One of the exciting wedding presents we got (nearly 5 years ago, too) is the game Scrabble. Throughout three years of pre-parenthood, we played a lot of board games, including Monopoly (we even invented Extreme Monopoly), Settlers, endless rounds of Uno, etc. But for some reason, we could never get into Scrabble.
Every time we'd sit down to play, we'd take 5-minute turns trying to make words from our seven tiles, sounding out ways to pronounce invented words and making up their definitions, only to ultimately place on the board three and four letter words. Of course, this made it even harder to keep playing with so many limited options for placement of new words. We'd usually play for about 9 or 10 turns, (totalling 15-20 minutes) and then decide to put the game away and do something else.
Well, we dusted off the old scrabble box this past week to give it another try, thinking that maybe with a couple more years' experience under our belts, we would now be seven-letter champions. Um....Not quite. We're still just as awful at Scrabble, if not worse. We had a movie playing in the background to dispel the boredom we knew would occur during endless turn-waiting. Then commenced the three and four letter vocabulary (with occasional five-letter words). Jut. Gait. Widow. One of us was actually trying to extend words long enough to actually reach the bonus squares, but for the most part, our words scored in the mere single-digits.
We had the laptop handy to look up definitions for letter combinations we would try to pass as words. "Look up gweab. Is that a word?" "If I can make up a definition for floisty, can I put that one down?" We started swapping letters with each other. "You have a D? I'll give you a U?" Then we each revealed our trays and attempted to combine our 14 cumulative letters to make words that fit into the minimal spaces available on the board. Then the inevitable question "You wanna just do something else?" We lasted maybe 45 minutes max.
It was a real, concerted effort to play Scrabble, and once again it failed.
I think Scrabble is just not for us.
3 comments:
floisty? gweab? i love it!! you should make up your own version of scrabble--extreme scrabble! if you can make up your own definition it deserves a spot on the board.
The Scrabble box says that the average game ends up at 500 to 700 points total. Dad and I have been trying for 35 years to score something approaching 700. We are educated and intelligent people, but and we have never made it. And we do get to the triple word score squares. I think the box is lying.
Gramma, I might add, can do it. That is because she does crossword puzzles and studies a Scrabble dictionary, so she knows words that no one ever really uses.
You should try playing Speed Scrabble. It moves a lot faster than regular Scrabble, so it keeps my attention better. Visit http://www.mrkland.com/games/spscrab.htm
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