A Scrabble Variation

We're a family who likes to play games -- board games and card games, not psychological games.  When we were down in Texas recently, we played a variation of Scrabble that our son taught us and I thought I'd share it with you.  It was fun, quick, and easy to grasp.

For Jason's version of "Take Two", you don't need the Scrabble board.  You only need the Scrabble tiles.  Before the game begins, turn all the tiles face down in the middle of the table and mix them up.  Play begins with each player taking 5 tiles and keeping them face down in front of them until the signal is given to begin playing. (We usually just say "Go!")

At this point, each person plays on their own tiles.  You basically create words with the tiles that you have, building on them in typical crossword fashion until you can't do any more.  Oh, I should also tell you that you can rearrange your tiles at any point in the game.  You don't have to leave them set up the way you had them.  So, if you get stumped, you can undo what you did and try again, creating different words.  Whenever a player uses up all of the tiles he has at that moment, he yells out "Take Two" and everyone stops what they are doing and draws two tiles from the pile in the middle (including the player who ran out of tiles) and then play continues with each player continuing to work out words on their puzzle that they are building.  If  you reach a point where all the players are stumped and there are still tiles in the center, the players will agree to "Take Two" and play recommences.  Play continues as described above until ALL tiles in the center have been drawn and one player uses up all of his tiles OR until all tiles in the center have been drawn and each player has come to a dead end and is unable to use up any more of their tiles.

Once the game is over, you count up your score like you would on a Scrabble board with the exception of the fact that you don't have any double, triple, etc. special score blocks.  So you are just counting the values of each word that you have spelled.  Subtract from your total score the points of the tiles you still hadn't played when the game ended.Then we declare the winner of that game as the one with the highest score.  Some play this with a running score and carry the totals from game to game until an agreed-upon high score has been reached and then that player is the overall winner. 

There you have it.  Our son's special version of Scrabble.  It's fast and fun and helps to exercise those brain cells.

Scrabble By Our Rules

I read an article in the paper the other day that quoted the BBC as saying that Mattel was going to be changing the rules of Scrabble for the first time in the history of the game.  Scrabble players around the country were all stirred up.  But as I read further, it said that the rule changes were apparently not going to apply to play here in the States.  I guess in Great Britain you will be allowed to spell out proper nouns. 

Growing up in my family, my brother and I learned early on that we had to be Scrabble players or we wouldn't have a lot of other options.  My mother loved to play Scrabble!  In fact, she played Scrabble up into her early 90's when we realized that she could no longer see the board.   She also developed her own set of unique rules.

Oh, we followed the usual rules such as if someone challenges you on a word's spelling and you look it up and the spelling is correct, the other person loses a turn.  Or, if you wish to look up a word in the dictionary,  you can do so but you will lose a turn.   We also followed the rules about not using proper nouns or foreign language words.  After that, however, my mom came up with her own set of rules.  For example, -

1.  If someone played a blank, you could replace it with the letter it was representing if you had that letter and then you could use the blank to represent another letter AND you didn't have to play the blank on that particular turn.  You could save it to use later.

2.  If you had more than 3 of the same letter, you could put one back into the bag and draw another tile without losing a turn.

3.  You could consult a list of 2-letter words AND "Q" words that Mom had, at any time, without incurring a penalty such as losing a turn.

3.  And finally, Mom liked to have us all play with 9 tiles instead of 7.  She said the game went faster that way.  Well, it was true.  The game does move along faster AND it opens up more possibilities for words you can spell.

My own children grew up playing Scrabble by "Grandma's Rules."  It was quite a rude awakening for them and for me when we first encountered opposition from players outside of our family who didn't want to play by her rules.  Why in the world wouldn't you? It certainly livens up the game.  Without those extra options, I've been known to doze off in the middle of a game with deadly serious competitors.  My goodness, in my family, playing games was a time for laughing, gossiping, joking, even pouting, but NOT serious thinking.  Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the meaning of "play?"

So I give you fair warning....if you ever play Scrabble with me, I'll be the one who is trying to exchange the blank tiles or trying to pull 9 tiles out of the bag.  If thwarted, I'll probably be the one snoring softly in my chair as I await my turn to play.

