Great Word Game - Fun for all (Scrabble Original)

Member Name: jpegington

Product:	Scrabble Original
Date:	14/01/07 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining, Fun, A game to think about

Disadvantages: Can be long, Can be hard work

So yet another Board game review for me as I seem to be enjoying them and picking up some nice crowns. Thanks to everyone for those.

Anyway, back to scrabble.

ABOUT THE GAME:

Now Scrabble is a simple word game created by Mattel. The recommended age of the game is 10 years old, but in order to be good at the game you do need quite a good vocabulary so maybe slightly older might be better.

BASIC RULES OF THE GAME:

OK, now Scrabble is a very simple game to play, but very hard for those of us like me with bad vocabulary. The basic rule is that you have a board upon which you need to make words. How do you make the words, well you have a number of tiles within the game and you get to pick 7 of them out of a bag. Each tile has one letter on it (worth different number of points) and you need to make a word from these letters and put them onto the board. Then you need to draw more tiles until you have seven again.

Aim of the game is to be the person with the most points at the end of the game, but more on all that shortly.

HOW TO SET UP THE GAME:

OK, you should have a board (with various symbols on it, like Double Word, Double Letter, Triple Word, Triples Letter, etc) on it. This is the basic playing service for the game. You also have 4 green trays which are to be used to keep your letter tiles on and a large quantity of letter tiles in a bag.

Place the board on a table (on a turn table if possible as this makes it easier to play as you can turn the board to you when it is your turn), give each player a green tray and place all the letter tiles into the bag.

Next decide who is going to be the scorer for the match (always a horible job as you always have to be writing down numbers, but thankfully Dad always used to do this, although now it my job between my wife and I).

That is basically the board setup, so lets get on with playing the game.

PLAYING THE GAME:

Ok, first thing to do is work out who starts, this is a slight advantage sometimes, so we always pick one letter tile out of the bag, and closest person to A then starts.

Next each player needs to pick out 7 letter tiles. These are the letters that you have to use to make your first word on the scrabble board. The first player to play must make a word (obviously the most highest scoring one) out of these letters. He must place these across the middle of the board (there should be a star on the central position of the board) and then calculate how many points he has. The first person to go, always gets double points which is why it is an advantage sometimes. The first player then has to pick out more letter tiles from the bag to make up his number to 7 again.

Now it is the second persons turn. His job is a little more difficult as he must make a word that is able to be placed on the board out of the seven letter tiles that he has. What do I mean by this? Well simply put, he must make a word that either uses one of the letters on the board already or by extending the word into another word (For example if the first person put down "YOU" then then second person could add an "R" on it to make "YOUR" or could make another word running down or through or up from the "U", i.e. "UNDER".) Obviously he has only his 7 letter tiles to use, but he must make a word using these starting letters.

Again you need to work out how many points he has and move on to the next player. This continues until there are no more letter tiles left and all words have been made that can be made on the board.

WINNING THE GAME:

You win the game by having the most points at the end of the game.

INFORMATION ON POINTS/SCORING:

Each letter tile has a number on it, these represent the number of points that letter is worth (i.e. vowels are alll 1, Q = 10, etc). These represent how you score the points and therefore words made up from higher scoring tiles is always going to be better. On top of this you have special squares on the board like "Double Word" or "Double Letter". When you make a word on one of these squares (or a number of them) then you should calculate your points taking these squares into account (i.e should you make a word on a "Double Word" square, then you should count the points on your scrabble tiles and then double them).

STRATEGY TIPS:

Not that many strategies to tell you here, except obvious ones. Firstly you should try not to give your opponents access to making words on the "Triple Word" squares as it is possible to get very high scoring words using these. Secondly there are some letters that are very hard to place (i.e. Q as you must have a U) and therefore sometimes it is good just to get these onto the board whenever you can. However these high scoring letters are great on Triple Squares or Double Letter Squares etc. Need to work out what you want to do there youself. Thirdly I would recommend having a Dictionary near you. This comes in handy to check spelling of words and whether they are real words. We always play that if it is not in the dictionary then it cannot count.

MY OPINION:

OK, now I must admit that when I was younger I did not like Scrabble. This is probably because I used to play it with my parents (who are both very good at it and do not like to lose) and I used to be beaten quite a lot. It has only really been in the last number of years that i have started to really enjoy playing scrabble again.

Having said that, I would encourage everyone to play this game with your children. It is an excellent way to teach vocabulary and spelling and help them to think and it is a great way for parents to spend time playing with their children rather than letting them just play computer games or watch TV.

I now enjoy playing Scrabble with my wife. I find it entertaining and fun, and we have to actually think about it as well. I find this does help me stay awake and use my Brain for a change.

I would not say that Scrabble is an easy game as you constantly have to make new words and think about it, therefore not something to just vegatate on like other games. However it is good fun, and the feeling when you make a high scoring word is just awesome.

Another point I forgot to mention earlier is that if you can place all seven letters onto the board in one go, then you also get a bonus of 50 points. Unfortunagely I have not managed to do this yet!!!

I would mention that Scrabble can be quite a long game. Especially if you are having problems placing words. A game can go on for hours which does start to get boring if you are constantly waiting for someone else to play. We often watch a film that we know in the background so that you are not so bored.

All in all I would recommend scrabble to everyone as a good game to play.

Summary: Good game that is sometimes to long