No one likes to play games with me because I either always win or always lose. Oh, by the way I cheat.

Vis a vis Scrabble, I often palm pieces, grabbing three for each grab, putting the best on the rack saving the rest for later. You'd be surprised how many people never even think of cheating.

It's harder to explain the times I cheat to lose.

Oh hell yes! I have so many. But one of the loveliest was near the end of a game, when I had a J and Y and some other beastly letters. I played JOEY in the lower right triple word, and extended a word on the board with the E into the triple; I believe the score was something in the 90s.

When your Scrabble foe's jaw drops, his face sags, and he mews a sad little mew, it is the music of the stars as far as I'm concerned.

(mr t, it grieves me to say it but you are going to hell, where you will be chased by angry Qs for all eternity and there will never, never, never be any Us to cradle your battered weary head.)

X Z L W Q G M

http://www.transom.org/shows/2004/200410.vidlit.html

I remember playing on line with someone I wanted to see naked, winning, and realizing that I was never going to see her elbows, let alone anything else.

mr t gonna get some qat scratch fever in hades, i'm a thinkin

As I've gotten older it's been harder and harder to find people to play Scrabble with, so for the past few years all of my Scrabble games are vs. the computer. Recently I drew 7 vowels at the start of the game and exchanged tiles only to be left with 7 more vowels. It was one of the few times I've thrown in the towel and restarted the game (which is easier when you're playing a computer).

My favorite Scrabble memory doesn't actually involve playing a game of Scrabble. Many years ago I spent an evening with the band Jesus Lizard and a few of the people I was with kept trying to find cool and hip counter-culture things to talk about to engage the singer David Yow. He generally wasn't very responsive until he overheard me say to someone else that I'd rather be at home playing Scrabble. We spent the next half hour discussing Scrabble boards, memories, and strategies.

Last Christmas, The Husband and I had two of my hawt friends over. We all played scrabble. V won, but I feel that she had an unfair advantage because she played after M in the rotation, and M was too drunk to spell. We've talked about, but never had a re-match. It was a sexually charged evening.

Also, my Mother, who will be 80 this December 25th, is an avid Scrabbler in her assisted living joint. No problems with her wits, thank god. She used to cheat at cards, but not at Scrabble. I don't think it would occur to her. I do worry, however, that she may be taking bets. She may be a Scrabble hustler. I got her a Scrabble tree ornament for Christmas this year.

I do so enjoy the Scrabble. Have fun and win big.

I made beating me at Scrabble a condition of marrying my first husband. It's a longish story, but we kept track of our cumulative scores for a long time afterwards. My current partner has many many fine qualities, more than the ex by a long shot, but being a crack Scrabble player is not one of them.

People actually cheat at Scrabble?

That's pretty sad.

Also, I think that I am going to steal jessamyn's idea and make it mandatory that my relationship partners have decent Scrabble scores before I become involved with them.

My favorite scrabble memory:

Arquebus.

My favorite Scrabble memory is from when I spent NYE in a beautiful centuries-old cottage in Wales that some friends own. We had a huge meal of meats and vegetables raised and grown on the land surrounding them, and lots of great wine. Then we sat in front of their huge fireplace and played Scrabble. Wasn't the most exciting game I have played, but it was a lot of fun. After the game, I went outside to have a smoke (before I quit) and it was so beautifully quiet. I sighed and all the sheep came running out of the barn, which made me laugh.

I also like to keep track of who uses which words, and to (jokingly) psychoanalyze them (and myself) afterwards.

I noticed that the board on the page jessamyn linked contained the words "scum" and "sod"

You all have charmed me so greatly. Um, except for mr t, who at least has charmed me with his honesty.


Mine: When I was a sophomore in high school I had my first serious boyfriend. I was living just outside Boston at the time. Understandably, there's lots of time to kill during the winter. We took to playing two-on-two Scrabble matches with my parents, who are just fantastically good Scrabble players and who keep a cumulative score (my stepdad has the edge, but barely.) One time we beat them, during which game I played 'xenon' on a triple word score.

It's the little things.

I was drawn to my current girlfriend's profile online by her mentioning her love of Scrabble. It took almost a month into the relationship before we actually got to play.

Also, my old band was on a ten day tour and I brought along my portable scrabble game. My bandmates invented "offensive scrabble" where extra points were given if the word you spelt was offensive.

I played scrabble on a nude beach in Vermont once. I was naked part of the time, my opponent was not. He won - barely. Then I played scrabble with him by fire & lanternlight at a campsite, and I beat him. Nobody ever beats him and he was blown away and told all his friends and relatives which gained me a measure of uncertain celebrity for a while. The relationship never really came to anything. Some years later he started dating a psychotically jealous woman who had a hysterical fit when I forwarded him a MoveOn email and so he told me we could never be in contact again.

I once made a game-ending play that very nearly doubled my total score. Probably a Q or X combined with a triple-word-score, of course, but I no longer recall the word.

People do cheat at scrabble, of course. There's the poker-face cheat, where you play a nonsense word and coolly manage to get it accepted without anyone consulting a dictionary. The other one is best performed when others are slightly incapacitated -- you play a regular tile as a blank. Either you have to exchange it for a real blank if you get one later, or bluff out the appearance of three blanks on the board, or bluff out your use of it as an error. There are also straightforward cheats like doing the math the wrong way or just fudging the numbers you count, if everyone keeps their own score.

You never heard any of this from me.