Scrabble

Do you like to play Scrabble? I love playing Scrabble: you might be surprised to know that I often lose against my brother, but since he is good at noticing patterns (and observing patterns is a huge part of Scrabble, in addition to having a strong vocabulary), it is not unexpected that he is better at it than me.

Still, it should not just be about winning and losing. The mere fun of playing is what counts: when playing Scrabble, the part I like the most is taxing my brain when trying to come up with a high-value word to spell when faced with a bad selection of letters on hand against letters placed on the board that would make it tough to get a good word even with favourable letters. I am also a fan of seeing what nonsensical or funny words I can make out of my letters.

My brother and I do adopt a few "house rules" when we play Scrabble. For example, we do allow names of people and places in our games, as it does make for interesting playing and does not really make the game any easier than without titles. We also ban three and two letter words until the late part of the game when there are only a few letters left each: often putting words less than four letters in length early on leads to stagnation, making it tedious rather than challenging. When playing with other people we respect whatever rules they follow, although when they play with us using our board, we do inform them of our method of playing in case they wish to try it.

Of course, while winning and losing is not everything, I will not deny that I do get a sense of satisfaction (but no rubbing the victory into him, that is bad sportsmanship) in the occasions where I do beat my brother: I just about won the last game with him at 272-262, though in all fairness we were playing with Mum, who came in third with 174. I always love it when we play a game when it is not clear who is going to win.

Scrabble is easily up there with Monopoly and Chess as one of my favourite games. It has been really nice playing it again for the last couple of months after it had been packed away for a long time.