Scrabble

Growing up my mother and I played scrabble on a regular basis. She had the attitude that all was fair in board games and card games so she never allowed me to win a game. I am an appalling speller and yet the game appealed to me. There was just something very satisfying about making the word cat and scoring 12 points instead of the 5 that were the total of the tiles without the double letter score.

Over the years my spelling improved, slightly, and my pleasure in playing scrabble continued. I freely admit that I am not a great player. I can play a reasonable game but do not expect me to give a really serious player a decent game. I have read books on the serious side of the game, I have played with serious players and I have watched a documentary on the national championship but I am not skilled enough nor diligent enough to learn the lists of words that seem to be the basis of games that score more than 500 in total.

The exception is that I have learned a lot of the two letter words and some of the odd 3 letter ones that are permissible. Do not ask me what they mean but they help me score which is what counts. My one regular opponent moans and sighs. Challenges the words. Claims that if you do not know the meaning you can't use it. Sighs some more but over the past year has begun to add them to the game in order to increase the score! I prefer the British list of words. It is the generous use of the letter u that I like. Colour vs color and so on. Scrabble can turn into a different version of balderdash if one does not have a dictionary on hand. I have heard my opponents utter supposed meanings of words that have had me rolling on the floor. My dear sister is famous for one particular one ... courtesy of Henry V I believe.

When my family went away for weekends, or weeks, to a game part my mother always made certain that the scrabble set was packed. In the light of the paraffin lamp with moths battering themselves to pieces on the screen of the porch we would play well into the late evening. My father was not an enthusiastic player. I can not remember him playing very often. He claimed it was because he was a poor speller but I think it was more a case of being consistently beaten by his wife. My mother took no prisoners. The battle lines were drawn from the moment the board was placed on the table. You were never permitted to retire. No amount of moaning resulted in permission to leave before the end of the game. Even making words such as 'the, up, it ..' would not irritate her enough to end the game. Her victories were many and were recorded in a little book.

I always thought her an excellent player but as the years passed and my language skills improved so to did my scrabble playing. Still not a really good player I began to be win games. My mother played with me regardless of who won but she no longer took care at noting down the final score. Then one day I beat her by over two hundred points. Her face fell as I passed her the score sheet. Sitting on the deck of a friend's house on the East Cape coast I watched her status of scrabble queen disappear. Her expression hardly altered as she gave me back the score sheet and smiled. Congratulations, she said with a warm smile.

When I next took out the scrabble board she claimed that she was tired. The next time she was too busy. Excuse followed excuse. When we did play again she teased me less than she ever had about my spelling. The game was silent. Instead of jokes and memories surfacing we played a solemn game. I won the game.

It was months later when she was visiting us again that I managed to convince her to play a game of scrabble. She won. I wrote the score on the lid of the scrabble box. All the games we played that summer had their scores recorded on the lid of the box. The games were close. Scores were higher. We were equal in our victories when we played a last game before she left. She won the game. I wrote the score on the lid of the box.

We never played another game of scrabble together. She and my father moved to the UK where he passed away a year later. Devastated by his death she moved from one child's home to another searching for something that had been lost forever. A year later she passed away.

When I was packing up a bookcase last week I came across the scrabble box. There were the scores written in a variety of different coloured inks. Our times together laughing over a simple word game recalled at a glance. There are other scores on the lid from games played between family members during the last few years when we all lived together. Each score a warm reminder of a time that has passed.

I play word games on facebook and other places but nothing replaces the open board with the seven tiles on their rack waiting to be placed where they will make a good score. Of course the cups of tea and the conversation with the other players may have a lot to do with the value of the game.

Today's challenge is to find a way to make the word sferics on that triple word ....