Who'd of thought spelling could be fun. (Scrabble Original)

Member Name: blackviolets

Product:	Scrabble Original
Date:	17/07/09 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a good, simple game

Disadvantages: if you loose a tile, those who take ages with their go.

So I'm finally going to admit that I love this game. I don't mean to brag (yes you do!) but I am incredibly good at it as well, which is probably why I like it so much. Despite my subdued personality I can be very competitive when it comes down to it. On many occassions (really not joking now) I have been known to sulk when somebody has beaten me and will refuse to stop playing until I have won at least one game.

So far my highest score has been 516 points. There's probably going to be somebody out there who's gotten more but for the time being I'm fine with my amount, anyhow enough about me...

Most people must of played this game at least once in their lifetime and if you haven't then you don't know what you're missing. This isn't just a game for the elderly, anybody can join in and you don't even have to be that great at it. Depending that is, on who your opponents are.

Over the past few years they've made scrabble available for people to play on consoles, over the internet even travel sets but for me the original 15x15 board is the best one to use.

The rules are simple, each player picks up 7 tiles with seperate letters on. When you put down a word you have to pick up the same amount of tiles so that you always have 7 letters to play with. So if you put down the word 'cat' you have to pick up 3 tiles. When you put the words down they have to intersect with another word, so the board should start to look a bit like a crossword.

Words can read from left to right and up to down but in no other direction. Certainly not diagonal! The letters are worth points, naturally the more difficult the letter to form a word is the more value they're worth. Q, Z and X especially.

Some of the squares on the board are marked with double word scores, triple word, double letter or double word scores. All very self explanatory really. So you go around the board, each player having their go, it's better with 4 people. Naturally when all the pieces have gone you can't pick anymore up signalling you're near the end. On some occassions people give up at the end because they can't get rid of all of their letters, in that case you take the points that their remaining tiles amount to off of the main score.

So, hello again to any of you who skipped the above rules, noted that I could probably of written it a little more simply.

I find that this game fills in a lengthy amount of time whilst being fun at the same time. Yes I did say fun, spelling isn't all that boring sometimes. It isn't likely to get your blood raising but it's generally an enjoyable thing to do. Especially if it's raining outside and you'd rather stay in than get soggy.

If you like doing sudoku you may like this as well, but more importantly is that just because you spell the longest word doesn't mean you're going to get the points you deserve. No matter how impressive it is. Usually a game with 4 players can last to just over an hour. Unless you get the people who take forever to pick a word and then put down mat or something like that.

If you want you can put a time limit on how long each go takes, however this can backfire on your self if you have tricky letters to work with.

As I've said this is an enjoyable game to play and there is also a junior version as well, although I'm not particularily sure how it differs from this one. I like spelling games and I know I'm pretty good at them, although knowing me I've probably 101 spelling mistakes in this review. Anybody of any age can join in (within reason of course) and it's a bit of simple good fun. You can get this is WHSmiths for £11.99 and on Amazon for £14.65.

The set comes with 4 stands to put your tiles on and a small bag for your tiles to go in, just so the cheats out there don't pick and choose the best letters.

Summary: .