oh beautiful just say it dude (01-03-2012)

[jay-ell]

I spend a lot of my free social time at a board game store with a large play area behind the merchandise section. The play area is actually about 3x the size of the sales floor, with space for about a dozen banquet-size folding tables and chairs to seat six to eight dozen people. It's the largest open play space on our end of town -- there's one other store with a play area, but it's only got four tables and they're much closer together. So on any given night, you might see several different groups playing a variety of games. I go on Thursdays, and there's typically our group, which ostensibly gathers for Munchkin; a game of Starfleet Universe; a D&D fivesome; several pairs of Magic players; and a board game group (last week they were playing something called Tigris and Euphrates that looked pretty sweet).

On Tuesdays, Pedro and I sometimes go for Date Night, and there's a group of regulars that stand out as the most hard-core of them all: The Scrabblers. I love word games, and I thought maybe I would come and play with them sometime, but after I watched a couple of rounds I decided that these folks are so far out of my league it's not even funny. They are nice people, and very open-armed, but they are clearly serious players who study word lists and memorize anagrams and stuff. The leader of the group is nationally rated -- one of his friends told me that, and he brushed it off as "no big deal" -- and the others in the group skew significantly older than the average game nerd and have clearly been playing regularly for more years than I've been alive.

The Scrabblers are also the only group that never walks around to see what everyone else is playing or join in a pickup game while they're sitting out waiting for a partner. They're very welcoming and looking to recruit, but they don't have the general interest in games of any stripe that the rest of the store's clientele seems to share. If they're sitting out, they're studying dictionaries or playing solo to practice their bingos. There's almost no social element to their partner games, either. They only play in pairs, and they never talk about anything except the board.

I get the appeal, but...it's not what I'm looking for on my biweekly night out, you know?

_{Edit: I meant to edit this post for proper semicolon usage, but I mis-clicked and ended up creating a new post in which I quoted myself. Sorry guys.}

[pmcd9]

Anagrams, Bingo, WTF?

I knew some hard core scrabblers (Is that a word?).

[side_show]

I really like scrabble, and I struggle to find anyone I'm evenly matched with.  I cream my hubby every time I play, and my only other friend who plays (who I play the iPhone scrabble with) is so much better than me that she's clearly gotten tired of beating me.  She's really ethical, so I know she's not cheating.  I realize there are cheat programs for Scrabble and I've taken a look at them to learn how to play a stronger game, but I refuse to actually use the program in game play.  I've played a few anonymous match ups on iPhone and both the people I played were  so obviously cheating that I was pretty disgusted.  Why cheat at scrabble - isn't the intellectual pursuit sort of the point of the game?  I dont' get people sometimes.

As for the non-minglers at your group JL, I can totally understand them because I am totally disinterested in those type of games.  I've tried to play them, but I just don't like them at all.  It's just not my thing at all.  Words on the other hand, are totally my thing.

[jay-ell]

As for the non-minglers at your group JL, I can totally understand them because I am totally disinterested in those type of games.  I've tried to play them, but I just don't like them at all.  It's just not my thing at all.  Words on the other hand, are totally my thing.

I get that, too. But it makes them stand out at the game store, where most people gather to learn new things and meet new people. The Scrabblers are a bit...cliquish.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[CortJstr]

I've said this before but: Word Wars. It is way better than a documentary about Scrabble has any right to be. It's also better than the book.