Scrabble-A classic SOme tips and Experiences of A great Game (Scrabble Original)

Member Name: ducky17

Product:	Scrabble Original
Date:	22/03/02 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: family game, aesthetically pleasing, exciting when you spot good moves

Disadvantages: can be slow depending on your opponent and the way the board lays itself out , sometimes hard to get into

THE THRILL, THE AGONY? I like Scrabble because I sometimes win, which makes it different to other board games. When things are going well for you in the game and you spot possibilities all around the board, it can make you feel smart. When you see a good mood, it´s fun to chuckle to yourself while your opponent lays down his meagre 9-point word, then, slowly, with dramatic emphasis, click down your 35-point gem and watch his ego shrivel to nothing. And the agony, if he beats you to it and his score shoots up into the big numbers! It´s almost worse if he UNWITTINGLY, STUPIDLY, blocks your masterpiece of a word just to lay down a pathetic little 9-pointer.


On the other hand, if the game is not going well, it can be a bit slow. Sometimes all the letters get bunched together, and there´s NOTHING to be done except to make little prepositions, for example. And if you have opponents who feel the need to think for ten minutes before they sigh and form their prepositions, might be better to slap a kitchen timer down in front of them and agree to a four minute pondering limit.


GAMEPLAY (The game´s a classic, so skip this paragraph if you´ve played before). You have tiles with letters on them, which you arrange into words on a grid gameboard. At all times (until the end), you have seven letters, and when it´s your turn, you must form a word which intersects with a letter in word already on the board, forming something that looks like a crossword puzzle. Different letters are worth different numbers of points when you use them ? this is related to their relative frequency in English ? infrequent letters are worth more points. Different squares can double or triple the value of a square or a word when you cross them.


AESTHETICS The game is more attractive than most, in my opinion, because the colours are understated and the tiles are still made of wood. The tiles are very smooth and pleasant to the touch, and make a satisfying click w
hen you lay them down.


WHO CAN PLAY People who know how to read and write words of more than two syllables, including grandparents, who enjoy this game, in my experience, and already know the rules. A good game for family parties when the conversation dies.


STRATEGY I am no mathematician, but it seems to me that, especially in a game of two players, your statistical odds are much better if you always aim for the double and triple word tiles, even if you have a higher-scoring idea that doesn´t involve them. After all, your high-scoring tiles will still be there next turn, but that square might be occupied by your opponent, who could even have some devilish plan up his sleeve. You also might try psyching your opponent out by staring fixedly at some squares far away from your next planned move and laughing an evil laugh until he lays down tiles there just to thwart you. A clean conscience never won a game of Scrabble!


FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING I used to be a teacher of English for non-natives, and although my students didn´t really like Scrabble in English, since they found it frustrating, it is a way to kill an hour of class time without a lesson plan in a legitimate-seeming activity. It was also mildly entertaining for me to walk up behind them and spot great moves that they didn´t see because this kind of thinking is MUCH HARDER in a foreign language. Actually, I have played Scrabble in three languages, and, if voluntary, foreign-language Scrabble can be a fun language-learning exercise. If you want to practise, say, French, and you know a French person who wants to polish up his English, try playing a bilingual match (the disadvantage of this is that you find yourself exclusively coming up with moves in your native language), or, better, both of you can be restricted to the foreign language; i.e., you play exclusively in French, and he plays in English. OTHER TIPS If you want to make the game shorter, play with eight or
nine tiles instead of seven. This also makes the game easier, good for playing with children or for a foreign language classroom. Another way to make the game easier is to permit writing words down-to-up and right-to-left

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