Scrabble
With the flourish of a tabloid headline: How many points for orgasm? the Spectator magazine's issue of 15 February 2003 raised the profile of games in the UK. Admittedly the article is about the stalwart (who said staid?) Scrabble rather than the latest euro or wargame sensation. However, we have to be grateful for small mercies. In a country where rehashed chess scores, bridge hands and backgammon die rolls are seen as the height of intellectual gaming, it's good to see the, er, monopoly broken, if only for a moment.
Jonathan Maitland's piece promotes Scrabble as the greatest game of all. He writes: "Scrabble is the perfect mixture of luck, skill and strategy. It requires mathemnatical ability and a huge vocabulary. And, like golf, it manages to be both sociable and competitive at the same time (though not nearly as expensive). Sometimes it can even get a bit brutal."
His article is a well written, brief, potted history of the game and its inventor flavoured with a good dose of anecdotes and a mention for celebrity scrabblers.
This tale, for example, justified the tabloid headline: "At one tournament, an old lady's opponent played the word ORGASM. The old lady looked puzzled and challenged the word's validity. Amid much stifled sniggering, the judges confirmed that it did, indeed, exist. The old lady asked what it meant. She was told, as delicately as possible. 'Goodness me!' she exclaimed. 'I must tell my husband when I get home.' " The article does not tell us the outcome of her report to her husband.
I was especially interested in the celebrity players. In the USA, players of the Advanced Squad Leader wargame can point to the famous baseball pitcher Curt Schilling as a fellow gamer.
Apart from the occasional media flirtation with miniatures gamers (the late Deryck Guyler, Gavin Lyall - any others?) I don't know of any similar personality in the UK. So, the suggestion that Sean Hughes, Alistair McGowan, Ant and Dec and Blur are all Scrabble players is noteworthy. I don't know how you go about it (short of slinging a copy of Puero Rico or Settlers of Catan onto the stage at the next Blur concert) but I would like to see somebody try and introduce these gamers to other gaming delights.
All of which leads on to me wondering if we could match the game to the celebrity. If Alex Ferguson, Ken Livingstone and Bill Gates were really gamers what would their favourite games be?
I suggest Alex is a secret lover of Tipp-Kick, Ken's favourite is Avalon Hill's Road Kill or maybe Metro and Bill Gates' obsession has to be Java! But I am sure you can come up with more appropriate or funny matches. And, if so, feel free to share them.
Ellis Simpson
17 February 2003
