Scrabble

Like many families, I suspect, the suggestion of "Shall we play a game?" in our household is often met with a split second of enthusiasm that is quickly replaced by mild cynicism and resignation.  Usually at least one person needs to be persuaded to play, and no matter how wonderful our intentions are, there will be hurt feelings, guilt over trying to stop others from winning, ultra-competitiveness, a desire to quit, and - with awesome futility - an announcement at some point that we should never play this game again.  But, of course, we do.

Settlers of Catan, Harry Potter Clue, Ticket to Ride, Hearts, Phase 10, Bird Monopoly.  The list goes on.  Honestly, there is little fun in playing in these games.  As a parent, I seem to spend most of the time trying to maintain the fragile peace between my children, so it feels rather counter-productive to deliberately put them into a situation where they are now competing against each other.  Yet this is exactly what I do.

We recently took a card game to some friends' house to play after dinner.  I felt that in doing so, our families were taking our relationship to the next level, for one sees a new side of people when playing games with them.  It was a gamble, no doubt, for there are certain people with whom we know we should not play.  A recent card game ended with my pregnant sister-in-law leaping across the table at my gloating brother, wrestling him to the ground, and pummeling him while he yelled, "The baby!  Watch out for the baby!"  Yet when they visited last, what did our children insist that we do?  Play a game.

Scrabble (or "Squabble", as some family friends call it) has not yet achieved the same notoriety in my household.  I suspect this is partly because we have not played it as a family.  My wife and I used to have a notebook in which we kept a running score that we updated after each game, but that - probably wisely - was left behind when we moved here from England.  I do, however, remember games of Scrabble with my family when I was a child and they would definitely get contentious.  My mother would be infuriated by my father's slow play and my father himself often lost patience with my mother, once even - allegedly - kicking her under the table.  We bickered over what words we could use (which means we must have played without a dictionary), and games seemed to take hours.

So it was with a host of mixed feelings that I signed up for last month's Escondido Public Library Scrabble-thon. 

Scrabble is a game.  It's supposed to be fun, I thought.   
But you're supposed to win, therefore you can be competitive, said a little voice inside me. 
Isn't it a bit over the top, competing in a Scrabble tournament?   
Maybe, but this will let you play to win instead of worrying about your family members' feelings.
 Shouldn't I care about my opponent's feelings, regardless?
You'll probably never see your opponent again.  You get to win guilt-free!
But I'm British.  I have to apologize for everything.
When in Rome...

And so on.

I entered as part of a four-person team in the intermediate division.  One of my team members was a former student whom I've played against a few times over the years - he's really good, and he would go on to win the intermediate division.  One of the things he taught me was the strategic use of the two-letter words, and this was an area where I felt that I would struggle in a competitive environment.  In the Official Collins Scrabble Dictionary, there are a number of words that are allowed to be used that most people would never consider, and a number of them use the big point value letters, like z, x, q, and j.  Can't come up with a word for your "z"?  How about "za"?  Stuck with a "q" because you don't have a "u"?  Don't worry: there's "qi".  (Both of these words are currently underlined in red by my spellchecker.)  Now I'm not claiming to know every single word in the dictionary, but most of the "words" in the picture below seem dubious at best.

From "The Phrontistery" [phrontistery.info]

During the tournament, I heard someone who was clearly a rookie like me, saying repeatedly and with increasing frustration, "That's not a word!" to an opponent who was using these words with skill and relish.  So I usually don't use them.  It feels a little bit like cheating to me.  And this isn't some noble scruple I possess.  I just don't want the person I'm playing with to be resentful or angry.  I want people to like me!  I did want to win, though, so I spent a little bit of time boning up on these words.  However, I did not really put in enough time to remember them, so during the competition, this left me in an awful no-man's land.  For example, I had the opportunity to join my word to another one using "Fe" (with the f on a triple letter score).  I thought the word might exist, but I couldn't be sure.  Plus, I didn't really want to use it anyway.  So I didn't, and passed up on an easy 30+ points, only to see my opponent play it on the next turn.  You can see my problem.

The other part of this is that I like aesthetics and an open board.  So I will often put down a word that uses more letters or a word that I consider to be a "great" word, even if it means fewer points and even if it means opening up the board to my opponent.

In short, I am not really primed for competitive Scrabble.

The tournament took place in the Escondido Senior Center.  There were rows and rows of long tables, each with several boards set up on them.  Snacks and drinks were offered in the kitchen.  A silent auction fundraiser was off to the side.  Everyone would play 5 30-minute games.  I met up with my team members and quickly discovered that I was the weak link.  As the minutes ticked by and game time got closer, I realised that I was actually quite nervous.

As I sat down to play my first match, I noticed two hourglasses (or egg timers, as we call them back home), one on each side of the board.  These were for the players to keep track of the time - you're only supposed to have two minutes per turn.  Now, I don't know about you, but I don't do that well under pressure, and when it comes to Scrabble, two minutes is not very long at all!  At this point, I started sweating, and before I knew it, we were off...

My first opponent claims to be playing in her first tournament, too, but I quickly discover that I am playing a seasoned pro.  On her very first turn, I notice that she spells "weird" incorrectly.  Technically, I should challenge the word.  She will lose her turn and the points.  Instead, I helpfully suggest that she reverse the "i" and the "e".

Rookie mistake, St. John.

She is so fast that she has her tiles ready to play within seconds of me playing mine.  I have no time to think; all I can see is the salt slipping inexorably through the hourglass.  And, of course, she knows all the two-letter words - and many more beside.  She plays "jills" (the plural of the name Jill?), then "sui" (isn't that Latin?), and I am completely unnerved.  The 30 minutes fly by.  It is a massacre; I lose by over 100 points.  Andres, my former student, only beats her by two points later on.

The board and scorecard from my first ever competitive win!  ("Qi" is not mine, I promise!)

In the next game, I am matched against someone who is weaker than I am.  I win comfortably, but it makes me soft for the next game.  I notice that a lot of people are not using the hourglasses, so when an elderly and very deaf gentleman sits down at my board for my third game, I don't really mind when he takes his sweet time over every turn...until I get a run of terrible letters and he starts edging ahead in the scoring.  He is taking at least a minute at times to add up points on his turn, and more than once tries to claim a "double word score" that has already been used.  I also notice that he is not keeping a running score on his paper; rather, he is just recording the scores, intending to add them up at the end.  Etiquette says that you both agree on the points and the score before moving on.  So now he's breaking two rules and since it's halfway through the game I can't really say anything to him.  But he seems kindly and I don't want to give him a hard time.  I mean, it's just a game of Scrabble.  But I'm losing!

With less than a minute left in the game, I pick up a "j", and as time ticks down, I plop down "jails" for 26 points and the lead with 5 seconds to spare.  But before I even have a chance to tally my score and announce it, he - quick as a flash, far quicker than anything he's done so far - plays two more tiles.  Technically, he's not supposed to do that, and I raise a quizzical eyebrow at his sudden speed.  Still, by my calculations, I am up 13.  But after he adds up his points, he has a different total: he claims to have won.  We have to go back, play by play, until he accepts, at my insistence (finally, some backbone!) that the 48 points he is claiming on his third turn was actually only 18 points.  I leave the board fairly convinced that he was using his apparent slowness to fake ineptitude and take me for a ride.

My next game is an easy win: I am ahead by over 100 after 6 turns.  I take pity on this poor soul (he was the one loudly challenging and bemoaning all the two-letter "words" earlier) since he's probably taken a shellacking in every game he's played, so I pass up numerous opportunities to run up the score.  Another mistake.  I later discover that our team score is not determined by wins and losses, but by total points scored.  Andres redresses the balance somewhat by dropping 390 on him in the next match.  There's ruthlessness for you!

My final match is a close one.  My opponent plays "hungers" (all her letters for an extra 50 points), with the "s" placed on the front of my word "crying" for a total of 80.  I briefly consider challenging; I have never heard of "scrying" before, but I decide against it.  Still, I play "averse" for 43 on my next turn, and I keep shrinking the deficit before running out of time at the end and losing a pretty high-scoring game.

Our team - despite my lack of ruthlessness - wins first place in the Intermediate Division and I am happy with a 3-2 individual record.  After my initial nervousness, I realise that I have really enjoyed myself.

A hard-earned medal (and one from a marathon)

So what did I learn from all of this?

First, I am still rather uneasy with the inherent incongruity in playing a game as part of a competitive tournament.  The friendliness of everyone at the tournament seemed genuine, but it was backed by steel, grit and a determination not to give any quarter when it came to points, words, and strategy.  It was as if, to paraphrase Romeo Montague, one was having one's head cut off by a smiling executioner with a golden axe.

Next, I don't think that I will learn from my mistakes.  If I plan on playing next year, I am not sure that I will be able to play two-letter "words", insist upon my opponents' following tournament rules, or challenge others' words without feeling horribly guilty.

Finally, I plan on proposing a new rule to my family: no game can last longer than 30 minutes.  I doubt they'll go for it, but it's worth a try!