88.Scrabble

88. Scrabble

Do you like to play Scrabble? I don’t like it I love it. I started playing many years ago when we lived in what was then Rhodesia. There were sanctions on the country at the time and our board and tiles were locally and very poorly made. The tiles were little blocks of stained wood with the letters printed on them. But they were of different thickness and we would joke that we could tell which letter one was getting out of the bag by the thickness of the tile. The letters would wear away a bit and had to be restored with a black marking pen. I think we had bought the set as a Christmas present for my mother when she came to visit one year. She refused to take it home with her saying that she had no one to play with at home so she would leave with us so we could play together every time she visited.  Still we loved to play and got just as much fun out of it as we would have got with a proper set.

We would often get together with friends in the evening for a game and had great fun. My husband Jonathan is a great tease. He would look at his letters, point his finger at the exposed triple and say “How do you spell QUIZZICALLY”? or some other outrageous word. The gullible amongst us would react in horror without even thinking that it was an impossibility. We had a dictionary on the table and any queries were checked and we would not allow anything that was not in that dictionary, but we did not make anyone miss their turn or loose points.  We were even allowed to look up the correct spelling of a word in the dictionary; we just drew the line at trawling through the dictionary to look for words. As you can see we played for fun and there was much laughter and teasing on our Scrabble nights. Later on our dear friends Roy and Maureen bought us a proper set with a nicely printed board and evenly sized plastic tiles which we have still and Jonathan and I play fairly often.

Every time that my mother came to visit us we would have endless games. We played just the two of us, or with the family, or with visiting friends. We played at home or in the holiday chalet, in the game park or at the lake. My mother who was an avid reader and had a very good vocabulary became very good at the game and when she went home she would be the Scrabble champion or the group that she usually played with. And later when she went into a nursing home I believe she was still beating most of the other ladies right up until she was in her nineties.

Nowadays although we still play with our board and tiles I also play on line. I play with my sister in the UK, my cousin in Cape Town and another friend here in Australia. Obviously with different time zones some games can go on for ages but that is fine as no one is able to knock the board off the table or peep to see what letters you are holding on your rack.

Playing more than one game at a time can be a bit frustrating when you have the Q in one of the games and are waiting for a U to put down a word and on the other game you have 2 Us and just can’t get rid of them. I can’t decide which is most upsetting to have a slot with OOOIIIA or to have a really lovely word, EQUINOX and nowhere to put it. Or is it worst to almost have a seven letter word, just one wrong letter and there is a place to put it if only that A was an E. Yes It is a fun game but it can be very frustrating.

I think the thing I like about it most is that it is not just a game of chance. Yes there is a large element of chance involved, you can’t do a lot if you get lousy letters but even with good letters you need to have a fairly good vocabulary to be a winner and also you have to know where and how to place your letters. Using the triple and double scores makes all the difference. It is really an all-round game and I justify the time I spend on it by saying that it is good exercise for my brain and so I am warding off the dementia. I think that whoever it was that designed the board was obviously a sadistic genius. So often you have word to put down and a place to put it but you know that if you play it there is a chance of your opponent getting a triple. If one uses the Double letter and then the Double word place just three away from triple word you try to put the largest scoring word on the Double letter so that you can make your score as high as possible but then that leaves your large scoring letter available for your opponent to use to make a word and score triple. So many times you have to decide if it is wiser to get as big a score as you can or wiser to try and stop the other player using your nice letters to increase his score.

When I was introduced to On Line Scrabble by my cousin in Cape Town I tried to get my sister Adele in the UK to play too but she took quite a bit of persuading. I can’t remember why. After all she is a very good speller and it should have been just the game for her.  Eventually I did manage to get her to try it and she became hooked. At first I beat her every time, goodness only knows how but then she got the bit between her teeth and went with it. Now she mostly beats me and one time she beat me for 14 games in a row - Oh the shame of it! I accused her of all sorts of cheating. Maybe she was bribing the computer to give her better letters than me (how does one bribe a computer?) or maybe she was making up words that did not really exist or she had a little voodoo kit and was sticking little pins into a doll that looked a lot like me. But I have now come to the conclusion that the way she cheats is by being smarter than me. That’s not really fair is it?

 I am not sure that these games are warding off my dementia, maybe making me a little bit crazier, but I enjoy them so I will continue to play, win or lose.