Not So Scrabulous

Thanks so much for the invitation to join your blog. My feminine perspective for today is that I’d be scared to go hunting with Scooter.

Now, how about a story of love lost?

I loved playing Scrabble as a child with Michael’s and my grandmother. Last fall, Michael and I discovered that we could play Scrabble online against each other via Scrabulous and ISC's Wordbiz. We’re a tad competitive with tendencies toward obsessiveness, so in short order we got serious. We read Scrabble books and bought Scrabble dictionaries; watched Scrabble documentaries (Word Wars and Scrabylon) and joined the National Scrabble Association (NSA); bought study guides and started memorizing lists of words: the 101 two-letter words, the 1,015 three-letter words, short words with J, Q, X, or Z, and words laden with vowels. We found creative ways to memorize words, like tag-team-composing a limerick daily that ended in an acceptable Scrabble word, like this:

Michael:         There once was a blue fish named Dory
Me:               Who mistakenly ate something gory
Michael:         It made her quite ill
Me:               All green in the gill
Michael:         And suffered the most hideous AURAE.

and

Michael:         There once was a goddess name Luna
Me:               Who liked to eat nothing but tuna
Michael:         She had quite a fright
Me:               After dinner one night
Michael:         When she found herself next to a UNAI

I quit my favorite yoga class to attend Scrabble club meetings. I studied word lists instead of reading regular books. I bought a new faster computer and signed up for cable internet service to reduce technical difficulties with playing online. Michael and I committed to play in an NSA-sponsored tournament and got ready for it by playing every morning from 5:00-7:00 AM for several weeks.

The tournament was an interesting, humbling experience. We played in the bottom division and lost more than we won. We both lost to a 14 year old. Michael did manage to beat an elderly gentleman who declared that no computer had yet been built that was big enough to hold all the acceptable Scrabble words.

I intended to work hard to be do better in the next tournament, but when I faced the task of memorizing 4,030 four-letter words, I just couldn’t do it. Memorizing a 4,000-word list was more than four times as hard as memorizing a 1,000-word list. As I started the process, I began to forget the three-letter words I’d already learned. It stopped being fun; it wasn’t an adventure anymore; it was just another chore. Besides, I was missing yoga and reading. So I neglected my word studies and felt guilty about it for weeks that stretched into months. Michael eventually admitted that he’d given up Scrabble, citing too much work for too little reward. Relieved, though a bit disappointed, I admitted to myself that I’d already quit too.

So where did this flirtation with competitive Scrabble leave me? It left me in Scrabble purgatory. Now that I know words like QI, AALII, XYST, and CWM, I can’t play with the neighbors. And because I don’t know all 4,030 of the four-letter words, I can’t compete with serious Scrabble players. Now I’m condemned to live a Scrabble-less life.

Anyone else have a story of losing something you loved by taking it too seriously or through overindulgence?

By the way, Michael and I were on the cutting edge of a Scrabble fad, although we were unaware of it. In July 2007, Facebook made Scrabulous easily accessible to its members, and now online Scrabble is all the rage (NYTimes and Washington Post).