My girlfriend got me Scrabble for Christmas. I realize for a lot of you out there, this sounds like a lame gift, somewhere in the league of a three-pack of tube socks or perhaps a special edition DVD of 'City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold.' I, however, absolutely adore Scrabble.
This is in part due to my immense love for the English language. I have an almost perverse fascination with its needless complexity and eccentricities. Take the word 'read.' Unless I use it in a sentence, you don't know whether to pronounce it like 'red' or 'reed.' Isn't that hilarious? It's also one of my all-time favorite English-language quirks that 'good' and 'food' do not rhyme when any sane person would assume they ought to.
Also, it is hard to fault any language that produces the word 'lugubrious,' an adjective which sounds exactly like what it describes.
It's understandable then that someone who is fascinated by language as much as I am would love Scrabble. But what I find simultaneously delightful and evil about the game is it doesn't always reward a wide vocabulary. Particularly if you're an English major like me, the pressure is on to produce clever, complex words. Regretfully you are entirely at the mercy of the random tiles you pick and open spaces the last player has left. Thus, even Noah Webster would be unlikely to use a real zinger like 'zygote'; he would instead have to sheepishly put down 'hat' and insist that his letters suck.
It can also be quite frustrating when longer, more obscure words are worth less than small, common ones. You won't survive in the dangerous dog-eat-dog world of competitive Scrabble playing with big words alone, believe you me, sailor. You must use the colored bonus tiles wisely:
Player A: I've got 'lacunae,' the plural of 'lacuna,' meaning 'a gap or missing space.' Let's see?? with 'U' on a double-letter score tile, that's 10 points.
Player B: I've got 'quick.'?? It means, like, the same thing as 'fast.'
Player A: I know what 'quick' means.
Player B: 'Q' is on a double-letter score, 'K' is on a triple-word score. Hey, that's like, 90 points! Isn't that funny?
At this point, Player A bludgeons Player B to death with a dictionary, which is a shame as it completely ruins the nice leather binding.
My favorite bit of strategy in Scrabble is adding letters to existing words on the board to create new words. I pity the poor soul who puts 'quid' down, thinking they have used their valuable 'Q' to its fullest potential: My simple-yet-dastardly addition of an 'S' transforms it into 'squid,' scourge of the ocean deep and a word worth at least 15 points! This, however, leads to arguments in the long run, particularly about whether turning 'pest' into 'pesto' is a cunning move or just you showing off and being a dick.
So what point, exactly, am I trying to make with this column? The gift one person considers as inferior may be prized by another? English is a strange and wonderful language? It is not pure knowledge that will get you ahead in life, but strategy and cunning?
Oh, that's right. My point is: I frigging LOVE Scrabble.
