Beware monster of Scrabble

Friday, December 9, 2011

There are certain sections of a weekly newspaper to which people gravitate, sections with information they can seldom, if ever, find in a daily newspaper. One such section in the Bedford Journal is our calendar and last week, we found in it something frightening, something terrible, something so terrifying that we can only hope that it isn’t true. It said this: Scrabble, Anyone?

It might surprise you to learn that there are some people in this world – the reasonable ones – who loathe Scrabble.

You seem surprised. You seem not to understand how anyone can loathe Scrabble. We can only think you have managed to avoid ever having to play it with people like someone we will call Kathy. Here is what happens in Scrabble when it involves “Kathy”: People sit around a table and each takes and hides seven letters from which to form words. Let us suppose the first person puts down, oh, a six-letter word. But next up is “Kathy” and this is where the “fun” begins. Because “Kathy” is in no hurry to form her word. Indeed, she wants to ponder her choices even though, were we to peek, we would know that she has no choices other than something terribly obvious.

But “Kathy” wants to ponder and ponder and ... the minutes tick by. There we are, only two players into this game, and the reasonable ones among us are ready to leave or go watch a movie or overturn the board. Instead, we might do the reasonable thing: demand a change in the rules to Speed Scrabble where no one gets to ponder for more than 30 seconds.

Wait, how did we get off on this tangent? We wanted to discuss the paper’s calendar and ... well, perhaps another time. We were distracted by the inherent evil of Scrabble.

On the chance that you disagree with us and would like to play along, go to the Bedford Library on the second Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. where all ages are welcome to Scrabble it up. Or ponder.