Negotiating the Perfect Vacation

You can blame it on my daughter who took her time deciding on what colors she wanted to feature in her wedding. Because of this, I decided to take matters into my own hands when it came to the mother-of-the-bride dress and I began to frequent Ebay for good deals on fancy dresses. OK, I also shopped the sales at stores here and I must say, I came up with some super outfits -- all of which were bargain priced. I soon had a closet full of "special occasion" dresses in various colors. I was hedging my bets, hoping that at least one would go with the colors she would eventually pick for her bridesmaids' outfits and the wedding flowers.

Eventually we hit the jackpot because she went with a deep eggplant purple and I got to wear one of my favorite outfits from my closet. This was not before several people had made the comment to me that George and I might as well go on a cruise because I now had plenty of outfits to wear onboard a ship. Listen, you don't make comments like that to obsessive-compulsive people! It doesn't take long before a flippant comment takes root in my brain and soon grows into a full-fledged, all-or-nothing, "let's do it" obsession.

So I've been launching opening "cruise" salvos across George's bow for several months now with no discernable effect. He has just continued to sail solidly along on his normal course with no attempt to change direction. Imagine my surprise then when he casually mentioned the fact that we were going to get a tax refund this year and that he thought it might be nice to use it for a cruise. You could have sunk me with a feather! Not to worry though. My natural buoyancy soon had me righted and my mind was off and sailing to at least a hundred ports of call.

That was the easy part. Now we are in the negotiating stage. Where will we cruise? When will we cruise? What type of cruise do we want to take? I rather liked the idea of a Canadian/Maritime Provinces cruise. My reasoning was that it would be gorgeous in the fall but more importantly, we wouldn't be too far from any coastline in case of trouble. Hey, I'd see the movie "Perfect Storm" and you don't watch something like that with an imagination like mine without it affecting you. I couldn't even watch the movie "Titanic." I wasn't alone. As a friend of mine says, "Boat sails, boat hits ice, boat sinks, people die. What's to watch?" My sentiments exactly. To put it another way, who wants to invest emotional energy watching people cavorting around knowing that most of them will be dead by the end of the movie? Not me! So I'm a little leery of ships that go out into the really deep water.

When I suggested a Canadian cruise to George, his response was "We've already traveled to the Maritime Provinces. Why would we want to go there again?" I thought about this. To be fair, I don't like reading books or seeing a movie a second time. Maybe this was a similar quirk. OK, a Canadian cruise was out.

I did some sleuthing on the internet and discovered a gem of a cruise. There was going to be a special interest cruise through the Panama Canal with an added land tour in Peru with stops at Machu Picchu. These were places I had learned about in my beloved archaeology classes in college. But even better yet, the cruise was a "knitting cruise." Yup, they would be offering knitting classes onboard and special trips to alpaca farms in Peru. Wow! This was fantastic. What could be better than a 12-day Stitch and Chat session with like-minded knitters? I showed the itinerary to George and waited for his response. It didn't come. I looked over at him and noticed that his eyes seemed to be glazed over. In fact, he looked to be in distress.

"Heartburn, Honey?" I asked.

"I'm NOT going on a ship that's filled with knitters," he sputtered. Scratch that cruise.

A family friend had gone on a Christian music cruise and had loved it. George and I both love gospel music and a theme cruise like that wouldn't be bad. There was only one sticking point. I really wanted a chance to learn some dances on a cruise. Since George doesn't want to dance, I had read that there are usually cruise staff available on ships to partner travelers who wanted to take dancing classes but didn't have a dancing partner. Somehow I didn't think there would be salsa dancing on a gospel music cruise despite the fact that David certainly danced up a storm in the Scriptures even going so far as to throw off his clothes and dance naked. Now I wasn't planning to disrobe while dancing although I have been known to get up and dance on tables in my heyday but I really wanted to learn some moves beyond "stand and shuffle."

Since we seemed to be "dead in the water," (ooh, bad choice of words) I decided today to go over to the local AAA and pick up some cruise brochures. They're sitting on our dining room table right now waiting for the next installment of "pick the perfect vacation." On Sunday, we'll be visiting a big travel show and that should give us some more ideas. Somewhere out there is the perfect vacation for the two of us where George can relax and check his email while sipping his Shirley Temple and watching the waves slide by and I can sit in a quiet lounge area out of the wind and knit to my heart's content.