Sunday, March 3, 2013

Triple Word Score

It's not very often that I enjoy playing Scrabble. I mean, yes, I went through a very brief Words With Friends phase, but that's only because it's incredibly easy to cheat, and there's no one breathing down your neck while you try and make a word with A-A-A-E-Q-I-P because they've already got something like "RIBOFLAVIN" all lined up. In general though, I actually hate Scrabble. I hate the dumb letter tiles, the awkwardly-designed rack with the stupid curved bottom (or top? I can never figure it out) and the fact that there is a whole dumba$$ dictionary, JUST FOR SCRABBLE words.

I just hate Scrabble.

Now, it's not that I'm not good with words, 'cause I am. I'm good with words. Way good with words. Very good at making words. Making words is very good for me to be good at.

No, it's more to do with my lack of patience and my intense hatred for losing at even the least competitive of board games. As soon as someone whips out the Scrabble board, I either have to check out completely or decide to risk losing a few friends in the span of an hour or two. It ain't purdy.

But then something miraculous happened. This weekend, I played Scrabble all the way to the end without losing any friends. And it also happened to be one of the funnest nights of fun (see that wordplay?!) I've had in awhile.

It all started innocently. Claire and I were looking for something to do this weekend (she leaves on Thursday, which will suck very hard) and we happened upon our neighborhood Chatterbox. Don't know what that is? Well, it's a bar where you go and play super awesome, classic board games (Think: Boggle, Trouble, Trivial Pursuit, Connect 4, etc) or chillax in front of the original Nintendo for a few rounds of Mario. It's just the greatest place.

So, we sit down, order a beer and Claire gets up to go get us a board game. I say "Anything except Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit." She comes back with Scrabble and laughs right in my face. I'll miss this, big time.

I've probably never laughed that hard during a board game in EVER. We had so much fun, except for the fact that Claire is a Scrabble Nazi. At around the third round, she had to request the much-despised Scrabble dictionary. The waitress brings over 6 pieces of a dictionary that are all taped together with packing tape. (This is not the first time a friendly board game turned REAL.) She flips through the 1982 version of the dictionary and triumphantly announces "Pharon, see? It's NOT a real word!" Apparently "qi" is a word in Words With Friends, but not in Scrabble.

Lies.

Every time the waitress came to check on us, Claire was flipping through the dictionary and making me take my tiles back. The waitress was all "Wow, you guys are hardcore." Whatever.

Anyhoozle, I'm pretty sure I lost. By like 3 points. But as we were looking at the board, Claire says "I let you get away with so many words. Zig? Toc? Da? Eg? WTF are those words?"

I said, "Those are real! ZIG zag! Tic TOC! Ta DA?! Eg...okay, I don't know what that one is, but you didn't challenge. Your fault. The other ones are real." She responded with something like "Just because you put another word around it doesn't make it a real word."

But what really matters is that I legitimately had an excellent time playing a game I super hate. Turns out, you just need the right person to play with.

1 comment:

M. Librarian said...

And this is EXACTLY why we're friends....I HATE Scrabble...but given a cocktail, might be willing to enjoy myself....