TheBanyanTree: From Queen Honey to Word Games

[Julie Anna Teague]

Quoting auntiesash <auntiesash at gmail.com>:

> I love a sentence that starts with "losing doesn't bother me" and ends with
> "that's cheating!!!"  Hmmmm.

Maybe you had to grow up in my family.  We had major Scrabble 
tournaments and the rules were the rules that were printed inside the 
game box, i.e., no dictionaries unless someone challenges your word. 
That being said, I guess Words with Friends does not claim to be 
Scrabble.  It also doesn't bug me that other families play scrabble 
different ways, but that's not, strictly speaking, the rules of the 
game as per the game was designed.

This is not incompatible with the fact that losing doesn't bother me.  
We had the rabid Scrabble tournaments, but no one was ever unhappy 
about losing.  It was all "win some, lose some", we just enjoyed the 
game.  My great uncle Clark was the best player.  He usually won, and 
that was ok.  If you did happen to beat him, it was a capital "O" 
Occasion, and Clark was just pleased as punch, too, because it meant 
he'd had a very competitive game of it.  It doesn't bother me to lose 
in Words with Friends, either, because we all know what the rules are.  
But they are not the rules of Scrabble.



> I suppose you could just randomly put tiles down and hope for the best.
> Not sure why anyone would bother.  Kinda defeats the whole purpose of
> playing a word game.  In real Scrabble - at our house anyway - we don't
> really do the challenge thing.  If we aren't sure about how a word is
> spelled, we ask the other player or one of us looks it up.  No reading
> through the dictionary looking for a good word, but if we aren't sure, then
> the dictionary is there.  If someone plays a word that looks fishy, we
> might say "what does that mean?" and check for accuracy, but we don't
> consider the "bluff" or the "gotcha" to add anything to the pleasure of the
> word game.  And if everyone knows the rules and plays by them, how is that
> cheating?
>
> My play style is not conducive to winning (See I would have had to ask if
> conducive had 2 c's or an s).  I like long words and I like cool little
> words that fit into the grid to make more little words.  Sometimes those
> give you points and sometimes they don't.  I play them anyway.  I think I
> win about 2/3 of the games I play
>
> Yeah - Pam kicks scrabble butt.  No surprise there.  She's a sharp cookie
> with mad word skillz!!
>
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Julie Anna Teague
> <jateague at indiana.edu>wrote:
>
>> Quoting Jena <eudora45 at sbcglobal.net>:
>>
>>
>>  I don't play Words with Friends anymore. Despite my vast vocabulary, I
>>>>> kept
>>>>> losing to people who should not have been winning. In whose opinion?
>>>>> Well,
>>>>> mine of course!
>>>>>
>>>>
>> Ha!  Losing doesn't bother me, actually.  Good thing, because I lose
>> regularly and I don't think I've ever beat Pam!  But the thing that bugs me
>> most about Words with Friends (and I do still play it) is that I consider
>> it "Scrabble for cheaters".  Because in real scrabble, you play your word,
>> and if someone challenges you and you look it up and it's not a real word,
>> then you have to take it off and lose your turn.  In Words with Friends,
>> you find out it's not a real word and you get to try again and again and
>> again.  You can try anything you want until it takes. That's cheating!!!
>>
>> I got a Words with Friends request this weekend from a person I knew when
>> we were kids, and haven't seen since.  I sent him a message that said, "I
>> think the last game we played together was wiffle ball up on the corner in
>> Otwell when we were 10!"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> You are a fine person, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you;
>    but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!?
>
> ?Thank goodness!? said Bilbo laughing
>




Julie

~O
<I~ love to run
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