#7, for the record
Wednesday evening was the Scrabble meetup, which was held at Kits beach for a change of scenery. lechiro and I went, and because we started after everyone else and were off to a slow start, we only played one game.
The first half of the game was painfully slow. Our tile combinations were brutal, and all we could manage were three and four letter words, with an occasional, and I do mean occasional, five letter word. So because our tiles sucked, we couldn't make good words and open up the board, and because the board was so tight, it was hard to make good words with the tiles we had. A vicious cycle.
However, just over halfway through the game, lechiro got a bingo with the word STORMED, for a total of 65 points, and was now way ahead of me. Until then, the score had been pretty close (and pretty bad-we were worried that neither of us would even break 200 points), but then a couple of turns later, I had the following tiles on my rack: A, E, I, L, N, T, and a blank. They were a good combination of letters, and I thought that surely I must be able to get a bingo with them. I kept moving my tiles around, making eight letters words, but the problem was I needed to use a tile that was already on the board to make an eight letter word, and due to lack of space on the board (the board was pretty full by this time) and lack of appropriate letters, I wasn't able to make the words that I had in mind.
However, I was determined to try and make a bingo, and noticed only one possible spot where I could make a seven letter word. In order to do so, I would have to use my blank as an S and put it at the end of the word FOB that was already on the board (that was actually the first word I played when I started the game), and make the S the last letter in the word I made. I kept playing with my tiles, trying out different combinations, and finally I saw the word ENTAILS. I built down, with the E and I landing on triple letter squares, and with the 8 points for the word FOBS and the 50 point bonus, I got a total of 68 points. This was my seventh bingo ever (yes, I keep track. Why not?)
The game was pretty close, but I somehow managed to win. The final score was 359 for me, 304 for lechiro.
I also learned an interesting thing at the Scrabble meetup. A woman, Lorraine (she was really nice, and I enjoyed talking to her), said that she was wondering if the word email, without the hyphen, was in the Scrabble dictionary, so I looked it up. Sure enough, it is in there; email is now an official Scrabble word. I guess I better get with the times and stop spelling it "e-mail".
After the meetup, lechiro drove me home and drove Lorraine and Erin, the organizer of the Scrabble and boardgame meetups, to the skytrain station. As we're in the car, we're chatting about Scrabble and things, and Lorraine says to lechiro and me, "It's a good thing you both like Scrabble." We're both confused, and were like, "Huh?" She then realizes her mistake, and says, "Oops. I thought you were a couple." Ha ha.
The first half of the game was painfully slow. Our tile combinations were brutal, and all we could manage were three and four letter words, with an occasional, and I do mean occasional, five letter word. So because our tiles sucked, we couldn't make good words and open up the board, and because the board was so tight, it was hard to make good words with the tiles we had. A vicious cycle.
However, just over halfway through the game, lechiro got a bingo with the word STORMED, for a total of 65 points, and was now way ahead of me. Until then, the score had been pretty close (and pretty bad-we were worried that neither of us would even break 200 points), but then a couple of turns later, I had the following tiles on my rack: A, E, I, L, N, T, and a blank. They were a good combination of letters, and I thought that surely I must be able to get a bingo with them. I kept moving my tiles around, making eight letters words, but the problem was I needed to use a tile that was already on the board to make an eight letter word, and due to lack of space on the board (the board was pretty full by this time) and lack of appropriate letters, I wasn't able to make the words that I had in mind.
However, I was determined to try and make a bingo, and noticed only one possible spot where I could make a seven letter word. In order to do so, I would have to use my blank as an S and put it at the end of the word FOB that was already on the board (that was actually the first word I played when I started the game), and make the S the last letter in the word I made. I kept playing with my tiles, trying out different combinations, and finally I saw the word ENTAILS. I built down, with the E and I landing on triple letter squares, and with the 8 points for the word FOBS and the 50 point bonus, I got a total of 68 points. This was my seventh bingo ever (yes, I keep track. Why not?)
The game was pretty close, but I somehow managed to win. The final score was 359 for me, 304 for lechiro.
I also learned an interesting thing at the Scrabble meetup. A woman, Lorraine (she was really nice, and I enjoyed talking to her), said that she was wondering if the word email, without the hyphen, was in the Scrabble dictionary, so I looked it up. Sure enough, it is in there; email is now an official Scrabble word. I guess I better get with the times and stop spelling it "e-mail".
After the meetup, lechiro drove me home and drove Lorraine and Erin, the organizer of the Scrabble and boardgame meetups, to the skytrain station. As we're in the car, we're chatting about Scrabble and things, and Lorraine says to lechiro and me, "It's a good thing you both like Scrabble." We're both confused, and were like, "Huh?" She then realizes her mistake, and says, "Oops. I thought you were a couple." Ha ha.