My first board game was Snakes and Ladders and I still enjoy it so much! I love the fact that the game is based on sheer luck and you can play without worrying about losing because bad luck usually isn’t your fault. Then my mom tried to teach me chess which was something I could never learn and enjoy. (Please don’t sneer at me! Its not my DQ – dumb quotient that made me do it, just a lack of requisite IQ)
Meanwhile I had graduated to monopoly (I very often was the banker though!) and cards. Then one day a spanking new board game was home! Scrabble was the name and the name didn’t make any sense to me. Then we sat to play, mum, dad et moi and very soon I was hooked for life. The thrill I got from making new words, calculating the scores and actually wanting to win every game.
Scrabble is basically a board game invented by Mr. Alfred Butts (without the S, MouthShut would have refused to accept his surname, right? Lucky him!) which allows you to make words vertically and horizontally across the board. Something like a crossword, but without the clues.
The game can be played by 4 players at a time. It has all the letters from A-Z in form of plastic tiles. Vowels like A, I, E, O are more in number, anywhere between 6-10 odd and other letter in 2 and 4s. Letters like Z, Q and X are only 1 each and carry higher points than the vowels or common letters like R and S.
Every player pulls out 7 letters each and the game begins. The intention now is to make words with 7 letters you have on your holder. If you make a 4 letter word in one turn, then you pull out three more letters for next turn and play till the tiles get over.
Across the board, there are some squares which say Double Letter or Double Word or Triple Word which will as the name suggests, double or triple the letter or word scores! So the intention is to use high value letters on these squares to earn more points!
As a family we had to pull out dictionary umpteen times to make sure a certain word existed! So please keep a nice dictionary alongside. I mean Raja is now a dictionary word! There are of course a set of rules to be followed which include no past tense words that end in ED or present participles ending with S!
Mayunk and me bought it last year and played it as if we needed to go to Scrabbler’s Anonymous to get rid of the addiction! We just played another game yesterday on chhutti ki lazy afternoon and Mayunk won with a fair margin of 50 points. He made the word PRIZE where Z was on double letter and the whole word had triple word score. This means one word gave him 75 cool points! It’s all about getting the right words at the right place!
Now there is another version of it called Upwords which is equally good. And you also get a classic edition with wooden tiles and a velvet pouch to hold the letter and all that jazz for close to 2000 bucks. It’s like a super collector’s edition.
PS: That’s my photo on winning our first game after we got the new board! We played best of 3, then 5 and then 7! Then lost track about who won more! But the fun continues!