Apparently this got Dugg back in September, but I just stumbled across it. This is one of the most beautiful tombstones I have ever seen. Kinda sad too – Paul was only 31 when he died. I’m going to see if I can’t find out more about this… anyone got any more information?

Scrabble Tombstone

Now this is a birthday cake! It’s 12-inch square rich fruitcake for the creator’s aunt’s 80th birthday – “she’s a very keen player and always plays to win!” I will give her major bonus points for the hand-lettered bonus tiles – extremely well done – but I’m taking away those same bonus points for using a fruitcake. When you make a chocolate cake, we’ll talk.

Pat-a-Cake Parties’ Scrabble Cake

Spotted these homemade Scrabble journals from Lori Z. the Art Maniac. Many people use Scrabble tiles for art projects; she came up with another use for the boards!

Homemade Scrabble Journals

Note: the last video is ever-so-slightly not safe for work.

Game #1: Joyce

I told Joyce right up front: “I’m a rookie, be gentle.” Full disclosure, always. She replied, “Great. Whenever I’m nice, I always end up getting beat.” Foreshadowing.

Joyce was great. One of the top players in my division, Joyce was very nice, exceedingly patient, walked me through all the procedures and protocol, and put up with my inability to calculate score.

And I’m quite certain she wanted to strangle me when I bingoed with altered to take a 30-point lead late in the game. I gave her an opening – I played anger in an effort to get rid of my tiles – leaving an a hook with lots of room.

She gave it a good throw with outages, coming just short of a bingo (and damn near giving me a heart attack). I held on for a 346-313 victory.

Did I feel like a chump for beating her? Kinda. But there is karmic justice; Joyce didn’t lose the rest of the day, and she won our division with a 6-1 record.

Game #2: Chuck

I didn’t know it at the time, but Chuck is kinda famous in my industry. He’s the guy behind No Pattern, a prominent illustrator who has worked with some big name clients. You know, that guy who makes you look at your own work and client list, go fetal and start sobbing.

But at that moment, he was just Chuck, the other tournament newbie. Surprisingly, we both won our first game, so I knew this was going to be a challenge.

I play an awesome opening move – qua – giving me a quick 24 points and the chance to use my d on my next play. Apparently Chuck had the same thought, as he dumped a 64-point bingo in created. Uh oh.

I stayed with it though, and managed to take the lead after my seventh word. Things were looking very good when I was looking at sitting on my rack. Unfortunately, there was no place to put it!

Experienced Scrabble players know the rest of the story. My next five plays were one-letter low-point dumps (3, 3, 6, 8, 12), hoping a spot would open up. Chuck went 27, 32, 36, 37, 14, and my fate was sealed. Final score: 391-291.

Game #3: Merran

Merran was a sweet old gal who was very fun to play, conversing throughout the game. We touched on the “new generation” of Scrabble players – the good and the bad. On one hand, it’s new blood, and it’s great to see the game spreading to a new generation.

On the other hand, most newcomers only know online Scrabble. Most play very fast, and most struggle with the mechanics of the physical game. It’s hard to argue – I can assure online players, playing the actual board game against a live opponent is quite a different experience.

A good analogy: the world of poker. Before No-Limit Hold ‘Em was on every television channel, high-stakes poker was played by a tight-knit group of veterans, playing for the love of the game as much as the actual jackpots.

After the explosion, thousands of 20-somethings crashed the party – each armed with thousands of hours of TV exposure and online poker. But when they sat down to the table, most quickly realized that it’s not the same game.

My match with Merran was a back-and-forth game, we were never separated by more than 25 points. She got me right at the end with towns over the triple-word score, and it was over. Final score: 318-293.

Lunchtime

I ended the morning session with a 1-2 record. While I was a bit disappointed to lose the last game, I was feeling pretty good about being able to hang in at this level. Little did I know what was to come…

Preparation is key

Admittedly, I could have done a better job cramming for the big event. I just returned from a Scrabble-free vacation in Florida late Thursday night. On Friday I forced myself to play a couple of practice games with a real Scrabble board. Getting the feel of actual tiles, keeping score manually, tracking tiles – trust me, it’s an entirely different experience.

