Scrabble – Obsessing Again

In 1978 I moved to Center City Philadelphia, on Rodman Street between 11th and 12th. After years of living in homogenized apartment complexes in the suburbs, I moved into an older building on a street so narrow there was only room for one car to pass with no parking at the curb! I moved into an apartment one floor above my friend Neal’s.

Center City Philadelphia was great. I could walk out my front door to get the paper or have a bite to eat. No car was necessary in the neighborhood and almost anything you wanted was in the neighborhood.

One day, early on, I found Neal played Scrabble and I asked if he wanted a game. That began a Scrabble obsession.

We played that first game and I immediately realized Neal operated on a different Scrabble level from me. He put down “ani” and “zygote.” My jaw fell. How could I compete when I didn’t know “aa” was a Hawaiian volcanic rock?

Of the first 20 games we played, I lost 19. Actually, I lost 19 in a row before winning one, and that was probably because of incredibly lucky tile selection.

People who don’t play it think poker is a game of luck, not skill. They don’t realize that Scrabble has many of the same elements of skill versus chance… yet no one thinks of Scrabble as a game of luck. After 19 losses I certainly didn’t.

I played Neal enough to get better, though certainly never anywhere near as good as he was.

When I moved from Philadelphia to Buffalo, the Scrabble playing ended. With Neal I had the willing partner and convenience that I’d never find again.

My going away gifts included a Scrabble dictionary with this inscription:

To my protege –

May your Neilson ratings never fall as low as our first game. May your future be a seven letter word with a triple word score.

Neal

When I first got on the Internet in the late 80s&#185 I found a server (in Toronto I think) which hosted Scrabble games. I played for a while, but as the net developed and there were other things to see, I lost interest.

A few nights ago I watched a Scrabble documentary on the Times/Discovery Channel. All of a sudden I was motivated to play again.

After a few minutes of searching I found a site which hosts free online Scrabble games. I know the Scrabble trademark is incredibly well protected, so the only reason this site survives probably has to do with the fact that it’s in Romania.

I downloaded the software and started to play Thursday. By Friday I had 5 games under my belt (4 losses, though the last was only by 2 points).

Since the site records all your games and understands the competition you’re playing against, it ranks you as a player. Now I will have a goal, improve my ranking.

As with online poker, it is not too difficult to cheat while playing. I am hoping that the others I play against, who have sworn not to cheat, uphold their end of the bargain.

In the meantime, I wonder if Neal knows about this? Before long I could be losing to him again!

&#185 – When I first got on the Internet (thanks to a co-worker who was able to get me an account from his university) it was a very different place. Web browsing was done in a non-graphical way. Information was found on Gophers and Archie servers. It was totally non-commercial.

One thought on “Scrabble – Obsessing Again”

  1. I like to play Literati, on yahoo games – It’s BASICALLY scrabble but with a slightly different board, and the letters are dynamic, vs. scrabbles static host of letters, which makes the game a bit interesting since you know that everytime there might be 20 S’s or only 1. You can also play rated games in which the results are recorded and such. It’s really fun. Here’s a link of my own best scores, if I may boast a bit 😉 http://www.heem.org/scores/

    Anyway, http://games.yahoo.com/games/login2?page=lt

Leave a Reply to Jim Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *