VARIANT TRADERS POLARISE

As Cyberkev has zoomed off to Albury for the weekend, GWAN did not happen on Thursday night and I was able to return to the Scrabble club. I was a bit more comfortable this time. All the ladies recognised me and said hello, and of course I still had no idea who they were and said hello back. The club's other "young" male member, P, was present this time, so I played against him first.

P suggested we don't use dictionaries so as to stretch our minds. However I came to the conclusion that as we don't know enough 2 letter words, we were making it very difficult for ourselves. With large words you form on the rack the dictionary is rarely useful, but if you want to know whether you can form a 2 or 3 letter word to join on to, you really need to have an encyclopedic mind or look in the book. So it was a slow, painful game. I was able to form VARIANT and most of VANGUARD on my rack, but was unable to lay them down. I also made one illegal word, AXERS, but if you don't use the dictionary and it isn't challenged, that's fair. I thought it would have been a real word. The final score was 353 to me, 197 to P.

After a nice cup of coffee I was assigned to play against L who thrashed D and I in the 3 player contest last week. I know she's good (compared to me) so I was a bit worried. Sure enough, after 3 words she was leading 105 to 43 (QI for 64 points!). However I got lucky letters and was able to lay down TRADERS for 74 points, to lead by 1. I kept just ahead for a couple of words, and got lucky again with a blank and was able to play POLARISE on a triple word score for 80 points. I lead by 45. After that though, I was plagued by difficult consonants and couldn't get huge points. L played ZOA for 70 points, putting her back in the lead. I couldn't keep up, and she beat me 388 to 367. But still, I thought I played really well. I got big points with the common letters and she got big points with the uncommon letters - Q, J, X and Z. I was also able to get to a couple of triple word scores by finding just the right words, which was good offensive and defensive play. Maybe with a few more 3 letter words under my belt I will be able to beat her.