Word Up!

Or, Why I’ll Never be a Scrabble Contender

The Amazing Bob™ and I’ve been playing our particular brand of Scrabble for years. We refer to it as Scrabble Dada which it is, sort of. For us, the game is all about making interesting words, engaging crossword shapes and entertaining juxtapositions.

We don’t keep score, we create words beyond the limits of the game board and, should a key letter be absent, it can be borrowed from elsewhere -- that is, IF the word’s got some killer allure. We have to have some restraints, don’t you know. Oh and we can use proper names too. Sometimes you just totally need to place ‘Freud’ next to ‘ass.’

With this as my Scrabble history, my word game DNA, I accepted AND have sent invitations to play Words with Friends on Facebook.

At first I paid no attention to the double and triple word squares. If I managed to get anything other than a single point scoring letter onto a double or triple letter locale, well, pure accident. Naturally I lost. Always. Every match.

This on line pursuit has just a passing similarity to the game that Bob and I play. We’re like puppies running tear ass around the yard after the linguistic equivalents of sparrows, squirrels and dust motes. We’re Calvin and Hobbes playing Calvin Ball.

This on line entertainment is about strategy and sacrifice. Goodness, just today I had to pass on ‘zither’ because, though I could create it with my tiles, there wasn’t a rule sanctioned space for it. Worse yet, I had to pass on ‘unmoored’ (such a lovely, romantic Heathcliffe-esque epithet) earlier today because it would have gone beyond the game’s edge. And ‘mylar,’ I could’ve made ‘mylar’ -- it puts the shiny silver, blue and purple balloons, bobbing along the ceiling of my past hospital rooms in mind. It’s a happy word but a proper name kind of happy word, I think.

OK, OK, there still are places to wedge some creativity in, a bit of Dada-esque fun.  Sometimes, when the hand I’ve been dealt and my creativity both fail me, I make up something that looks like a word. You know, consonant/vowel/consonant/consonant. Hey, that could SO be a word! Or, when the board is jam-packed with tiles and I’ve only got one or two left to play, I’ll randomly place my consonant next to a vowel or vice versa. Who knows? You can’t know until you try. The cool and curse of Words with Friends is the stern alert window that comes up when you’ve chanced a tile placement deemed ‘invalid.’

To my surprise, I’m enjoying this very different pastime quite a bit. I think it’s become a bit addictive for that matter. I’m now actually starting to win the very occasional round. Excuse me **cough** I need to go check in on my contests in play now.