Hi, I'm Pearl's 17 year-old son, David. She brought to my attention that
Scrabble was being discussed on this list. Now, to say I'm a Scrabble
enthusiast would be an understatement. Scrabble is more than just a hobby for
me. It is a way of life. There are in fact several ways to play on the
internet, but there is also an entire club and tournament Scrabble
subculture. I play online and at clubs and tournaments, where all my
competitors are adults. I am ranked among the top 100 players in North
America according to the National Scrabble Association's ratings list, and I
regularly average over 400 per game. I study the special Scrabble dictionary
and word lists derived from it to increase my playing vocabulary. I have even
played in the last two National Scrabble Championships.
Where to start? Since some of you expressed interest in computer/internet
play, I'll describe how that can be done. The easiest way is on
www.games.com. Simply register an account (it only takes a couple of
minutes), then click on the Scrabble link on the main page. Click on your
home area (either North America or outside of North America), then click on
one of the Scrabble rooms (Consonant Creek, Vowel Valley, etc.) to go in and
find a game. Hopefully someone in there will help you with the interface and
such.
Another way is through Networdz, a program you can download to play people
over the internet or to practice against the built-in computer program.
Extensive information on this can be found at Bob Weiss's site,
http://members.home.net/bobsweiss/bob/scrabble. You will also need a chat
program called mIRC to play this way.
If you have Hasbro's Scrabble CD-ROM program, you can play on MSN Internet
Gaming Zone (www.zone.com). However, I'm not sure how long this will be
available since recently the Scrabble part of the site lost Hasbro's support.
Even so, the CD-ROM program is by far the strongest program to practice
against by oneself. Julie Bean's site has info on this and many other
Scrabble-related topics at
http://personal.bellsouth.net/mco/b/a/bachtal/index.htm. Be sure to check out
the links section. It is an excellent resource for all things Scrabble.
For the best competition possible, I recommend playing on a Telnet server
called MarlDOoM (DOoM stands for distributed object-oriented MUD; MUD stands
for multi-user domain. I have no idea what any of this means.) This is where
I spend most of my waking hours :-) You can play games against others or
ACBot, the online computer player, and even watch games. Highly addictive if
you ask me. Information on this can be found at John Chew's site at
www.math.toronto.edu/~jjchew/doom/faq.html and Mark Watkins' site at
www.math.uga.edu/~mwatkins/BobGrid.html.
For general Scrabble info, Steven Alexander's Scrabble FAQ at
www.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/faq.html is indispensable. It has
countless links and stuff about tournament Scrabble, ratings, dictionaries,
etc.
Those who want to take the plunge can go to the National Scrabble
Association's site at www.scrabble-assoc.com. Here you can find out about
club and tournament activity in your area, and join the NSA if you wish.
I hope this was helpful to the Scrabble lovers on this list. Anyone with
questions can e-mail me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
David Weisberg
