How do you do that thing you do?......Grid Game Strategies

[YTF]

It seems that many of us here have been enjoying the grid games. I'm curious as to how everyone here has been approaching the games. The ultimate for many is the lowest score possible while others are content to complete the game regardless of the score. I'm usually looking to use as many Red Sox players as possible and just recently completed my all Red Sox grid. Judging by your consistently low scores, some of you must have the combination of a vast knowledge of the game's history and a photographic memory. We know about some of the popular "cheat codes" that are available and some of us have found a few of our own that might be lesser known. Of course franchises that have changed cities can be a gold mine considering some have very rich histories and folks sometimes forget the origins of that logo represented on the grid. What other tricks of the trades, strategies or themes do some of you employ when getting your daily grid fix? One thing that I have found helpful is to keep catchers in mind. A lot of them, especially guys who have been career backups, seem to move around a bit. I mentioned recently completing my first all Red Sox grid and in the future will probably look at other complete team grids, grids completed using just one position or one using just one of every position with an option of DH or pitcher.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

The peak of my MLB fandom was 1995-2013. Generally I can remember Sox and frequent foes during that window. If I had to play without using players from the 18 years that I was watching baseball daily, I'd be sunk.

 

[edoug]

Sure I've used Edwin Jackson and Octavio Dotel. But that hasn't worked out well for me very often. I would love to do an all Sox grid. But five or six is my high. So many of you are far superior to me. I can't get fancy. I have to use the names that pop up in my head. But I have been immaculate a few times, including today. I really enjoy playing the game. Good enough for me.

 

[YTF]

I think as we play the game more we're going to remember certain players, both ones that we've had successes with and those we've whiffed on. I'm 63 and thanks to the baseball cards that I collected in the late 60's - mid 80's there are a few visuals in the memory bank to pull from which helps on grids that don't feature the Marlins, Rockies, D'Backs and Rays. On rare occasions I benefit by (barely) remembering that the Brewers were the Seattle Pilots for one season. On the flip side, I sometimes confuse which were the group of players belonging to the Washington Senators franchise that moved to Minnesota and which were the group of players belonging to the Washington Senators franchise that Moved to Texas.

 

[Papo The Snow Tiger]

My ultimate goal is to fill the grid. My first default is to go with Red Sox guys, so obvious choices Rookie of the Year/MVP or 3000 hits is pretty easy, as well as when the Red Sox are on one of the axis'. I'm also pretty familiar with past notable Sox teams, like "78 or "86, and was a big baseball card collector back in my youth, so if I'm stumped the first thing I'll mentally do is go through the "78 or '86 roster and try to imagine that guys baseball cards. If, for example one of the boxes was the ChisSox and Indians, I'd probably remember Jack Brohamer's cards and put him in the box. If I can't come up with any Red Sox connection, then I revert to my old Strat-O-Matic game. I have the '78 season, so I'll go through the team in questions roster and try to picture where the guy ended up after that. I was also had a big interest in the '69 Expos and Pilots, so since they were expansion teams all of those guys came from somewhere else and are a go to if the Nationals or Brewers are one of the teams. My final fall back is to put in Bartolo Colon if I'm stumped for a pitcher. I usually have a harder time if the boxes are stats related.

 

[Brand Name]

Okay...

-Play any/all of OOTP, MVP, The Show. From there, study utility guys, backup catchers, and relievers.

-Memorize trades. And from there, think of the smaller parts of the trade. Like how 11 (11 now, wow!) years ago the Crawford/Beckett trade was called the Punto Trade jokingly? This school of thought but unironically use it for Grid. It wasn't Larsen/Bauer for Maris, it was a guy like Joe DeMaestri who the Yankees got.

-In turn, also think of Tetris squares or multiple-use guys: If I see 3 teams that I recognize a guy for but one of the possible boxes involves his primary team, I'm using the other box as a result.

-Do Stathead searches between games. Guys to play with teams do certain things. Or pour over their stats on their raw pages, those abbreviations eventually get drilled into you.

