The board may be dim because I was too lazy to use flash, but by god it was a good game. (Not just because I won.)

Some friends came up from the City yesterday to hang out with me on my birthday, and we went romping a bit during the day, but, more importantly, we also played Scrabble:

Now that I have a camera again, I can resurrect the Scrabble Reports! Hooray.

Now I’m going to back to gazing woefully at the garden and thinking that I should have weeded more assiduously on Friday.

I have to say, being part of a top secret online Scrabble club has greatly improved my Scrabble skills. Practice is obviously an important aspect, but it’s also the exposure to really good players. I’m learning all sorts of things from them, sometimes unconsciously, and it has translated into a formidable game in meatspace. I don’t always kick ass at Scrabble, but I often do, even with less than stellar letters.

The other day I was playing with someone who was asking me how I did it, so I thought I would formulate my Scrabble strategy a little more thoroughly here. One of the most important things that I do is I look at words in terms of potential point value. I used to think that the “best” word was the most awesome word, but now I look at my letters in terms of how I can use them most effectively. I especially like hooking onto multiple letters, creating a web of words which generates a lot of points for me. And I am always looking for a bingo.

I also don’t set people up for awesome words. I won’t open up a bonus square if I can possibly help it. Obviously, at some point, I am going to end up setting someone up for a word either way, but I can work to avoid it, or to do it in such a way that it will benefit me later. Since a lot of Scrabble is chance and the ability to memorize letter combinations, you need to help yourself out by locking the other player out of good moves. Which, I suppose, is mean, but so is eating meat and most of us do that too.

Memorize Q without U words. The Q is always fucking me over. So, we’ve got qi, qat, and suq. Qadi, qoph, waqf, qanat, qibla, talaq, tranq, and burqa are some four and five letter options. Don’t you love “waqf”? It’s an Arabic word for a religious endowment of land, if you were wondering. If you’re got more letters to play with, how about qasida, qigong, qintar, qwerty, yaqona, inqilab, or qabalah? Tsaddiq, tzaddiq are also fine options, and can be pluralized with “im” if you were curious.

Learn the two letter word list as well. I’m not going to post it here because it’s long, but here’s a link to a handy two letter word list. If you’re playing Scrabble with sticklers, make sure you’re on the correct edition of the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary. The same goes for those Q without U’s above.

Play with an open dictionary. My house is open dictionary. For me, Scrabble is more fun when you aren’t afraid to put down a word. You can’t look things up in the dictionary before you play, and you shouldn’t use it excessively, but it’s a great way to learn new words. An open dictionary allows you to experiment and challenge fearlessly, and I think it makes the game more enjoyable.

Enjoy yourself. And remember that Scrabble is not a test of intelligence, it’s a board game. A lot of people do well because they can memorize things, not because they are smarter than you.

[Scrabble]

I challenged Cap’n Raspberry to a game of Scrabble last night, and was pleased to see that despite having a hand consisting entirely of vowels for most of the game, I still kicked his ass.

It might have been a close call, though.

[Scrabble]

The inaugural game of Scrabble was played on Treasure Island last night, between myself and one of the roommates, who will henceforth be known as Puff to distinguish her from La Chiquita, the other roommate.

So Puff and I played some Scrabble. It was a close game. If I hadn’t ended up with all the high scoring letters, I think she probably would have won. Fun times were had by all, while we watched Run Silent, Run Deep and ate snickerdoodles.

Next time, there will be an interhousehold challenge, in which we will severely beat The Boys six ways from Sunday.

[Scrabble]

Once again, I reign victorious over all my Scrabble lands, with a final score of 194-158-117

The dirty word was P, although I did make cow.

[scrabble]

I worked my opponents thoroughly, thanks to “detacher.”

My final score: 208.

The next closest: 106.

Oh, yes. Scrabble groove, baby.

I have played more Scrabble in the last 19 hours than I have in…quite a long time. I think I’ve played five separate games since midnight last night. Seriously. One of my coworkers made fun of me because I came in to work looking something the cat dragged in–the conversation went like this:

“Woah! What happened to you last night?”

“I was up until five in the morning playing Scrabble.”

“Ha hah. No, seriously. You look like shit.”

“Yeah, I know. I was up until five in the morning playing Scrabble.”

“Are you shitting? That’s the lamest thing I have ever heard.”

“Hey, I may be in the grip of a Scrabble hangover, but I still pack a punch, girl, watch out.”

Here’s a selection of the games we played:

12:34 am–Ailish, Dora, & I.

3:42 am–Ailish, Adam, and I. Note that beer was required for successful game completion.

6:30 pm–Adam & I. I think he is gesturing at “fetch,” a word of which he was rather proud. It was a little odd playing Scrabble in the daytime, though. Note the blinding shafts of sunlight across the board. Due to excessive Scrabble and beer consumption earlier in the day, this game took a long time to finish.

Afterwards we played with Loki for awhile. Here comes the bonus feature!

Yes, that’s right, the mysterious meloukhia can be found in the reflection from the window. (Which astute readers will note is out of the frame. This is because in order to open the window in this room, you must take it out of the frame–it has no runners. So the window is either closed or wide open. And when it’s closed it doesn’t make a perfect seal anyway. Not that I am bitching or anything, but some lowlife contractor claimed to have fixed this window and charged my wonderful landlords a silly amount for this work…which he obviously didn’t do.)

Let this be your warning, gentle readers–Scrabble, like alcoholism, can be dangerous.

[Scrabble]

Tonight we played scrabble. Laurel and I tied in the first game, but only because I went out first and she had to eat a point. “Quacked” was my work, and I am immensely proud of it. I also missed a scrabble for “anointed,” because someone stole the spot I was going to put it in. Alas.

My stealthy scrabble partner assisted in my scrabble domination.

Then we got bored and played sex themed scrabble. Peter destroyed us, but the naughtiest word on the board was still mine. Interestingly, naughty scrabble was completed in about half the time it took us to play a game of regular scrabble. Now, granted, we had a wider range of choices because slang was allowed, but we were limited to sex-related words, so it should have balanced out.

But it didn’t.

Mysterious.

[scrabble]

I whupped K good, not once, but twice in a row. Satisfaction is mine. Check out “larceny,” my devastating point-gathering stroke. I love using all seven letters, it fills me with glee. He didn’t stand a chance after that. “Cakes”, however, was his. Which is a pity, because I had further plans for that C. And yes, “lube” was my contribution.

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[scrabble]