Scrabble Adventures

Well, here’s my Scrabble log. Hopefully at some point in time, I’ll be able to say that I’ve accomplished something like Stephen Fatsis in his book Word Freak. In any case, here’s some background info about me.

I’m fairly new to the Scrabble-world. I started attending the Mississauga Scrabble Club regularly in 2006. Originally, I was looking for a mental distraction from my studies (I’m a PhD student) and considered getting back into Chess or Bridge. I used to play Chess in high-school and with an expert level player in my dorm at university (I never beat him). Chess was too hard – or rather, I’m not very good at it. So, I considered Bridge. I love playing duplicate Bridge, but I don’t have a regular partner so finding a game, even at a club, can be tough. As a result, I stumbled onto the world of Scrabble…

I figured that I could spend some time not thinking about my studies, and learn some new words at the same time. A while back, some friends gave me a list of two-letter words, so I knew those. While I had some low expectations, I was very surprised by my first night. In my first game, I got beaten handily by a 90 year old granny! She was playing words I had never knew existed. By the end of the night, I was fortunate to win one game out of three because of some good tiles. I’m told that most people are a bit taken aback because of the clocks, but because I used to play competitve chess in high-school, the clock wasn’t a big deal for me. Just being exposed to expert players with varied and broad vocabularies just shocked me.

Ever since that first night, I’ve been going back to the club. I’m not too crazy about studying, but because I want to get better (I’m a little obsessive-compulsive) I think I have to start studying. I’ve been able to get by so far on my vocabulary and picking up some strategy. But, now that I’m in the 1100’s (at the club), I’m realizing that I just don’t know enough words.

Enough reminiscing…I’ll try and post regularly with some tid-bits and details of my adventures into this new word world.