-Which, in turn, check out early histories of teams, or events for matters like ASG. I like to know the earliest possible looks of things to study the evolution of the game, so I study 19th-century ball. John Thorn on Twitter is a good place to learn more immediately if you want quick but valuable snippets.

-So how do I connect with those players or anyone from days gone by I've never heard of like Cuckoo Christensen? The newspaper effect: The newspaper effect is basically studying, reading, and re-reading about these guys in SABR bios. It's how we learned about players a lot growing up. Don't sleep on your mind's ability to adapt here similarly. It's just new information in a familiar vessel. Think about how we learn of new hot prospects? I believe the mind works in a similar way here. Also, the nicknames names from before WWII usually are memorable*, which is the time effect: Basically you're more likely to remember the time of a 1:37 appointment rather than 1:30 simply because it is so different than the norm.

*Aside from the countless and incredibly dull quantities of guys nicknamed Reds and their predecessors, the Cys/Cyclones.

 

[Mugsy's Jock]

I flash to my key years of baseball card collecting: 1968-74. i always try to use Pilots when Brewers are called for, Expos for Nationals, and Senators for Rangers — those combos deliver good rarity. I also rattle through old Hall of Famers, where the Rarity scores again can be really good. I’ve had grids that include 6-7 Hall of Famers, which I enjoy.

After maybe 5-10 minutes of trying to come up with the most offbeat names I can, I’ll bail and fill in anything I can.

Edit: rereading the thread, most of the same stuff @YTF already said.

 

[kenneycb]

I cheat. I try to go to my vault of knowledge with the goal of obscurity then check by googling. I’m doing it for me so I have no moral issues.

 

[YTF]

I flash to my key years of baseball card collecting: 1968-74. i always try to use Pilots when Brewers are called for, Expos for Nationals, and Senators for Rangers — those combos deliver good rarity. I also rattle through old Hall of Famers, where the Rarity scores again can be really good. I’ve had grids that include 6-7 Hall of Famers, which I enjoy.

After maybe 5-10 minutes of trying to come up with the most offbeat names I can, I’ll bail and fill in anything I can.

Edit: rereading the thread, most of the same stuff @YTF already said.

He probably wouldn't qualify as an "old" Hall of Famer, but I'm shocked at how often I've used Eck and have gotten a sub 1% score.

 

[Mugsy's Jock]

He probably wouldn't qualify as an "old" Hall of Famer, but I'm shocked at how often I've used Eck and have gotten a sub 1% score.

Jimmy Foxx and Rogers Hornsby and Eddie Collins and Early Wynn…. All go tos!

 

[Tony Pena's Gas Cloud]

1. Use older players. Even the most famous turn of the century guys are usually good for a 1% score at most.
2. Get familiar with the career paths of certain journeymen who aren't generally associated with most of the teams they played for - especially pitchers. David Wells, Alan Embree, Jamie Moyer, Lee Smith, and Goose Gossage have bailed me out many times, and their percentages are surprisingly low.
3. Play to your strength. I collected cards from roughly '85 to '93 and can still picture guys wearing certain uniforms 30+ years later. If you know you're right, use it. Don't overthink it to try to save a % here or there. Fill the grid rather than trying to show off.

 

[Leskanic's Thread]

I cheat. I try to go to my vault of knowledge with the goal of obscurity then check by googling. I’m doing it for me so I have no moral issues.

Yeah, this is me as well, as I've said in one of the other threads. I'll start by seeing if I can get anyone just off the dome, but usually that's only good for two or three definite answers. Then I see if I can think of highly probable ones, and I am on Baseball Reference to double check. (I don't want to miss any guesses, not because I feel accomplished at having completed an open-book test, but because I want to know an answer for each square by the end.)

If I remain stumped after coming up with my own names, I look up a year I remember (usually a year from my childhood when I collected a lot of baseball cards or a post-2000 year when I played a lot of a baseball video game) from one of the teams and see what memories are jogged. That usually does it.

