Scrable is back. Like a sprightly retiree granted a new lease of life, it celebrates its 60th birthday this year, returned to its rightful place as the best-selling board game in Britain (the first time it has held this spot since the 1980s). In the current economic climate, families appear to have decided it is a more attractive pastime than West End musicals, holidays in the Eurozone or days out to British Lapland. The VAT cut even means you can get a generous 75p off the average set.
But for many of us Scrabble never went away. My first memories of the game are torturously slow evenings with my grandmother whenever she came to stay. It has always been a staple of family Christmas. In a less innocent teenage phase someone once suggested a strip version at a house party. My flatmate has invented a variation in which you can only use obscene words (a game which would probably appeal to Jonathan Ross – one of many well-known Scrabble aficionados). I’ve had one of my only major arguments with a friend while playing it on holiday in India (he claimed the dictionary wasn’t big enough to contain lljoxzy, conveniently his last remaining letters).
A group of us even took it skiing this year.
Tragically, then, it has formed something of a silent soundtrack to my life. The only reason I’ve never added it as a Facebook application (or any of the copycat versions, such as “Scrabulous”) is that it would mean the end of any productive daytime work.
It’s annoying as well as tragic. For the truth is, like many, I’m sure, I have a love-hate relationship with Scrabble. Ultimately, it’s a vicious, tedious little game: as competitive as Monopoly, as slow as chess and with as much potential for intellectual embarrassment as Trivial Pursuit.
When you lose, you blame your letters.
When you win, everyone else hates you. Depending on the outcome, it has just the wrong, or just the right, combination of luck and skill.
Scrabble certainly contains much to irritate the irritable. My pet hates are people who take too long for their turn (we got round this on our ski trip by adopting a “drink while you think” rule) and annoying geeks who seem to know every allowable twoletter words (there are 124 permissible such words according to the official rulebook).
Others are driven into a paroxysm of rage when their planned word is blocked by another player or someone forgets to bring the turntable and they have to play the entire game upside down. Arguments over the score can turn violent. Each family appears to have its own rules. Ours tries to get round the competitiveness by keeping a tally of our best group scores. It’s all in vain. We all know it’s the winning that counts.
Getting beaten by any of the dyslexic, illiterate doctors who constitute my close, much-loved family can ruin the entire festive period.
Yet still we play, in the vain hope of the perfect word to end all words, spread across two triple word scores and blocking the person next to you.
53 per cent of homes in Britain have a set. Over 150 million games have been sold in 121 countries. There’s even a Welsh version (which might have been the version my friend who thought lljoxzy was a word was playing, without telling me).