Playing Games

In my experience, there are two basic types of families in the world; those that play Scrabble®…and everybody else.

I grew up in a Scrabble® family.

Saying this doesn’t say nearly enough about my Jewish, liberal, middle-class, suburban up-bringing…but it’s a pretty fine start. Like owning a copy of the bible, a well-worn dictionary, and a hopelessly out-dated set of encyclopedias, there is simply a certain type of family that has the game in the house. Nobody can actually remember how the game entered the house…like an article of faith, it just …is.

Now, before you get the wrong impression about us…I don't mean to imply that we played Scrabble® regularly, or even particularly well. In fact, I can only remember playing at most once a month. From the time I was old enough to spell basic words (yeah right…me, Mr. Spell Checker), I was invited to play…and I was given plenty of help getting my letters organized (how they didn’t realize then that I was dyslexic is beyond me).

As we all got older, the games became much more competitive, fun, and sometimes downright acrimonious. You see, Scrabble® tends to unmask some interesting personality traits (translation: flaws) in people. The truth is, you never really know somebody until you’ve sat across a Scrabble® board from them.

Some players are content to play the letters as they come…looking for a place on the board that seems likely, and playing a safe, if occasionally inspired, game. I think of myself as falling into this category.

Others are more, um, aggressive; looking for letters the way a poker player looks to fill an inside straight or a royal flush. When this type of player places a word…it’s not just for the highest possible score. They are also placing their letters so as to prevent others from being able to use even a two-letter (two point) word (my wife and brother are both of this ilk). This latter group are what I like to call Scrabble® snobs.

I’m convinced that these 'snobs peruse the dictionary in their spare time for obscure words (especially one’s that include Qs, Zs, K’s, and other high-value letters), and spend evenings memorizing all the two-letter words in the Official Scrabble® Player’s Dictionary®. Armed with this smug knowledge, they occasionally test the outer boundaries of ‘common usage’ (I’m not pointing fingers or accusing…I’m just saying 'putzwad' is NOT a word!).

Being at best a tentative speller, I would never dream of challenging one of their esoteric plays, and I have always harbored the suspicion that they abuse my passivity to occasionally coin new and interesting (not to mention hi-scoring) words.

One of my favorite family stories (told to me by my wife) concerns a houseguest from Canada that had joined her family one year for Passover. This person, having lost an embarrassingly long and unbroken string of Scrabble® games remarked, “Well, In Canada we say that it’s not whether you win or lose…it’s how you play the game.” Without missing a beat, my mother-in-law (AH”S) purportedly replied, “Well if you don’t win, you must not play the game very well!”

Ah, yes…now that I think about it, the lovely peach that is my wife did not fall far from the tree.

We have already started our kids out on Scrabble Jr.® , and will soon be upgrading them to the full-blown combat addition. Not only will it (hopefully) keep their English vocabulary growing, but it will also give us a little insight into their personalities.

My only fear is that if they take after my wife or brother, they may get some strange looks trying to slip words like ('Vietnamese monetary unit') or (a seven letter word for 'the science concerned with fermentation'), into everyday conversation.