Recently, I have begun playing Scrabble (in real life, against the computer, against Sophia through the iPod Touch), and I love it. Had to pick up this book about the competitive world of the game. Do you know that playing all seven tiles on a single move is called "bingo-ing?" And chatting up your opponent while they are thinking out their next move is called "coffeehousing." Ha! I also checked out The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary from the library. The appendix is very helpful: Q Words Not Followed by U, Short Words With No AEIOU Vowels, Short Words With High Vowel Counts, and 2- to 5-Letter Words Containing J, Q, X, or Z. And every Scrabble player worth his or her salt knows the list of 101 two-letter words by heart. Qi is a nice one if you can play it on a triple letter tile.
10 comments:
I love the challenge of seeing how many points I can get from one or two tiles - I saw an image of a board where the person had played a total of six or so new words - parallel all the way up. It's more engaging how you can plan your next move while your opponent is playing...
My husband & I play scrabble on Facebook while he's at school. I also have a perpetual game going on with a buddy up in Wisconsin. It's way too much fun. :-D
Christine, have you heard of a game called WordSpot? I've been playing it with the weasels & the spousal unit, and it's surprisingly engaging. It's got a similar premise to Scrabble, but sort of reversed rules, if that makes any sense. Either way, lotsa fun.
Not to get too "booky" here, but the Fastis book is well worth reading. As is his George Plimpton-ish book on football.
Oh, and I detest Scrabble. Just sayin'.
I haven't played Scrabble in a while, but I do like it and I have a non-special-edition version in my front hall closet. Yancy and I used to play it and as I recall, he usually kicked my butt.
Math person.
the scrabble documentary is on instant view on Netflix
Hey, I didn't say I sucked at Scrabble, just that Yancy usually beat me! Yancy is a pretty smart cookie though. And also a math person, though he doesn't know it. ;)
I love Scrabble! I used to play all the time with the kids until they got smarter than me (somewhere around middle school). Good vocabulary builder.
Thanks, Sophia.
Heather, I don't know WordSpot but will look into it--thanks!
Sophia, don't watch the Scrabble doc without me!
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