It rains cats and dogs during the night. Sunday morning dawns, bleak, damp and with a chill in the air that bites to the bone. Where’s the sunshine? We scrabble – or is that scramble – for ideas.
Do we go for our planned Sunday outing in the rain, or not? Prevaricating over breakfast, a decision is made. Let’s see what the sky says later in the morning.
In the meantime…
A newly acquired Scrabble game begs to be opened. It’s been waiting a week now. Perfect! We spend two hours or so discovering new words, and using old ones.
A word of explanation
We decide to break a rule and allow dictionary checking so long as the proposed word is declared before Dr Google’s Scrabble Dictionary is consulted. Fingers crossed we hope the online dictionary gives approval.
It’s fun being creative with spellings. We laugh about potential discoveries from absurd combinations, and eyes twinkle in surprise at some that prove to be real words. Always, in the background of these checks is hope. Hope that the letters in our hand will dwindle more quickly, or that the new word will magically give us that brilliant score.
Is there an official Scrabble dictionary?
According to my search on Google, there’s numerous ‘official’ Scrabble Dictionaries. There is “an Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or OSPD, a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English. Merriam-Webster, Inc. Merriam-Webster, Inc.”
I count no less than 12 ‘official dictionaries’ on Amazon! There’s a plethora of words to choose from! Just so long as they are acceptable as Australian English!
In my childhood home, I remember a massive tome of words, our very own Webster Dictionary having pride of place. I believe my brother laid claim to it years ago.
I am amused
We each grew up in households that played Scrabble. I suspect mine played less often than my partners did. He recalls playing ‘quite a lot’ in his teen years. We each grew up with different applications of the rules, and this is to his advantage. He sees words in ways my mind is not yet attuned to. Quite simply, in our games, we could place a word on the board – one word. We usually saw it linked to a letter.
My partner sees letters create a word that links up with other letters to create more than one word. He meshes words together! It is an easy skill for my partner. I need a scrabble board of words to show you what I mean! This inbuilt habitual way of seeing the board and his ability to create great scores amazes me.
Cheat!
We each used to play online Scrabble for a while. My partner is so darn good at finding words and matching letters to create two or more words in the one ‘go’, that he was accused by his online players, of cheating. I can assure you; he doesn’t cheat! He doesn’t need to!
An hour or so later, it’s game over. I add up my remaining letters and boost his score by five points. He doesn’t need the extra. He’s won by a rather large margin!
Family fun
I like board games. Lots of family fun nights. Monopoly, Squatter, Scrabble and Yahtzee are just a few I recall as a kid and still play. Holidays were our fun nights for games.
My other option on a rainy day is to read a book, a solitary choice. You can check out some here. Today’s game of Scrabble was simply good fun. We hit the target. It turned a drizzly kind of morning into sunshine.
What do you do on a rainy day? Please let me know below or by clicking here and scrolling to the end of the post.
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