Scrabble is possibly one of the best board games in the world to play. I was recently given it as a gift and it is proudly displayed on my bookshelf as one of my prized possessions. Here is what I love about this game and the top five reasons why you should play Scrabble, too:
1) You learn lots of new words. Okay, so you might be stumped and resort to adding prefixes or suffixes to words already on the board (and I admit that I definitely take advantage of words already on the board). Or maybe you find yourself with nothing except one-syllable words that are common in everyday language (again, I admit to being the kind of person who uses words such as “life” and “edit” ;)). But at some point in the game, the other player is likely to use a word that might be unfamiliar to you. Or maybe one of you will use a word that you have heard and used before, but you don’t know exactly what it means. This is your opportunity to open up the dictionary and check it out. Most of us use words without really knowing their meaning and it is a delight to discover that a word has much more depth than previously believed.
2) It’s a good bonding experience. Board games are fun. They bring people together, even if half the time you’re arguing over what counts and what doesn’t. It might show your lack of knowledge in complex words, or your inability to do simple math when trying to calculate the points from a word. Who cares? This is an opportunity to learn something about the person you’re playing with as well as learning new words.
3) It challenges the mind. You have a jumble of letters to choose from that have to somehow intersect with other letters already on the board. You have to mentally rearrange the letters to figure out how you can form a word for the most points possible. If that’s not a great challenge, I don’t know what is.
4) It gets the creative juices flowing. I don’t really like getting the blank tablets, and I think that they know it because they always seem to land in my hand when I’m reaching into the bag of letters. The main reason why I don’t like the blank tablets is because I have to envision any letter in its spot in order to create a word. But it shouldn’t be a nuisance: instead, it would be better to look on it as a chance to play around with the letters! The other creative aspect is when you get to the point where you only seem to have vowels in your hand. Trying to form a word from that can be tricky- but there are quite a few words that can be made if you think outside the box.
5) If there’s ever a point of contention, the dictionary will solve all problems. I think that this is a good metaphor for life. What problem cannot be solved with words? Most people get to where they are in life by being able to talk their way to their position. I’m not saying this is always the case, but it stands to reason that if we can sell ourselves with effective communication, we’ll get farther than the person over there that is too humble or shy to acknowledge and talk about their accomplishments. In Scrabble, it’s also nice to have the dictionary there to settle a dispute: if the players are at odds and can’t decide if a word should be allowed or not, the dictionary holds the answer.
What’s your favourite board game? Are you a Scrabble fan?
Love it until I kick your bottom at it this weekend 🙂
The boyfriend already succeeded at beating me in Scrabble the last time we played! Such a disgrace, to be defeated by science students 😉