Scrabble with strangers

Tonight I headed down to Chelsea to a Scrabble meet up: you just arrive, Scrabble board and dictionary in tow, and play with strangers. It was held at Neutral Ground Gaming Centre (I love the name), which was overrun with adolscent boys playing fantasy card games. The smell of hormones was overpowering. I was the only woman in there when I arrived (I keep getting to places early as I never know how long the subway ride might be) and I nearly turned and ran. But I couldn't spend another moment in the apartment after working from home today and bonding too deeply with the fridge.


Now playing against strangers is a totally different game: there's no checking the dictionary before your play to see if its a word, no moving the tiles once your fingers leave the board, no challenging without willing to forsake your go if you're wrong. Words like 'quirt', 'oe', 'curia' were played. It was serious!

There were about 50 of us: an IT consultant, a speech writer for the South Korean consulate, a high school maths teacher, a guy who worked in a rare books store, and that guy in the photo with the do rag just wandered over from one of the fantasy games to join in.

And the boards people brought, they were unlike anything I had ever seen before. Blue travel boards, ones that zipped up in leather covers, and the recently released Onyx Edition: silver background, black tiles, tile bag and box. Its about as sexy as Scrabble is ever going to get.


I won my first game, then had to play the winner of another game and got soundly trounced. He was playing another game on his cell, while we played and was playing mind games with me by playing made up words. A total Scrabble geek. Not like me ofcourse.