Drinking Scrabble
Mar. 31st, 2005 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kismet09(personally, I prefer strip Scrabble)
Scrabble With a Nuanced Twist
Wet Hot American, By Nick Summers
October 22, 2004
I first learned about the history of Scrabble from the excellent 2002 book Word Freak, the story of a Wall Street Journal sports writer who took a year off to play the game competitively. The book describes how Alfred Butts meticulously invented the details of Scrabble, counting letters on the front page of The New York Times to get an accurate alphabet distribution, agonizing over blank tiles, arranging bonus squares just so. You come away with the impression that the game is perfect--incapable of improvement. But I've never had great respect for the status quo, so on Wednesday night I set out to add to Scrabble a little je ne sais quoi, which is French for "alcohol."
Drinking Scrabble is just like regular Scrabble, except it gets harder to play well as the game goes on, so your turns devolve from OXIDIZE and ZEPHYR to RAT. My friend James, aka Spectator's real editor, accepted my challenge. We'd played once before, a total barn-burner that he took, 376-312, on the strength of a single seven-letter play. We're both serious Scrabble nerds--the board had been dense with obnoxious two-letter plays like AE and NE.
The tactics Wednesday night were, uh, not so nuanced. Part of the problem was that we started the game at 1:30 in the morning, after Game 7 of Yanks-Sox, so even going in we weren't the picture of sobriety. We hammered out the rules: take the other guy's score for each turn, halve it, and drink that many sips of beer. Bingos and triple-word scores were worth a shot each. Our friends left to go out to the bar like normal people, and we sat down for a game that would make Alfred Butts spin, like my deluxe rotating board, in his grave.
Turn 1
I open with WILT. James doesn't take long to lay down ALE on top of that, to make AW, LI, and EL vertically. It's 14-14. We take seven sips each; no big deal.
Turn 3
Yahtzee! Using the T in WILT, I play THINGIES all the way down the center of the board to the triple-word score, using my blank tile for the G. This, I learn, is where Drinking Scrabble starts to break down. Just like drinking at parties makes everything seem like a really good idea ("Let's go into Riverside Park at 4 a.m. and scale a rusty metal fence to play a game of Horse!" or "She's kind of attractive!"), Drinking Scrabble makes lots of words seem like great plays. James knows right away THINGIES isn't a real word and challenges it off the board.
Turn 5
James is playing well--using average words but hooking them onto what's already on the board, and making good use of the premium squares. I also haven't been making him drink, since I've been saving my good tiles for a big play. Finally it happens: THINNEST, up to a triple-word score for 87 points and a whole lot o' drinkin' for Jim. But then he plays JAM for a triple himself (47 points), and it takes a while to figure out just how much we each have to imbibe. The game deteriorates immediately.
Turn 8
No one has any idea what the beer count is. I turn over the arithmetic to James. We're playing well--XI, OGLER, WIRIER--but almost completely abandoning defense, and only James is making intelligent use of the tiles already on the board.
Turn 10
I stop taking notes. The last thing I write down is that deciding on TOMES is "endlessly agonizing."
Turn 11
Complete chaos. I play IF. James plays PAT.
Turn 13
With James up by a lot, I need a big play. I stare at my tiles: QOOIRA and a blank. None of the triple-letter squares are open, but I need at least 30 points to get back in the game. Letter by letter I study my options, and then I maturely reach for the board and throw it across the room. Final recorded score: James 305, Nick 239. I checked our math yesterday, and it's not even close to being correct.
Epilogue
It's safe to call Drinking Scrabble the single worst idea I have ever had. I can think of nothing redeeming about the experience. I don't think I've been this upset about the game since the time my mom challenged SPAGHETTO (n., singular) off the board and I didn't speak to her for two days.
Alfred Butts knew what he was doing. Next week in Wet Hot American: games you can play in church.
Scrabble With a Nuanced Twist
Wet Hot American, By Nick Summers
October 22, 2004
I first learned about the history of Scrabble from the excellent 2002 book Word Freak, the story of a Wall Street Journal sports writer who took a year off to play the game competitively. The book describes how Alfred Butts meticulously invented the details of Scrabble, counting letters on the front page of The New York Times to get an accurate alphabet distribution, agonizing over blank tiles, arranging bonus squares just so. You come away with the impression that the game is perfect--incapable of improvement. But I've never had great respect for the status quo, so on Wednesday night I set out to add to Scrabble a little je ne sais quoi, which is French for "alcohol."
Drinking Scrabble is just like regular Scrabble, except it gets harder to play well as the game goes on, so your turns devolve from OXIDIZE and ZEPHYR to RAT. My friend James, aka Spectator's real editor, accepted my challenge. We'd played once before, a total barn-burner that he took, 376-312, on the strength of a single seven-letter play. We're both serious Scrabble nerds--the board had been dense with obnoxious two-letter plays like AE and NE.
The tactics Wednesday night were, uh, not so nuanced. Part of the problem was that we started the game at 1:30 in the morning, after Game 7 of Yanks-Sox, so even going in we weren't the picture of sobriety. We hammered out the rules: take the other guy's score for each turn, halve it, and drink that many sips of beer. Bingos and triple-word scores were worth a shot each. Our friends left to go out to the bar like normal people, and we sat down for a game that would make Alfred Butts spin, like my deluxe rotating board, in his grave.
Turn 1
I open with WILT. James doesn't take long to lay down ALE on top of that, to make AW, LI, and EL vertically. It's 14-14. We take seven sips each; no big deal.
Turn 3
Yahtzee! Using the T in WILT, I play THINGIES all the way down the center of the board to the triple-word score, using my blank tile for the G. This, I learn, is where Drinking Scrabble starts to break down. Just like drinking at parties makes everything seem like a really good idea ("Let's go into Riverside Park at 4 a.m. and scale a rusty metal fence to play a game of Horse!" or "She's kind of attractive!"), Drinking Scrabble makes lots of words seem like great plays. James knows right away THINGIES isn't a real word and challenges it off the board.
Turn 5
James is playing well--using average words but hooking them onto what's already on the board, and making good use of the premium squares. I also haven't been making him drink, since I've been saving my good tiles for a big play. Finally it happens: THINNEST, up to a triple-word score for 87 points and a whole lot o' drinkin' for Jim. But then he plays JAM for a triple himself (47 points), and it takes a while to figure out just how much we each have to imbibe. The game deteriorates immediately.
Turn 8
No one has any idea what the beer count is. I turn over the arithmetic to James. We're playing well--XI, OGLER, WIRIER--but almost completely abandoning defense, and only James is making intelligent use of the tiles already on the board.
Turn 10
I stop taking notes. The last thing I write down is that deciding on TOMES is "endlessly agonizing."
Turn 11
Complete chaos. I play IF. James plays PAT.
Turn 13
With James up by a lot, I need a big play. I stare at my tiles: QOOIRA and a blank. None of the triple-letter squares are open, but I need at least 30 points to get back in the game. Letter by letter I study my options, and then I maturely reach for the board and throw it across the room. Final recorded score: James 305, Nick 239. I checked our math yesterday, and it's not even close to being correct.
Epilogue
It's safe to call Drinking Scrabble the single worst idea I have ever had. I can think of nothing redeeming about the experience. I don't think I've been this upset about the game since the time my mom challenged SPAGHETTO (n., singular) off the board and I didn't speak to her for two days.
Alfred Butts knew what he was doing. Next week in Wet Hot American: games you can play in church.
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Date: 2005-03-31 07:36 pm (UTC)