Saturday, March 31, 2007

Gaming With Grandma - 12

My mum came over to our house today for her regular Saturday morning catch-up and gaming session.

First up we played Scrabble. You may remember when we played last week mum beat me 252 to 247. While I was happy to post a personal best with 247 I was keen to see if I could beat that score this week.
Probably the most obscure word I played was TOR ( a type of rock outcrop formed by weathering).
The dodgiest word I played was QATAR (an emirate in the Middle East). I'm not sure if the name of a country is legal in Scrabble, but I was proud of the fact I was able to play it through mum's GEAR and ROT to form an additional two 2-letter words (TO and AT - which I eventually turned into BAT using the last letter on my rack at game's end).
Longest words I played were STOREY and SLIDER.

I'm trying to improve my ability to work off words already on the board. I was able to do this by laying VENUE then turning it into VENUES and then into AVENUES with the word HATER.
Another cool moment was playing PROVEN through mum's WEAN to also form IN.
The most frustrating part of the game was when mum laid down AID on the S in my SLIDER to form the word SAID. This only scored her a measley 6 points but effectively blocked two Triple Word Score squares and blew away several minutes of my planning. D'oh! At first I thought it was some cunning plan on her part to deny me points but later she admitted that's all she could lay down.
My highest scoring word was JOIST using a blank for the O. That picked me up a cool 54 points. Mum's highest scoring word was ZOOM for 25 points. I was lucky to get both blanks and 3 of the 4 S's in this game. A couple of times I had bingos that I could just not find a place to lay down. Talk about frustration. It is hard to have to decide to break up a word but also consider what letters would be best left on the rack for the next turn.
The final score was me on 331 (personal best) and mum on 176. I averaged 18.39 points per round.
After that game Maddie joined us. Her choice was a Wiggles version of Snakes & Ladders. Groan. Maddie came first, Grandma came second and Dad came third.
Our final game of the day was Gulo Gulo. Maddie showed off just how dexterous her tiny fingers are by plucking out those eggs with the greatest of ease to take the win (which was even more impressive as Gulo Junior was at the bottom of the 5 tile stack).

1 comment:

Friendless said...

331 is a good score! The most devastating tactic I see is players playing parallel rather than across and forming multiple 2 letter words. They just keep scoring and scoring...