Six Rounds of the Word Game and the Dictionary Rule
The crossword game with the lettered tiles and the colored bonus squares brings out a side of the table that the other games do not. People get quiet. People stare. Someone always says they have nothing and then plays a seven-letter word across a triple. Tonight that was the player in the green jumper, with a word meaning a kind of pulley arrangement, laid from a double-letter square to a triple-word square for 68 points, which is the highest single play any of us can remember. The round finished 341 to 298 to 277 to 211, and I was the 211.
We played six rounds across the evening, each about forty minutes with four players. Cumulative totals, written on the back of an envelope that I am now transcribing: 1,702, 1,655, 1,590 and 1,418. The gap between first and second was one well-timed blank.
The rule discussion this time was about the dictionary. For years we have had it open on the table and anyone could check a word before playing it, which is friendly and also slow and also arguably not the game. The house rule we settled on by four votes to none, after some grumbling:
- The dictionary is closed during play. You play a word at your own risk.
- Any other player may challenge before the next tile is drawn. The dictionary is opened only then.
- If the word is good, the challenger loses their next turn. If it is not, the word comes off and the player who laid it scores nothing for the turn.
- The printed list of two-letter words inside the box lid may be consulted at any time by anyone, because nobody can remember them and it is not a memory test.
Three challenges in six rounds, two of them good words and one not. The pace of play improved noticeably, and the quiet staring got shorter. The player with the pulley word was challenged and was, of course, right.
The tiles are from a 1970s set with the wooden racks, found at a jumble sale, and the letter distribution has drifted slightly over fifty years: we have one extra E and are missing a V. We draw as if nothing is wrong. The missing V may explain a certain amount of my 1,418.