Beating my wife

I love scrabble. Well at least I did until recently. There is a scrabble app on Facebook that has enable me to play with a lot of people, many of whom I have never met. It is a pretty good app in many ways but there are some differences between it and the board game. To begin with it is impossible to cheat, or to accidentally knock the board when you are losing, scattering all the tiles on the floor.  It is also easier in some ways as you have the facility to try out words before you play them and so incorrect words cannot be challenged. As a result, some pretty odd words frequently find themselves onto the board, many of which have little or no everyday use. Of course the permitted word list grows as the language changes, and many new words are added each year - it is quite hard to keep up.

One of the secrets of success is knowing all the two letter combinations that enable the playing of overlapping words and increase your chances of fitting that seven letter word into place. Words like AA, OE, BO, QI, ZO and so on are all valid and the latter two are frequently used.

We used to play with the local vicar and his wife many years ago and adjusted the rules so that bonuses were added for any dirty word. Another variation was that you could play any word you wanted as long as you could come up with a definition that made any sense; you cannot play these fun variations online.

Anyway, it seems that the online version is having issues and I can no longer play on my computer. This is frustrating as I have many games on the go and I seem to be on a good run at the moment. I can get into the game on my iPad but somehow it just isn't the same. We seem to have lost the proper game with the plastic tiles and the ancient board and so we are limited to onscreen versions. This is just as well as online I seem to be able to beat my wife.