I never share my score as any sort of brag or accomplishment -- because I start with what I can remember, I usually have at least one 30%+ pick anyway. And when trawling BR, I'm not trying to find the most obscure answer I can, but the first one I can confirm in my memory. Maybe someday I'll have done enough open-book drills I can take an actual test...but probably only if it was an Oops All Red Sox grid.

 

[wiffleballhero]

I'm just trapped in this window between 1977 and 2005 (which has more to do with having kids than a post-04 let down). And yeah, regularly my squares are really involving three team: X axis, Y axis, Red Sox. Unless a player covers all three, I'm usually in trouble.

I cheat. I try to go to my vault of knowledge with the goal of obscurity then check by googling. I’m doing it for me so I have no moral issues.

I bet you'd break your Rubik's and then just reassemble it before bringing it back to school the next day.

 

[GreenMonster49]

Bobo Newsom and every journeyman knuckleballer (Dutch Leonard and Eddie Fisher in particular) are my mainstays.

 

[zak1013]

Yeah, this is me as well, as I've said in one of the other threads. I'll start by seeing if I can get anyone just off the dome, but usually that's only good for two or three definite answers. Then I see if I can think of highly probable ones, and I am on Baseball Reference to double check. (I don't want to miss any guesses, not because I feel accomplished at having completed an open-book test, but because I want to know an answer for each square by the end.)

If I remain stumped after coming up with my own names, I look up a year I remember (usually a year from my childhood when I collected a lot of baseball cards or a post-2000 year when I played a lot of a baseball video game) from one of the teams and see what memories are jogged. That usually does it.

I never share my score as any sort of brag or accomplishment -- because I start with what I can remember, I usually have at least one 30%+ pick anyway. And when trawling BR, I'm not trying to find the most obscure answer I can, but the first one I can confirm in my memory. Maybe someday I'll have done enough open-book drills I can take an actual test...but probably only if it was an Oops All Red Sox grid.

I’m in this camp too. Although some days I try to test myself and do it without looking up anything for an extra challenge, I find it slightly more satisfying to double check my work so I’m able to submit a guess for every square.

The other strategy I’ll use to give myself a “hint” is looking up the list of a team’s all-stars…eg, if I look at a list of all stars from the Royals that will usually help jog my memory if I’m trying to figure out someone who also played for the Braves.

 

[CoolPapaBellhorn]

I use the Crossover Grid as practice. I openly cheat and search for the most obscure answers that I will hopefully retain for Immaculate Grid someday.

Otherwise I start with my depth knowledge areas (Red Sox players, late 80s baseball cards, late 90s/early 2000s video games, fantasy baseball is super helpful for obscure relievers, etc.). I've realized that I'm completely useless on arbitrary achievements (20 wins, 200 hits, .300 average, all stars, etc.), so I need to study up on those milestone lists.

This is just for baseball. The only other sport I have a shot at is hockey, and even then I'm using mostly mid-90s EA Sports names.

If I'm really desperate, I might "fish" - meaning I'll type a first name in the search and see if any players who come up jog my memory somehow. I try not to cheat beyond that.

 

[Kliq]

For the statistical accomplishments, when you can think of a few choices, you should understand that 2-3 names are really going to occupy a vast majority of the answers, so don't rack your brain too hard or risk guessing on someone you are not sure about in order to get a low score.

For example, if the category was "Giant players with 40+ homers in a season" you should understand that Bonds and Mays are going to take up like, 80% of all answers. So even someone very famous like Willie McCovey should be good for a <10% selection. I typically go fairly chalk on the team categories, and then clean up with low scores on the statistical categories to get my rarity score under 100.

I also have a few pet names. I'm of the belief that Gaylord Perry is the most useful name in the grid. He accomplished pretty much every meaningful statistical barrier (300 wins, 20 win seasons, 3,000+ Ks, 200+ Ks in a season, multiple CYA, etc.) and he played for a lot of teams, including some teams you might not be able to remember a bunch of great pitchers from (Seattle, Kansas City, Texas, San Diego, etc.) And he is almost always under 5%, and usually well below that as well.

