f(x) = -1/2 +/- sqrt(5)/2

Am I missing something here? This looks like a sixth grade algebra problem.

I see two problems with your analogy. Crashing a car is far more expensive than producing CP, so much so that it would be hard to justify ever doing it intentionally. In addition, people don't make money off car crash photos; they do make money from CP.

It depends on your perspective. You're right in that competitive Scrabble isn't about knowing meanings of words, and this does bother some people. You can view Scrabble as not being about words so much as about combinations of letters. The game is then about a mix of anagramming and strategy (it was this strategy that I was talking about when I referred to depth; while living room Scrabble games usually feature little strategy, competitive players take into account many factors when choosing a play).

Scrabble isn't a game about words, it's just a game that uses them. It's about anagramming and about strategic decisions. It's no coincidence that Scrabble players tend to be on the more math-y side. If you shift your view of the point of the game, you might lose some of your disgust.

Just as a quick note, the page you linked is unofficial world records and hasn't been updated in a while. The official fastest times are here

Before someone claims dishonesty, all these solves were performed in competition with judges observing,

Assuming that "and" was supposed to be "any" (this is why proper spelling is important, folks), this is entirely false. Any sequence of turns solves one and only one position of the cube. If you don't believe it, work on your spatial reasoning imagine taking a solved cube and performing the inverse of the sequence (the sequence in reverse order, with all clockwise turns becoming counterclockwise and vise versa). You will get one position (obviously a starting position plus a sequence of turns uniquely determines an ending position). This is the position that that sequence will solve. No other.

Blindfold solving is done by memorizing the starting configuration of the cube and then performing algorithms that only affect a small number of pieces in a specific way (e.g. rotating three corners clockwise, flipping the orientation of two edges). These algorithms can be combined to, for example, cycle edge A -> edge B -> edge C -> edge D -> edge E -> edge A. Because this is inefficient from a number of turns standpoint, it wouldn't be suitable for a robot.

I'm a competitive cuber/scrabble player, you insensitive clod!

(No, seriously, I am. Scrabble has a lot of depth to it when played on a higher level that you are completely ignoring. Don't be so quick to dismiss something just because you don't know much about it.)

So THAT'S where the restaurant at the end of the universe is...

Single deck with favorable rules (S17, DAS, Surrender) can give a small player edge with perfect strategy, I believe. However, once basic strategy came around casinos changed their games to remove the player edge (more decks, H17 and no DAS, etc).