At last, finally, I have read the rules for playing Scrabble.   Shoulda done it six weeks ago.  It woulda helped.  Just got creamed.  By a total stranger.  That will teach me to mix it up with Scrabblers when I don’t know what I’m doing.

Never was a Scrabble player.  Just as I started blogging without having read a blog, and joined Facebook just to see my granddaughter’s pictures, I engaged in a Scrabble game, first time ever, because of an invitation by a friend.  Now I’ve played many games of Upwords in the past, which is also a board game, with tiles, with words – but with different rules than Scrabble.

Scrabble looked simple enough.  I soon figured out that TW meant triple word points, DL was double letter points, and that some strategy was involved to get the most possible points.  Then I got a blank tile!  I had to click on the ? button to find out how to deal with it.  It’s a wonderful thing, very handy.  Too bad there are only two  such “wild tiles.”

I did reasonably well for awhile.  Then came the day when I was ahead, with only three tiles left and I knew how I was going to play them.   I figured the game was in the bag.   Bingo!  The game was called and Fran won!  Fran had played all her tiles and that meant the game was ended.  Who knew?  She had played first, I should play last, the way I figured it.   Later I learned that that was a RULE.  I still think it’s a dumb rule, since the person who starts the game is always in the lead and thus has an advantage, but I shall play differently from now on towards the end of a game.  Forget the points!   Get rid of those tiles!

After a few days of Scrabble-dearth I went PUBLIC and found someone who would play with me.  Didn’t know him from Adam.  In fact, his name was Adam.

It started out fine.  He was a worthy opponent.  A really hard game with weird words.  He was a slow player – a move or two per day – but that was fine with me.  In my saner moments, I thought Scrabble  took up too much time.  Then, the coup de grace!  My friend Adam surged ahead when he played “cuisine” and got 63 points.   I was flabbergasted.  No way could “cuisine” be worth 63 points, no matter how many double or triples he played on.     And THAT was when I went off-site and read the official rules for Scrabble.  If you play all seven of your tiles, you get a 50 point bonus.  Nice to know for next time.

No doubt there will be a next time even if Adam did beat me by 100   points.  I love Scrabble on Facebook.    It’s fun and keeps my brain working.  I like the clever way it adds up your points for you, better than you could do, and  keeps a tally of the moves.     There’s a nice little chat room for friendly banter along the way.   It’s a connection to someone, even if it’s the strong silent type like Adam.

Game, anyone?