I hate playing games, but I have special contempt for Scrabble. My wife’s family considers Scrabble a way to evaluate intelligence. It drives me crazy that they play these strange words that they cannot pronounce let alone use in a sentence. Scrabble at the highest level mostly recognizes experience playing Scrabble.
Ok – that might have been a little bit of sour grapes. But, only a bit.
My family plays Words with Friends – the Scrabble game you can play on an iPad. Technically, “ words” is not Scrabble because that would be a copyright violation. I can’t tell the difference.
The game has nothing to do with friendship. You should hear the language players use. These expletives are really shocking when the players are competing online. There I am quietly reading on my kindle and out of the silence come these angry utterances that disturb my concentration. The debate over whether or not games make you more violent is not really a debate as far as I am concerned.
I see that there is now a version of Words with Friends for education. Maybe this is a good idea. If kids must play Scrabble, they should learn the game in a setting supervised by adults who will teach them sportspersonship and that using words in sentences is important.