Scrabbling around

Scrabble - a classic?

I picked up a copy of Scrabble Original during Amazon's Prime Day, mainly as it was about the only thing that looked like a decent bargain[1] (it was priced similar to the second-hand ones on eBay) and I've never really played it. I think that my sole exposure to the game was on holiday one year when there was a copy at the house we stayed it. My parents were never great board game players, and my sister and I kind of stopped after the incident where I (accidentally) turned the Othello board one colour. Jill doesn't recall having played it ever either. As it's a classic, and it doesn't have the poor reputation of Monopoly, it looked like a fun chance to try it out.

It was a rainy afternoon so we decided to give it a try. Originally, it was going to be three players with Aidan (8) teaming up with me and Nathan (12) and Jill on their own; however, the other two decided to play together as well.

Pairing up was a mistake. Both the lads sat back and let Jill and I do the work, and luck meant that Aidan and I soon had a big lead as our word combinations managed to land 50 points over two turns. Pretty soon after, Nathan wandered off to mess around on his phone, and Aidan went to watch YouTube. Jill wanted to finish, so we played on. I won, but my edge in the scoring was gradually eroded as I reached a point that I couldn't play more than two-letter words because of the selection of letter tiles and the board layout.

I'd like to play it again, but if we did, we'd definitely need to be playing as our own teams to avoid the drop off in attention with the lads. I also wonder whether the game is inherently random and elements like landing a huge lead in a couple of turns are common. If so, it could be quite disheartening.

What's your experience of Scrabble?

27 July 2019

[1] I was momentarily tempted by the Bluetooth Apple Numeric Pad Keyboard, but even after the discount, it was £100 which was a bit much!