Scrabble

Board games are really bizarre They each change your personality in a specific way. Your attitude
changes completely when you go from one board game to another.

When you play Monopoly, you become some sort of dictatorial landlord, like Mr. Roper and Mr.
Furley. Youre all like, You kids better have my rent money!

When you play backgammon, you become convinced that you're a 45 year old Lebanese man.
You take on the mindset of some guy named Kassem whos busy smoking cigars and eating lamb
kabob and tabbouleh.

And then theres the game Clue. When you play that one, you're paranoid, and you think
everyone is in the habit of assaulting people with candleholders. You hear the doorbell ring, and
youre like, Who the hell is that? Then you answer the door, and its a girl scout selling
cookies--and you start interrogating her. Where did you get these cookies? Are they kosher?
Where were you the night the butler was murdered?

But heres the game that really influences your personality. Scrabble. Watch two people playing
Scrabble. Any two people. Its amazing. What is it about that game that makes everyone so
intense? Ive never seen anything like it. Three minutes into a game, the players are staring at all
the letters, they're drenched in sweat, and they act like they're engaged in a battle for world
domination.

Whenever I see someone getting so crazy over a Scrabble game, I say, "Uh. Buddy. Lighten up.
Its just Scrabble. You're playing a game whose primary objective it to spell the words quizzify
and oxyphenbutazone."

But people dont lighten up. Not at all. One player draws some letters out of that gray bag. And
he takes a look at the letters. And he gets this angry facial expression that says something like,
Dagnabbit!! I got two As from the bag, and I already had two As, and I had three Es, so now I
gotta spell aeaeaea, and hope my opponent doesnt challenge that word. Later, that player uses
all three of his Es to spell geese, he draws some more letters, and he gets a bunch of As again.
Now hes got six As and one M. And at that point, hes consumed with the goal of spelling
maharaja. Then his opponent spells yoga, and he challenges it. He says, Thats a foreign word.
This guy is clearly bonkers. He believes that yoga is a foreign word, but maharaja isnt. As if to
say, Yoga is an Indian word. As for maharaja, thats a word the pilgrims said when they were on
the Mayflower. Maharaja is the Englishest word in all of English.

How come people get so excited whenever they challenge their opponents words in Scrabble?
They feel very righteous about the whole thing. Like theyre putting a stop to a very serious
transgression. They basically act like theyre boycotting buses in Montgomery, Alabama. They
look at their opponent, and theyre like, Shame on you! You think youre gonna get away with
this?! Me and and Rosa Parks will see to it that you dont. How dare you try to spell the word
uberlicious!

If you play Scrabble against a really young person, they actually might try sneaking in uberlicious
or something like that. Theyll just act like theyre going with a modern slang words youve never
heard of. Theyll be all like, Every teen and preteen says uberlicious all day. That word is
definitely in the dictionary. But if you want to challenge it and lose a turn, be my guest. And
youre thinking, Is this kid serious, or is he trying to pull a fast one on me? I have no idea.

Thats what Scrabble is like when you play against some young person. Now lets talk about what
Scrabble is like when you play against an expert player. Are you familiar with these people?
Heres how it works with them. When you play Scrabble and youre sitting across from an expert,
keep in mind that this psychopath knows 24,000 different two letter words. Most of them, no
one has ever heard of before. Im talking about words like xi, mu, and mm. Those are all in the
dictionary--and this opponent of yours, he has every intention of taking full advantage of that
fact.

Hell find a spot amidst all the hustle and bustle of the Scrabble board where tons of pieces are
congregated together, and hell place one letter in the middle of a bunch of other letters. And
hell simultaneously spell four different words! And then hell say, There we go. I spelled qua,
mu, qat, and mm. Thats 387 points. And youre like, What jungle language are you speaking
right now? Qua mu qat mm? Thems fighting words. Dont be Scrabbling words like that at me,
unless you want us to step outside and settle this like men.
So this Scrabble expert, his move is to go with qua mu qat mm. And as for you, you spend most
of the game salivating over the possibility of using a Q or an X on a triple word score. But what
you usually end up doing is spelling one of two words: it or at. And then 20 minutes into the
game, you spell ox. And you feel like you've really accomplished something. You tell your
opponent, "Yeah! Take that, bro! Ox! Nine points!