Scrabble SitesFor a writer, I'm not such a fan of word games. Hate hangman. Loathe crossword puzzles. Break out in hives every time Vanna White steps onto my television screen. The worst of the lot, in my opinion, is Scrabble. Here's a game that expects the players not only to formulate words using a random assortment of letters, but also to fit these words into a preset number of spaces, limited by letters on the board, and arrange the whole shebang to hit those all-important triple word-score spots. Blech. I'm usually roped into a few rounds of this Hasbro horror every year, and I full expect that this column will redouble the efforts of my family and friends to force me to play. After all, it's one of the world's favorite games. Everyone else just loves it. There are organized Scrabble clubs in Malta, for Pete's sake (www.global.net.mt/scrabmalta/).My mother loves it. My word-fiend editor loves it. I once dated this guy who wanted me to play a strip version (but since my father reads this column, I'm not going into details). But nobody loves it as much as the Internet. Half a million pages of lexicon fun await the Scrabble-minded surfer at the click of a mouse. You can try out several hundred online versions, play Scrabble by e-mail, join area Scrabble clubs or find the latest updates on the Scrabble competitions in Pakistan and New South Wales. If that's how you people want to have your fun, then be my guest.
But I prefer these sites. Imaginary Scrabble (www.mondaynightgroup. mcmail.com/scrabble.htm) envisions a game I might find a little more fun. Using the Scrabble set, players must form only made-up words, and provide a definition for them. Don't make a face, Kelli K et al. — this is a perfectly cromulent way to play the game! There's also the Scrabble Solver (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adam. bozon/scrabble.htm), which I think some of my opponents must be using when I'm not looking, because I definitely can't find any words to be made with my tiles. My set always seems to look like the ones on Bad Scrabble Hands (http://heybro.com/ badscrabble/badhands7.html). Even people with a dedicated dislike of the game can't help but get a chuckle out of these bad boys. But remember, "DTVTVTL" is only funny because we've all been there.—Diana 'JQXZ" Peterfreund
This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2002.