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!
That note makes me feel like I’m back in high school. Gawrsh! What a sweet thing to do – except for the winning part. If he really wanted to reel you in to playing at home he should have let you win at least the first game.
Sarah, at least he knows his limits!
Thanks, Barrie & Jordan! I’ll let him know.
Erica, I like Boggle, too, although hubbs isn’t as big a fan. I don’t understand.
Eileen, I think I will. 😉 Oh, and I’ve done some knitting, but I’m at the scarf stage, and I want to be making sweaters, so I keep quitting. So I admire you and Erica for sticking with it.
LOL, Mary! I can just picture that one!
Susan, we have a new Scrabble board, complete with a fancy score pad. We always write down where we played and the date, too. We don’t have a log of our games before that, though. It was a good idea for you to do that! It would be fun to look at.
Anti-Wife, I kind of felt like I was back in school, too. As for not letting me win, I think he knows I’d rather lose than have him go easy on me. I won the last two times, so it’s his turn!
The note gave me a chuckle. Too cute. Hoop and I don’t play many games, but I think we might start. That sounds like fun!
Oh my God! It was so funny to read that 🙂 I’d like to find people like you playing Scrabble in Madrid!
we actually love scrabble too and have kept score in the same notebook for years now. it is full of comments back and forth about game plays, mistakes, jokes, etc.
THREE BINGOS!?!?!
For the love of GOD! Forget the dictionary, you need a young priest and an old priest, and the Book of Excorcism/ Pronto! Three bingos? Unreal!
Playing in public?
How many points are in “EXHIBITIONISM” anyway?
Tink, it’s definitely a fun thing to do together. I highly recommend it.
Thanks, elenaberenice! If we’re ever in Madrid, we’ll have to whip out the Scrabble board and hope you pass by.
Rebecca, that’s such a good idea! We must start doing that.It must be so much fun to reread all those comments.
Dwight, it’s rare for one of us to have so many bingos in one game. We each usually have 1-2. We’ve just been playing a long time. Oh, and my husband has actually *studied* Scrabble strategy, which meant that I had to, too, lest I get left in the dust. So we’ve learned about rack management, which words have a q but no u, all the legal two-letter words (and many of the three-letter ones that can be made from them), etc. If you learn that stuff and are patient, you’re bound to do okay. As for playing in public, we just do it because we like the atmosphere of playing in a restaurant, park, whatever. It’s like we’re part of that particular community, but still in our own little world. I highly recommend it.
Caryn . . .
I’m the same way (with strategy). My mother is such a good player, I was compelled to learn all that . . . and my scores shot WAY up. Which sometimes kills me–because I’ll have an AWESOME word–good vocabulary. But a lesser word, not so interesting, will make more points. So I go for points. Unless I play with my kids, in which case I go for vocabulary. Since I don’t play cutthroat with them . . . 🙂
E
Caryn,
That is the most adorable note!
How could you say no to that?! You can’t!
Erica, I have the same problem with wanting to put in the show-off words instead of the ones that make the greatest number of points. I love to build a word right alongside another that’s already there, thus earning points for my new word, and all the words that were created as the sum of the new word and the existing word. If that makes sense.
I definitely couldn’t, jozjozjoz, even when time got away from us and I found myself playing way later than I should have on a work night.