scrabble

At the end of my first day at A-B's, she said, so, do you play any games? They don't drink, so it's all wholesome family entertainment at the A-B household. One of the first games I mentioned was, of course, Scrabble. It's not that I especially like Scrabble, but my mom loves it, so I play it all the time, and I'm pretty good at it. Well, they own Scrabble...in Norwegian. I eventually convinced them that, yes, I really did want to play and lose, it was fine, it would be good for my ego. My vocabulary in Norwegian isn't terrible, but it's a heck of a lot smaller than that of my opponents.

Only problem is, I didn't lose. I knew that strategy was a big part of Scrabble, but I didn't realize quite how big. I did get one special rule: If I played something and it wasn't a word, I was allowed to try again.

I think A-B and Mr. A-B realized they were in trouble when I played PATTE with the P on a double letter and E on a double word for 24 points. Which is not all that fantastic a play, but uses some basic strategy. (I rocked their Scrabble-novice worlds a few turns later when I made JA both ways on a triple-letter off the A in PATTE.)

Well, I said I didn't lose, but I also didn't win. When Mr. A-B played the last of his tiles and ended the game, I was about 30 points ahead. But I had the W in my hand and A-B had the C - those are worth a ton in Norwegian Scrabble because they're rare in the language, and they're rare in the language because they're only used in words that are borrowed from English, like "waldorfsalat" and "camping." The problem is, none of the three of us had any idea what words had been officially borrowed from English, and therefore would be in the dictionary, and which are just English words that everyone uses all the time. So once we'd subtracted a bazillion points from A-B and me and given a bazillion points to Mr. A-B (for going out first), he and I tied.

So the next night we agreed to play without the C and the W. This time, I won. That's my seven-letter word going vertically near the right of the board. (SLAPPER. I don't really know what it means, except that "Slapp av!" means "Relax!")


I totally lost the third game - I played my last vowel, an Å, about halfway through the game and spent the rest of the game staring down the barrel of a bazillion Js and Ms and whatnot. But that's ok. I still impressed the heck out of them in the first two games.

Here's my favorite play of all three games: Mr. A-B had (foolishly) played ORD close to a triple word score. So I added FJ in front of it to make one of the few words we've borrowed from Norwegian - and a whole bunch of points. I was proud.

Of course, if they ever learn a little basic strategy, I'm done. My only hope is to play them in English next time...and even then, who knows.