> memorization is so much more important than both of them
Is that really true at this high of a level though? There are a little under 120K words in SOWPODS that are 9 letters or less (looking through some of those archived games, it seems like 10+ letter words are uncommon). So there's a hard upper bound on what memorization can do for you, and it seems plausible that that limit (or close enough to make strategy the dominating factor) would have been reached by a handful of people.
I mean, maybe? That's still a scenario where the vast amount of memorization you did is more important than the strategy you may come up with. There aren't top players who got there with superior strategy and a vastly inferior vocabulary.
> That's still a scenario where the vast amount of memorization you did is more important than the strategy you may come up with
But if both players have memorized about the same number of words, the game is then entirely about strategy.
I think that's the point of what the article is saying. Sure, memorization is critical to get to the point where you can compete at that level, but once you're there, memorization is just a given. What differentiates the players' performance is their strategy.
I feel like ‘vocabulary’ is a slightly misleading word in this context, since it implies some level of understanding. ‘Set of allowed combinations of letters’ is evidently the measure used.
Is that really true at this high of a level though? There are a little under 120K words in SOWPODS that are 9 letters or less (looking through some of those archived games, it seems like 10+ letter words are uncommon). So there's a hard upper bound on what memorization can do for you, and it seems plausible that that limit (or close enough to make strategy the dominating factor) would have been reached by a handful of people.