Everyone I know that teaches in Korea played a game of Scrabble with students from time to time. I haven’t played this in for a while due to our school’s “no game” policy. Whenever I did play Scrabble, I’d get my ass kicked by students.
It’s not because I am a terrible player. It’s just that when I teach I value helping other players and learning more than winning. I’ll frequently tell students long words that will hand them the game even at the expense of using tiles I need on the board. I’m there to teach them new words and spelling, so if I throw a game to help a student win, at least I’m still getting paid to play Scrabble.
I threw down the Scrabble gauntlet via email with a few of my buddies. Scrabulous is an online version of Scrabble completely free. The best part of this service is that you can play live, or by email. That way a group of friends can play a casual game at their leisure. It keeps track of all the legal moves, tiles, and everything else for you. It even uses the official Scrabble dictionaries to keep people from cheating on their words.
One of my friends is a Scrabble master, and he’s been kick my ass. We’re on the honor system NOT to use an anagram program, or google for new words. You can only check spelling. This is how I intend to keep playing. I’ve already learned a few words too. It’s dead simple to set up a game, it doesn’t require any sort of log-in, and it doesn’t spam your email account with excessive messages. I’m really very surprised at the elegance of it.
Now if I could only score a few points to WIN a game from time to time.