I also boned up on the tournament rules. I’m a rookie entering a group of experienced players; violating protocol is absolutely the last thing I want to do.

Sadly, my insomnia picked a bad time to kick in. I went to bed around 1 a.m., woke up at 4:30, and never fell back asleep. To make matters worse, I had to get up at – gasp – 7:30 to drive to Battle Creek. I can hear all you 9-to-5′ers feeling soooo sorry for me, but I went into freelance web development to avoid waking up early. ;-)

Gameday arrives

When I first arrived at the Westlake Presbyterian Church in Battle Creek, I walked into an entirely differently subculture. I say that with deep admiration – the depth of immersion of any group into a given topic amazes me. One group was discussing the plural word forms of foreign currency; another was setting up board scenarios, deciding which of the eight possible bingos would be the next best play.

The other thing that struck me: I’m one of the youngest players here, and one of the few who doesn’t know everyone in the room. I later find out most of the players have played with each other for 15+ years.

I keep telling myself it’s just a board game, but it’s amazing how quickly one can get nervous when entering a new world.

Bracketology

I wandered up to the scorers’ table and checked out the draw. There were four divisions: A, B, C and D, each with 8-12 players. (Nice touch: as we’re in the home of Kellogg’s, each group has a cereal name). The top three divisions were for the highest-rated players; being a newcomer, I was placed in Division D (Frosted Mini-Wheats), and I’m seeded 12th out of 12. Lowest seed in the lowest division.

Great. I’m the Morehead State of Scrabble.

We get a total of seven games: three in the morning, three after lunch, and a final “King of the Mountain” game to decide our final position. It’s going to be a long day, and I can already tell it’s going to be one hell of an ego check.

Soon enough, 9:30 rolled around, and it was time to get started…

Continued in Part Two

Back from a short hiatus, it’s back to posting! I can’t tell you how bad I want this furniture (especially the pillows!). Thanks to some digging from the editor of Freshome, we know these custom pieces “are made by [the industrial design firm] Stephen Reed for employees in the London offices of Bloomberg financial services.” Very, very cool.

Freshome: Scrabble Furniture Set

I would pay money to see Lil Wayne take on Shaq.

I would imagine many novice players build words the exact same way. However, now that you know all the two-letter words allowed in Scrabble, it’s time to boost your scores by playing parallel words!

What are parallel words?

Instead of “switching directions” when building words, place your tiles in the same direction, and overlap as much as you can. By playing words parallel to each other, you can make multiple words – for multiple points.

Examples of parallel words

It’s the first play of the game, and your opponent has played end. Your rack isn’t great: aadenoq. Not much here, let’s just dump dead or dean for 6 points and move on, right? If we think parallel, however, there’s quite a few options.

In Option 1, if we overlap on the e, you can build two words: dean and ne (9 points). Not bad, but better than 6 points. That play does, however, leave an easy build to the triple word score. Let’s keep looking.

In Option 2, we can overlap and make three words: nada, de and an (12 points). Much better, but you use all your a’s (great for building qat or qaid with your q). Can we do even better?

In Option 3, we’ve found the highest scoring play by playing four words: dean, de, ad and an. Factoring in the two double-word scores, we end up with a final total of 16 points – 10 more than our first option.

The sky’s the limit

In my examples I used low-point tiles to show the principle of parallel words, but imagine the damage you can do with some of the high-point tiles. And don’t stop with four words in one play – I have been the victim of a six-word play (but thankfully, never a parallel bingo).

Good Scrabbling!

I will admit right up front that I hate Cheez-It crackers. I am suspicious of any food that deliberately misspells a word, and doubly so if that substitution is a Z for an S. And to be even more honest, the last thing I think when I eat these crackers is “Man, this really tastes like cheese!”

However, there are plenty of people that do like these “cheeze” crackers, and I can definitely see the NOM NOM potential. Now you know …

Thanks Slashfood for the heads-up!