BEVERLY HILLS (MI) –- There’s been quite a bit written lately about FaceBook yanking the wildly popular online Scrabble-like game called Scrabulous from its community, due to copyright infringement. This article sums it up pretty well:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25914209/

Here’s a link to the Scrabulous site so you can see what they’re talking about:

http://www.scrabulous.com/

Now if that ain’t a complete, bold-faced, freakin’ rip-off of Scrabble then I can’t imagine what the hell is. Trust me, I would know: I’ve been playing the game of Scrabble for almost 50 years.

I first started Scrabbling with my mom when I was in grade school. Ma was a stay-at-home, two-pack-a-day smoker who didn’t drive and therefore had a ton of time on her hands. She had been valedictorian of her HS class at Mission Hill HS in what is now the toughest part of Boston; was an inveterate crossword puzzle solver and always looking for a way to help me “improve my vocabulary.” Crosswords held no interest for me, as I had the attention span of a 2 week old beagle puppy. Ma was constantly trying to get me to play Scrabble with her, but I resisted the temptation. Then one day, she came up with the ultimate enticement:

“Hey, Jimmy let’s play Scrabble…for money.”

Bingo!

At first the games were for 50 cents, but they eventually escalated to $1. Initially, Scrabble with Ma resembled what me vs. Lebron in one-on-one hoops would look like. What most people don’t understand about Scrabble is that there is a helluva lot more to it than just spelling out words. Ma knew all the tricks. For example, she would make up totally absurd BS words and I would be afraid to challenge them (and thus lose my turn if I was wrong), so I would let them slide. We kept a big old Webster’s Dictionary at the ready as the final arbiter of what was legal, but it was mostly used when I screwed up. To this day, I swear ‘quo’ is a useable play in Scrabble, because Ma would say “You know, like status quo?” Good explanation but it’s not an accepted word. ‘Qua’ or ‘qat’: yes; ‘quo’: no. One of my favorite word disputes was when I laid down “thunk.” “What the heck is that?” my Mom asked. “Think, thank, thunk” I replied, conjugating the verb ‘think.’ She thought that was hilarious and went for the Webster’s…she wasn’t smiling when it turned out ‘thunk’ was actually in there.

We would sit in our living room after school and watch “The Mike Douglas Show” or inane game shows like “The Match Game” with Gene Rayburn and she’d absolutely kick my butt. Ma had this half chuckle/half cackle that she let out when she played all 7 letters that really cheesed me off. She’d sit there sipping her ever-present Coke and puffing on her Salems and take her sweet-ass time figuring out ways to “improve my vocabulary.” We kept the letters in a velvet Crown Royal bag and she would always accuse me of “feeling” the tiles, which really only helped when you ‘feel’ nothing, meaning that you had fumbled onto one of the two very valuable blanks. We had a three minute hourglass-style egg timer to keep track of the time limit and Ma had a habit of picking it up and tapping on it, just to annoy me. She kept a running tab of my debts, but being a good mom, she never actually demanded payment.

This went on for a few years until eventually thru osmosis I absorbed all of her Scrabble knowledge, every one of her BS words and each of her shrewd defensive moves: like blocking a triple word score if she couldn’t play on it herself; or playing on a space where a triple letter score was available in both directions if the X hadn’t been played yet, thus thwarting what would be an easy one letter, 50 point play; or never opening up a play on triple word score if she could possibly avoid it. Good tactics all.

Finally, at the age of 13 or 14 I was good enuf to win on a semi-regular basis and I was ready to make my move. I needed a new bike and it was the middle of summer, so I couldn’t wait until Christmas. I had seen a really nice 10 speed at the Western Auto hardware store (remember them?) in downtown Leominster and it was on sale for $64, a lot of coin in the mid-sixties. My plan was simple: play Scrabble with Ma and double down until I got the necessary funds, which if you count on your fingers you will discover requires a total of 7 consecutive victories.

Ma was no dummy so I had to reel her in like a big ole catfish. After I won the first game, I casually suggested that we play double or nothing, which we never usually did. She said okay and wouldn’t you know it, she won the 2nd game. I obviously hadn’t planned on that. So we started back at $1 again. I ripped off the required seven games in a row and then had to politely ask her for the money…like now. She *****ed and moaned but actually paid up. I had that bike until someone stole it off the front porch of a house next to Woodlawn Cemetery in what is currently known as “The Dark Side” at UD.

Ma has been gone for 26 years now. I’ve found a new, much more cunning and resourceful Scrabble opponent with whom to match wits. Her name is Maven and she’s an absolute biatch. Maven is the computer-generated combatant on the CD ROM version of Scrabble. And just like my Ma, she cheats.

There are various skill levels that you can set for Maven. If you choose “Beginner” it’s like playing me when I was 10 years old; select “Champion” and be prepared for a flurry of “bingos” and fireworks that go off when she plays all 7 letters multiple times each game. And talk about words of which you’ve never heard! However, unlike my Mom I know that every word Maven plays is 100% legal –- after all, she is the dictionary. There are all sorts of sound effects and music, but I’m old school, so I turn all that sh*t off.

A couple of concessions that I make to the awesome power of Maven: I give myself the option to play a word and not lose my turn if it’s not accepted. And, more importantly, in order to level the playing field, I usually only play a game when my first word uses all 7 letters, earning the 50 point bonus. “Hey Swampy, isn’t that cheating?” you ask. You’re ****ed right it is, but if I don’t play all 7 tiles on my first hand, then trust me, Maven will. Sometimes it’ll take over 10 minutes to find a game where I can open with a 7 letter word, but it’s worth the wait, because otherwise I’ll be totally screwed.

Recently, I was traveling and the guy sitting across the aisle from me noticed I was playing Scrabble. “Are you playing against the computer” he asked. “Yup…and it cheats” I responded matter of factly. After watching Maven in action for a few games he chuckled and said “I see what you mean.”

Even with my adjustments, I’m lucky if I win 1 out of every 15 games that I eventually end up playing vs. Maven.

When you are really into Scrabble, you are constantly on the lookout for 7 letter words or short goofy ones that utilize an x, q, z or j (like ‘djin’ for example) because those letters are worth the most points. The highest total I ever got on one play was 206 — it was the word “quizzing” using a z already on the board and a blank and covered two triple word scores at the same time. I’ve gone over 500 points in a game a few times. Am I a tournament caliber player? Hell no, and I wouldn’t want to be — those guys are total geekazoids who spend every waking hour memorizing computer printouts of obscure 7 letter words. Life is too short.

So whattya think: did my Ma accomplish her mission of “improving my vocabulary” or not? Well, you just finished reading something I wrote, didn’t you?

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at: [email protected]