Scrabble
What's the good word?
I first played Scrabble against my family, one of the games to fill a long Christmas break at my grandparents house. At that time, Scrabble was the quintessential ‘fireplace game.’ Chess — too difficult. Cards — too simple (because we played ‘War’ or ‘Go Fish’). Scrabble was the Goldilocks game: just right.
And for many people, that’s where it ends. Scrabble has sold millions of copies that mostly sit on kitchen tables played by couples or kids or a family. Alfred Mosher Butt’s game became a staple.
As the oldest of my generation, my siblings and cousins would crowd around the table to watch me play with the adults, but they were too young. So my grandparents bought Scrabble Junior for them until they “graduated” to the adult game, and everyone was happy.1
So the holiday’s went.
Scrabble is not only played by families. In the university’s game club we’d play before or after the long, complicated games. Save Rome from enemies external and internal, then put words on a grid. And — to my horror — my perfectly cromulent lexicon did not stack up.
My opponents were now future scientists and engineers. I’d grasped from an early age that the layout of the board’s special spaces were the battlefield and had made sure to not open up high scoring opportunities for my siblings, aunts and uncles. At least, not to open it up for a measly few points.
My new opponents knew that as well. This wasn’t the kitchen table. Ego was at stake.
Scrabble went from a game I played, to one I studied. Just a little. A few hours here and there.
That was my introduction to tournament Scrabble, where people focus on tactics and word lists; not just on building a big vocabulary. Scrabble players are focused on the words that are most likely to show up on a rack in Scrabble.
The two letter words are most important, because then you find more ways to place your word (or perhaps run two words parallel). Seven letter words are next, because getting rid of all of the tiles on your rack (a ‘Bingo’ in the lingo) is worth a fifty point bonus.
The kitchen table arguments over “is that really a word” were solved by using the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. We’d graduated to a new argument — Should “stupid words” be legal? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never used “AA” in a sentence. We all knew what it meant (after the first time looking it up), but did it matter? We wrangled with all of that, eventually deciding that the word had to be both in the dictionary and something you might be able to find in a play or novel or newspaper article fairly quickly. (Nowadays we might Google it and see if the first place it shows up is … on a Scrabble site. If so, it’s a stupid word).
Arnold Kling observed recently that hobbies become “Narrower, Deeper, and Older,” which explains why everything seems more niche.2 This entire site (as well as others like BoardGameGeek) is certainly proof enough. And I have dived deeply in some games; but not all.
With Scrabble I only dipped my toe into the waters of serious play, then decided that they were not for me. I was content with knowing that there were depths I didn’t know; others could explore them.
From time to time I played at a local bookstore with random opponents, a few games every week or two. The manager — a kind soul — graciously offered a small gift certificate to the high score every night. So I can honestly say that I have won money on Scrabble, thanks to those free-rolls. But blood in the water attracts sharks. Tournament players swept in and the gravy train dried up, at least for me.
I still went once in a while. Not being able to win is hardly the worst thing in the world. But the tenor changed with stakes and the group became serious and I found myself not as interested.
For me — Scrabble lives somewhere between the kids table in the kitchen and the tournament scene. I am glad that both extremes exist and certain that Scrabble is a First Ballot lock in the Top 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.
(And a bit terrified that I’ve spelled something wrong in the above article).
The parents and grandparents were probably especially happy at the educational value of having little kids intensely studying how to spell without prodding.