Don't let your daughter pick the letters (Scrabble Original)

Member Name: MaryanneH

Product:	Scrabble Original
Date:	20/12/04 (1205 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great game, Good for improving vocabulary

Disadvantages: None

Some games in this world are classics and will be with us forever, chess, draughts and of course scrabble. The one thing that separates these games above all others and makes them truly classic is that no two game are the same, there is no throwing a dice and landing on the same square over again they are games of tactics, skill and a just a little bit of luck. In Scrabble there are an infinite number of possibilities limited only by your vocabulary and in some cases imagination (especially if you’ve ever played with my mum and I was late into my twenties before I bucked up courage to question any of her dodgy spellings!)

So to the uninitiated what is scrabble?

In its simplest form it is a board game, with 100 tiles, 98 of which have a different letter of the alphabet on 2 of which are completely blank and are called, wait for it…. Blanks!

The board has 225 squares a number of which plain squares and some coloured ones, more of that in a minute and is suitable for a minimum of 2, maximum of 4 players.

How to get started!

Each player takes a tile rack and one single letter, whoever gets the closest to the beginning of the alphabet starts. You each then take 7 letters and start to make words up.

The first player must go across the centre square which is a pink square with a star on, the word must go over this square and whoever goes first gets double points on the first go. You then take it in turns to put down a word, the only rules are, it must be a real word but not a proper noun, abbreviation or prefix, and you must join your word to an existing word on the board by either adding to it or using existing letters for your word.

How to score!

Each letter has a number on it, and you add these up, if you go across one of the coloured squares mentioned earlier, this gives bonus points from doubling the single letter, to trebling the whole word. There is also an added bonus of 50 points if you get all your letters out. The scores on each tile, vary depending on how easy they are to use, common letters like the vowels, S,T, L, N, R are worth one point. Then D,G are worth 2 points, B,C,M and P are worth 3, F,H,V,W and Y are worth 4, K is worth 5, J and X are worth 8 and finally Q and Z are worth 10 points and if you pick up the Q with no blank or U you are in trouble. Once one person uses up all of their letters and all the tiles are gone the game is over and any that you are left with at the end are deducted from your score.

So how can a game of making up words cause so much raucous family fun on a Sunday afternoon. There are games of scrabble that can stick out in a memory as true moments of genius, like how I managed to open a game with the word Valkyries getting the K on a double letter and earning 74 points on my first go and still end up losing the game, and the day I got QUIZZES (using a blank for the second Z) across a treble word score giving an enormous score. Then you have the opposite luck and you are sat with a rack of I I I I E E O wondering if old Macdonald really did know there was a word E,I,E,I,O or whether it was made up.

Then of course you can be sat with the letters PENSUTI and you need to add another letter into PENS to get a really good score by getting it onto a bonus square. Depends on your company whether you decide to add the I in.

Of course these days there are a number of club players who have truly mastered the tactics of the game, like a standard list of 2 and 3 letter words, which Jonathon Ross declared on his radio show, were cheating to use, when discussing it with Robbie Williams. One of the most useful of these is ZO. The use of dictionaries is technically banned until a challenge is made to a word, but again how rigorously this rule is enforced is down to who you are playing with. The whole challenging thing can get a bit nasty as well as technically if you are successfully challenged and you are just bluffing by making a word up you should lose a turn. Again not a rule very often in force.

There are some very easy tactics that go with the game – don’t set your opponent up for the treble word score (the little red squares in corners and middle edges), don’t waste an S pluraling a word when you first put it down, keep it and make two pluraled words the next time then you get to count both.

Then of course you have the little children wanting to join in and help by picking your letters. Be warned THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA. Children cheat, they pick out letters that they like and you spend the last third of the game struggling with a rack full of vowels.

So many a Sunday afternoon has been wasted playing a game of scrabble and if you are struggling what to get a friend for Christmas who loves words, this will be a hit. If you shop around you can usually pick up a standard game for around £15 and it will last for many generations to come, I am currently using my Grans version and as with any classic there are extras you can buy like scrabble dictionaries, turntables and even score pads for people who couldn’t possibly cope with a piece of paper. So if anyone fancies a game, my place, Christmas day about 3pm – see you there!

Thank you for reading.

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