Scrabble neophyte breaks 300 for the first time! Film at 11!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Actually, no. The film would be inconceivably boring.

My girlfriend is an avid Scrabble player, and she’s been bugging me for years to serve as her punching bag. I had wisely avoided this until recently, when a sudden fever combined with copious recreational chemicals sufficiently eroded my sensibilities that I agreed to play Scrabble with her one (1) night per week.

Not since the joystick was abandoned for those damnable paddle thingies for video gaming have I so consistently took a shellacking.

The first couple of times were hardly even a challenge for her, but since then I’ve plateaued nicely into the “heartbreaking loss zone.” For example, I recently lost a shootout to her by one (1) point, on the strength of her playing out all her tiles first, and picking up two (2) points from my leftover “I” and “E”. 295-294. Goddamn it.

But not tonight, boys! Oh no. It looked typical in all respects. She went first, and quickly racked up a 60 point lead by midgame. I was hovering between the “Hawaiian word for ‘macadamia’” tilesets consisting entirely of I’s and O’s and the tantalizing “oh so close to a play of such magnificence that it would immediately strike my enemies blind” tileset. I swear to God (he’p me Jeebus if I’m lying one little bit)…I had seven tiles spelling Q-U-I-X-O-T-I-. My girlfriend had recently blocked the last long run to a free C. I think I had to settle for 4 points by using my O to spell “no” and “on” in a corner.

Typical.

But suddenly I spied a few lucky breaks. I was able to score 50 points on a Q word and an intersection with a double word score box, followed by a lucky draw of a blank tile, with which I was able to carry a Q word into the triple word score corner (36 points,) as well as a few other ones.

Final score? 310-274, baby. Aw hell yeah. Woulda had 315, except that she caught me flatfooted with a Y and a vowel.

I’m sure 300 is no biggie for some of you bastards, but it’s definitely a milestone in more than one way for me.

2

Revenge sure is sweet huh? When I was little I used to play my scrabble with my grandmother and she would not hold back. Oh my poor frustrated little self. I was the Calvin to her Hobbes. Until one day I bought my self a scrabble dictionary and just started browsing through it memorizing all these words. And I learned how to play real cutthroat scrabble. Plus I went to college and learned even more words and then began trouncing her mightily. Oh it was so sweet.
For the record my highest score of all time was around 575. But that was one of those games where everything just goes your way.

3

Congrats. Scrabble milestones are quite satisfying.

4

If you brag about your scrabble scores, you gotta post the big-scoring words!

You can keep a little notebook with the scrabble game, and write down any words that score over, say 35 points. “squid: 52 points.” Then you can reminisce about the really exciting games.

5

OK, OK. I was able to play JOVIAL off the J in her JET, which was the turning point of the whole thing. The clean-up was a series of body blows consisting of QUIT in a lucky spot (I got a double letter score on the Q, and a double word score on the T, with a cross-spelling of IT for good measure, adding up to 50 big points. I then drew a blank tile, enabling me to use it as a U to spell QUAI into the corner for 36 points of triple word score lovin’. In the end game, I was nursing an X, a Y, an O, an I, and an F while she was steadily playing out. I ended up lucking out and playing the X on VOX for pretty big total, the O off that for OX and a double word score, and the F somewhere else just to get rid of the damn thing. I got stuck with the Y and the I.

Ah well.

Hee hee. :slight_smile: