Thursday, June 19, 2008

Scrabble

I have not posted for a few days because I have been visiting my elderly mother, whose household does not include broadband. My AOL program does not include dial-up and my Blackberry does not include blogging -- or if it does, I couldn't figure out how to do it. The local Starbucks has wi-fi but my parents live far out in the country and anyway I was playing Scrabble with my mother. And playing. And playing and playing and PLAYING...

We played eleven hotly contested games in three days. I won five, she won six. This is deeply embarrassing for a professional writer who's supposed to have words as her livelihood, but at the same time, it validates all that research that says older people can keep their brains sharp by playing intellectual games. Mama is sharp. In fact, at the Scrabble board, she's a barracuda.

And just for your information... "quieted" spanning two double-word squares is enough to win someone the game. Or lose it.

3 comments:

José Iriarte said...

Ooh, I love Scrabble--and I'm pretty good at it, too!

Someone ought to organize a Scrabble competition at WorldCon!

Unknown said...

Scrabble is the game my aunt and I have bonded over since I was a pre-teen, and I love to get a pick-up game going. My grandmother actually first taught me to play Scrabble for Kids when I was very very young (my memory tells me I was four), and she continued to play until she passed away a few years ago. She had Alzheimer's, but Scrabble was the one thing she remembered (although she was notorious for turning over a letter, saying she already had one of those, and choosing another instead).

Have you played Super Scrabble yet? Twice as many spaces, twice as many tiles, and up to a Quadruple Word Score!

José Iriarte said...

That sounds like an abomination! There is but one correct layout for the Scrabble board!

KILL THE WITCH!