Scrabble Stories
I have been known, on occasion, to play Speed Scrabble, which involves ditching that useless board altogether, drawing seven tiles from a mess of them in the middle of the table, then, at an agreed upon moment, assembling them as quickly as possible into words on your own private grid. Once someone has used all their letters they yell "draw two" or "draw one" if several dorks are playing. Play continues in this fashion until all the tiles are taken and played. If you're stuck you can destroy your words and start over if you think you have the time. The first person to use all their tiles wins. Uh...wins the thrill of victory as points aren't really kept, although they can be for those math dorks out there.
The best part, though, comes next. Scrabble Stories. Everyone gets ten minutes to free-write something creative and fun, creepy, silly, scary, whathaveyou as long as it contains all of the words created during Speed Scrabble. Then you go around and read your stories aloud and laugh and laugh. It's a good time. If you're a dork.
Here are two of my Scrabble Stories: (My Scrabble words appear in purple.)
1.
The writers gathered at the inn, this time during the hottest summer on record. If only the fan worked. Nevertheless, they wrote funny pieces and slapped their knees at their jokes. At lunch, the women on diets weighed their roe to the gram, not wanting to exceed their caloric limit. Ultimately, they deemed it too expensive and axed it from their menu.
2.
The guy didn’t care that he had HIV. He feared the smell of the hospital ward wafting from the patients who were sicker than he was. As sick as he would become. Last week, as he walked past the nurses’ station, he heard an Indian family chanting over their son. Meditation was an art form he’d never learned to appreciate. Now he wouldn’t have time to learn it. The elevator dinged, the doors opened and he stepped onto the AIDS ward for his second treatment.
Word Jumble
My mother and I used to do the Word Jumble in the Living Section of the newspaper every single day. When I got a place of my own, we did them over the phone and on weekends when I went over to do laundry. For Mother's Day one year I hand-made a Word Jumble Mother's Day card complete with drawing and riddle. And no, I wasn't 10. I was 25 when I made this. So great is dorkiness and my love for my Ma. She loved it. Oh, yeah. She was a dork, too.
7 comments:
The card is great. A friend and I used to play what we called Unscrabble. On a board, no scoring, and you can only play made-up words. You have to give a definition when you put the word down. We used to keep word lists and sometimes write stories using the words--rambling nonsense, hilarious at the time and pretty much incomprehensible afterwards. Oh, and the last time I remember doing this I was heading for grad school.
I LOVE it! I think Unscrabble is my new favorite game.
You are awesome! I love the scrabble stories, as well as the Jumble card.
And I would totally play unscrabble with you guys! I'll bring the wine. ;)
Rebel: you're on!
we used to play a different version of speed scrabble: we used the board, but you scored based on how fast you laid your tiles down.
oh. and you had to take a hit off the bong before your turn.
it usually turned more into 'lots of laughing' scrabble.
Brilliant! Speed Scrabble sounds awesome . . . especially the story part. One of my all-time favorite parts of third grade was writing stories using vocabulary words.
I used to play a version of Speed Scrabble, but we called it "ding." So instead of saying "draw two," you'd say "ding" when you were ready to have your opponents pull more letters.
Unfortunately, one of my friends was really, really good at this and so, when she played, it would begin to sound like a truck backing up - ding, ding, ding, ding, ding . . .
It was too depressing. I gave the game up.
There is now a mass-produced version of this game on the market. I believe that they call it "Bananagrams."
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