As you grow up you realize you have certain skills that make you different from everyone else. While these skills may include putting things together or calculating numbers, some people are good at the slowly-dying art of putting letters together into comprehensible words. Long-tired of the replacement of “y-o-u” with a simple “u”, these people banded together and eventually created a game that would celebrate their talents. That game…. is Scrabble.
Like its less-appreciated cousin, Boggle, the objective of Scrabble is to take randomly drawn letters and assemble them into a word for points. Its secondary function (like another favourite game of mine, Risk) is to kill a lot of time while people argue over the rules and fumble about as they try to keep scores accurate by basic addition.
The Journalism Course Union saw an opportunity here; they structured a Scrabble night around editing first-year final assignments. While first-years played Scrabble, older years would edit their assignments, building community along the way. I managed to get in on a game, and while I don’t like to toot my own horn, I believe that my implementation of the word “annex” to a hefty point sum was, how you say… succinct.
Overuse of syllables aside, I like to see people going back to the old-school brand of gaming; I wonder if urban management would consider the addition of Monopoly to their curriculum.
