Why I love SCRABBLE...

This word game was invented during the great depression and originally named Lexico, then "Criss-Cross Words." Eventually it was renamed SCRABBLE, meaning "to grope frantically," and was trademarked in 1948. And that is the same game people play today.

It is this same game that I have come to love here in Bulgaria. I had actually never played Scrabble until I got here. After moving into my apartment, I went through and cleaned all the closets, cabinets and drawers. That is when I happened across a travel size game of Scrabble. I don't play the game too often, but when I do, I throughly enjoy myself. And when I do play, I always find myself playing with people who possess a larger, almost obscure vocabulary. I may not always win, but I always come out of the game with a bit more knowledge of words I may never use except in my next game of Scrabble.


And one of my favorite things about the game is this. When you play for fun, and you play with someone nice, sometimes they are willing to help you out a little. Sometimes they are willing to tell you if a word is a word without you putting it down yet. This happened to me in my recent game of Scrabble. I wasn't sure about a word. As it turned out, my word really was a word. And I managed to get 74 points for it. 74 points for a word I didn't even know the meaning of. 74 points for the word QUINCE!

Quince meaning:

1. A western Asian shrub or tree having white flowers and hard apple-like fruit.
2. The aromatic, many-seeded fruit of this plant, edible only when cooked.
   

And that is why I love Scrabble. You always come out of the game a little smarter. And you can kick a little ass with words like QUINCE.

(*Note: The game board above is the Russian version of Scrabble. The letters pictured closely represent the Bulgarian alphabet with a few differences. The picture was found online.)