For basketball I have a few names of fairly memorable players that just played for a lot of teams, and for whatever reason I can remember every stop they had, so it is easy to work them into pretty much every grid. They are: Tyson Chandler, Jermaine O'Neal, PJ Tucker, Isaiah Thomas, Shawn Marion, Rasheed Wallace, Dwight Howard and Jeff Green.

 

[YTF]

For the statistical accomplishments, when you can think of a few choices, you should understand that 2-3 names are really going to occupy a vast majority of the answers, so don't rack your brain too hard or risk guessing on someone you are not sure about in order to get a low score.

For example, if the category was "Giant players with 40+ homers in a season" you should understand that Bonds and Mays are going to take up like, 80% of all answers. So even someone very famous like Willie McCovey should be good for a <10% selection. I typically go fairly chalk on the team categories, and then clean up with low scores on the statistical categories to get my rarity score under 100.

I also have a few pet names. I'm of the belief that Gaylord Perry is the most useful name in the grid. He accomplished pretty much every meaningful statistical barrier (300 wins, 20 win seasons, 3,000+ Ks, 200+ Ks in a season, multiple CYA, etc.) and he played for a lot of teams, including some teams you might not be able to remember a bunch of great pitchers from (Seattle, Kansas City, Texas, San Diego, etc.) And he is almost always under 5%, and usually well below that as well.

For basketball I have a few names of fairly memorable players that just played for a lot of teams, and for whatever reason I can remember every stop they had, so it is easy to work them into pretty much every grid. They are: Tyson Chandler, Jermaine O'Neal, PJ Tucker, Isaiah Thomas, Shawn Marion, Rasheed Wallace, Dwight Howard and Jeff Green.

100% on Perry. He's a grid MVP in my book plus I'm of an age where I remember his career and most of the teams he's played for.

 

[Didot Fromager]

I keep getting amazed at how much I've retained from my pre-adolescent addiction to Strat-O-Matic, ABPA, Statis-Pro, and Avalon Hill board games, the Sporting News, Street & Smith's annual previews, and Topps. I can remember rolling dice for Chuck Hinton as a Cleveland Indian (Guardian) AND a Washington Senator (Texas Ranger) and that results in a 0.01 rarity score.

 

[Big Papa Smurph]

My first goal is to get 9/9. If I get a rare score, that's great; if I get a high score, that's fine too.
1.) I play MLB The Show, so I'm pretty familiar with current rosters.
2.) My baseball fandom peaked between 1999-2015. Reading box scores every day and reading websites made me familiar with players from that era.
3.) I know very little about pre-WW2 era baseball players. I know enough from the 1940's onward to get by.
4.) When all else fails, I think of Red Sox players who played for one of the teams. (for example, if it was Cubs and Athletics, I would think of Red Sox/Cubs players and then think if they played for OAK. Eventually I would get Nomar or Lester.)

 

[Sad Sam Jones]

I think any strategy I use has already been covered except to say that it's not a timed challenge. I don't rush through it and often if I'm stuck, spending more time on it just takes the fun out of it, so sometimes I leave and come back later... I'm never really thinking about that category or two I left behind all day, but if I just cleanse my mind of the process and return in the evening, often someone entirely new will pop into my mind. If you're using the same browser, it retains your answers when you leave the page anyway.

Otherwise, I've read a lot of baseball history over the years and pretty much anyone pre-expansion is almost always a good answer (the problem is, I associate most of those players with only 1 or 2 teams). I don't try to name as many Guardians/Indians as I can, but frequently it's just the easiest route. I also have a few players who just have way more real estate in my memory banks than is logical... I think I've used Jim Tatum at least 3 times because he played for the closest minor league team to me when I was a kid and ended up playing for a couple of the teams with which I'm least familiar.

 

[TeddyBallgame9]

I usually start with "which square does Fernando Rodney fit into" (I swear you can use him almost every day), then go through guys who played for the Red Sox. Growing up as a Sox fan in central NJ I have a lot of Phillies/Mets/Yankees names rolling around in my head but as soon as I see a 90's expansion team I know I'm screwed.