My wife and I play Scrabble. A lot. She usually wins. I have a better vocabulary than she does, but she has a better understanding of the game than I do.
I usually get all the letters to play great words and no way to play them. I got all the letters for ‘Quixote’ one time, but couldn’t play it because it is a name. I had all the letters for ‘jewelry’, and ‘library’, and ‘permeate’ (minus one of the ‘e’s). If I don’t get all the letters for a word I’ll be one letter off. And I still won’t have a way to play the word. It can be frustrating.
Last week we played with a friend of ours. I got to play the word ‘elongate’ on my turn. The ‘e’s were on the triple word score spaces at the bottom of the board, and I just filled in the letters between.
A few turns later I got to add a ‘d’ and make it ‘elongated’.
It was one of my better games.
We were out at the local used bookstore and they had a nice Onyx Edition Scrabble set for sale. We’ve already got two Scrabble sets but the wife decided to get it as an impulse buy. I have to admit it is a very nice set. We have all the letter tiles but we are missing one of the blank tiles.
We played an initial game using the new set. As usual, I lead the game most of the way through, then my wife started playing on all the triple word score tiles, and putting down one letter that ends up completing several words, and other things she does to rack up points. Ultimately she won 300 to 243.
I’ve resigned myself to losing 90 percent of the games we play and acknowledge her superior Scrabble skill. Maybe I can get an AI trainer and get better. We’ll see.
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