From time to time my husband and I have been known to indulge in our Scrabble addiction in public places — restaurants, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, park benches. Unlike conversing or reading a book in public, a Scrabble game seems to be everybody’s business, always calling to mind the old joke, “How do you contact civilization if stranded on a deserted island? Start playing solitaire, and soon someone will come along and instruct you to move that six on top of that seven over there.”
The same works for Scrabble. Countless passersby invariably stop to ask who’s winning. Any women present will root for me, while any men will roll their eyes in sympathy or find some other way to silently encourage my husband. (They rarely support him out loud lest they receive a sharp elbow in the stomach from their wives.) Without fail, some stickler will stop to inform us snootily that we are not to use the dictionary when playing Scrabble, that it’s against the rules. Another kinder, gentler meddler will give us hints which would earn half the points of the plays we end up using. We thank them all for their concern, smile politely, and go back to our game.
Despite our propensity for playing in public, we never break out the board at home. It simply never occurs to us, and even if it did there are far too many distractions.
And then this evening, the following note dropped into my lap. I looked up to see my husband waiting hopefully for a response. In a flashback to middle school, he had folded it into a cute little shape (then gave up and taped it closed when the folds wouldn’t hold).
Note: If you have trouble reading it, click the note for a closeup version.
I ask you, how could I say no? Game’s on in T minus seventeen minutes.
Now you know one of our obsessions. What do you do for fun?
Update: People are already asking, so here’s the lowdown. Hubby won, 445 to 334. He rocked the board with three bingos (words that use all the letters in the rack). Go hubbs!
Oh my God Caryn, that is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!!! You guys are just great. I love that you play Scrabble in public. 🙂
That is so cute. Have fun playing Scrabble. Dare I ask, who won?
Did you know that you can play Scrabble on Facebook? I’m so terrible at it, but I looove to play. Scrabble in public is cute. 🙂
Whoa, this is a new version of PDA…talk about love! 😉
We play Yahtzee and Monopoly. I totally kicked his trash the other night at Monopoly.
And we get made fun of it all the time because of it, Jess. We’re kind of famous (infamous?) in certain restaurants around town.
Dru, I just posted your answer above! Tim wins more often than I do, but I’m catching up. Slowly.
Courtney, I’ve heard that, but haven’t tried it yet. I also heard that Scrabble is suing Facebook for breach of copyright.
LOL, Larramie!
Go Liz! I haven’t played Monopoly in ages, but I’m terrible at it. Hmmm. Coincidence?
That’s so cute!! Hubby and I play scrabble, too, but not in public. We don’t play a lot of board games, but we love Cranium with a big group of friends.
So…? Who won? 😀 We sit in the livingroom together (on our respective computers, of course), and work on our websites. Wow. I guess we really DON’T have fun. Really, though, we have lots of fun together, usually traveling. Hope the Scrabble went well!
Brenda, we have a group of friends that gets together every other Thursday for games. It’s tons of fun. We play Cranium sometimes, although we usually break out Apples to Apples, Outburst, Taboo, Pictionary, Catch Phrase or Balderdash.
Katie, he did. By an embarrassing amount: 445-334. Next time we’re starting earlier than 8:00, and I won’t start falling asleep at the table, darn it! And I think it’s cute that you like to be together and don’t feel like you need to spend all your time giving each other 100% of your attention. I think it shows security in a relationship when people can be silent together, but still want to be near one another.
the bf and I play Remmy-Kube…we are insanely obsessed with the game and can play it all day and night. He claims that I cheat…I just whine a bit when he takes forever to make a move.