its U.S. release. Tom analyzed an early sample of completed games, and found that the top 5 percent ended at 400 points or more. That made me feel pretty good. My own average score so far is 312, my highest 444. Friday afternoon, I beat Lynda on the final turn. Bravo! said the bot. Way to turn it around and win. My best move was SHIRAZ, for 115 points. (I should pour myself a glass!) It had a triple-letter on the Z, a triple-word, and a side word of SICS. My average move scores 24, up from 22 when I started. Thank you, Cross Bot.
Winter Storm
International
Other Big Stories
The internet obsessed over a rift in the Beckham family after Brooklyn Beckham, the eldest son of David and Victoria Beckham, criticized his parents in a series of Instagram posts. Who do you think was in the right? Brooklyn. “He sounds like a young man who’s just had enough, who wants to get on with his life, his new marriage and who wants to make his own decisions without his parents’ interference,” Carole Malone writes for Express.co.uk. David and Victoria. “His act of independence was to attack the two people who gave him limitless opportunities, which he used to become a part-time model, second-rate photographer and failed soccer player,” Aaron Patrick writes in The Nightly of Australia.
The post-World War II order has helped foster global cooperation. The U.S. should rebuild its alliances to tackle the challenges of this century, writes John Kerry, the former secretary of state. Here is a column by M. Gessen on state terror. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
“King Kong in the city”: Skyscraper climbers describe what it’s like to scale a building. White House makeover: Take a look at 10 areas Trump has transformed in the “People’s House.” Your pick: The most-clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a young family’s search for a home in Southern California.
Women’s soccer: Trinity Rodman scored a goal in her first game as captain of the U.S. women’s national team. The U.S. defeated Paraguay 6-0. N.B.A.: Luka Doncic led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 116-110 win over his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, in Dallas.
“Half His Age,” by Jennette McCurdy: A novel about a 17-year-old’s sexual relationship with her middle-aged creative writing teacher will not be everyone’s cup of tea. But Jennette McCurdy’s assured, provocative follow-up to her 2022 best-selling, equally provocative memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” cements her standing as a talented writer. Here McCurdy, a former child actor who starred in Nickelodeon shows like “iCarly” and “Sam & Cat,” whisks us to Hollywood’s polar opposite: an unglamorous corner of Anchorage, where her protagonist, Waldo, subsists on microwave dinners, a Victoria’s Secret paycheck and cursory attention from her mother (in that order). Enter Mr. Korgy — married father, bloviator on film and literature with a capital L — whom Waldo fixates on as an antidote to her own disaffection and loneliness. Moral and criminal issues aside (a heavy lift, admittedly), McCurdy’s articulates the vulnerability of girlhood with guts, humor and just the slightest whisper of warmth.
|
