As we were fiercely debating our philosphical positions John blurted out that I seemed to be the Barry Bonds of Scrabble. I was using P.E.D.'s (Performance Enhancing Dictionaries) to increase my chances of accruing more points. To this I shot back that playing to win each contest was like taking his basketball team to play only games, but never practice to improve the deficiences in their play.
We have come to a bit of a stalemate and our gameboard sits unfinished on the coffetable until we can come to some to some sort of working agreement. John has suggested that maybe we could get one free use of an aid of our choice with each turn (but no more than one). This aggrement seems to satisfy my desires, so it may be that we will continue with that rule in place. (However, this bothers John because it means that his meticulous scorekeeping will have to have an asterisk by each of our remaining scores that denotes our use of resources). Either way, if you have any ideas on the topic please feel free to share them.
Our gameboard thus far
6 comments:
It can be just as competitive if you allow all p.e.d.s
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LrCGYtFAQ2U
I have to side with John on this one. Scrabble is a game. The reason you play a game is to compete, so don't hold it against John for wanting to win each game. Your practice should come on you own time.
With that said, a simple solution would be to play without the PEDs most of the time. Occasionally, you would hold "scrimmages" with the goal of enhancing your vocabulary and not declaring a winner of the scrimmages.
Interestingly, we have the same debate among the pensiero family. Gene's parents ALWAYS use the dictionary and we NEVER do. Perhaps the great Scrabble debate is never to be solved....
and YES I do remember that trip to the Apple Farm...wow. what can you say about that??
John here. Keeping the competition in the game is hard when the person trying to create a word is consulting the dictionary and saying, "is 'el' a word?"..."what about 'lek?'"
And on it goes. Meanwhile I'm busting my tail trying to think of words from nothing but my own vocabulary. I go by the rules (big surprise) which basically say that when you put down a word and it turns out to be nonsense, you lose your turn and the letters come off the board. You don't get to check it out ahead of time.
My new idea is to give us each three chances to check the dictionary each game. The negotiations are on-going.
Also, click on this Scrabble Dictionary link:
http://www.hasbro.com/games/adult-games/scrabble/home.cfm?page=Dictionary/dict
To me it looks like they're trying to imply that this woman is playing Scrabble with her infant. Apparently the best the baby could come up with was "tips."
Jimmie, I like your "scrimmage" idea. I just want the opportunity to play with the use of tools (as it is highly unlikely that I will just read the Scrabble dictionary for fun.) This may just be the breakthrough that John and I need to finish our game. Thanks for the ideas.
No problem. By the way, John don't you have your own Blogger account?
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