I don't know when we started playing scrabble on holiday, but for a while it was a key part of any break. Mostly it went well. We had leisurely evenings in cheap Greek apartments, picking out letters and swatting mosquitoes. We'd play travel scrabble waiting for ferries or during long, drawn out meals in tavernas. It becomes addictive.
My partner takes the longest time to place a word, carefully weighing up the maximum possible score from his seven letters. This sometimes drives me mad, as I want to knit or read in the breaks. So, I bought an official scrabble timer - a green bit of plastic with a red light on top that screams time's up. It has myseriously vanished. Somewhere along the way, we stopped playing scrabble on holiday. We each have our own version of why. We've agreed to say it was when our son came along.
Now that son is 15 and he was delighted to find a scrabble board in our holiday rental. He insisted on scrabble tournaments at least twice a day. Playing with him has been a revelation. We have refound our love of scrabble. My partner is still a ponderously slow player. But our son is a whirlwind.
It turns out one of us has been playing scrabble online. His knowledge of cunning two letter words beats ours hands down. Fe, ki, ug, xu anyone? He is focused always on getting a "bingo" - a term new to me in scrabble - getting all seven letters out in one shot. So far he's managed it five times. We watch in awe.
Yes, he doesn't know what some of the words he's using mean. But, he reminds us, that doesn't matter in scrabble. He constantly refers to the little box on the board that tells players how many tiles of each letter there are, and calculates the odds of getting that u to go with a late-appearing q on his letter rack. I have never properly looked at that little box.
He plays the game fast and furiously. We are being kept on our toes. So far we've played outdoors, indoors and in the beach hut. I won't tell you the scores, but I think we might need some online practice.
Fe - an American abbreviation for book size (forty-eighth)
Ki - a plant found in the Pacific islands and China
Ug - fear and horror
Xu - a minor unit of Vietnamese currency.
We live and learn, and we've learned that old loves never die.
Comments