Today's Scrabble

[supercheesegirl]

I had a Scrabble lunch today for the first time in a while! Kari wanted to play, so Karen and I joined her. Kari is a formidable opponent!

My words:

14 points - BIRD
16 points - LOONY/BO/IN
28 points - HARD/HON/GAME/ORE (OK, this move was awesome. After I did this, we had pretty much a solid block of letters on that part of the board because everything was layered together)
32 points - MAZES (on Kari's next move, she played F(A)X vertically to spell (A)MAZES, so she got X points and Z points in the same play. Dammit.)
38 points - WART/AW/ZA/ER (layering WART under MAZES for awesomeness)
08 points - RING (a complete tactical error on my part. I could have played the ING down from F(A)X, but I forgot the blank tile was an A and thought it was an O and wasn't sure that F(O)XING would be a word (although OUTFOXING of course would be). I also could have played the ING down from RANK for more points. I saw all this during Kari's next turn when it was way too late, of course)
12 points - GIN (saved by the triple-word block)
30 points - QUILT (there had been a U sitting next to a double-word block all through the game, and I got to play it!)
11 points - CAWED
09 points - JO (by this point I was down to a bunch of vowels and a P, so I did the best I could with what was on the board)
05 points - PUT
-1 point to Karen, who went out first

202 points total

Kari came in with 206 points and just barely beat me. She really gave me a challenge. I love playing with Kari because she appreciates the beauty and elegance of a good move the way I do. Karen, sadly, just never got to pull any of the big letters, and although she broke 100 with her score, she did not report her exact total.

Lately I've been playing a lot of Lexulous on Facebook with Dan, which is awesome because I hardly ever see Dan and on the rare occasions I do we're not usually playing Scrabble. But with playing online, you get to try out any possible move you want on the board and see automatically how many points it'll score and check automatically to see if it's really a word or not. It's kind of engineered to help you get the very best scores possible. Real Scrabble, on the other hand, seems to rely more on strategy and cunning and your actual knowledge of real words. I know a lot of two-letter words, but today I couldn't remember if XU was a real word or not, so I chose not to take a chance and didn't play it; in Lexulous, I could have looked it up several different ways and ultimately if it wasn't a real word the game wouldn't have let me play it. There's just a whole different feel to it. Suddenly today I was shocked by how much I prefer real, hands-on Scrabble. (Disclosure: in my last Lexulous game I got stuck with four i's--four!--and every time I traded back I kept pulling vowels, so maybe I have a teensy Lexulous grudge. Dan, there's no way you can beat me in RL Scrabble!)

Comments

[danchan22.livejournal.com]

I was sensing a little animosity throughout that extended Lexulous rant. I think if you could actually beat me online, you wouldn't be so bitter about it... :)

Now as far as RL Scrabble goes, that sounds like a direct challenge to my intellect, my soul, my worth as a man, and my family's honor. I will not take this lightly. Name the place. Name the time. Name the language. I will be there, and I will annihilate you.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

If you weren't nervous about me totally dominating our current game, you wouldn't be implying that I can't beat you online and trying to throw me off my guard... :)

Next time you're up in PA, we will throw down.