Scrabble - It's Scrabble Jim, but not as we know it.
The above was my childhood introduction to one of my favourite board-games, Scrabble. Being an only child it was rare I would get a game of this against anyone though. My Dad would usually come up with the most ridiculous excuses to avoid playing this ( later on I learned this was in fact because he was dyslexic). My Mum was always too busy to play against me , so when I found out this was available on the ZX Spectrum it was something I just had to get my hands on.
Although this was published in 1983 it took us a few years to own a copy. You would have thought that it would be one of the first games my Dad pursued for me, it was educational , it would mean I would stop demanding him to play it and it would keep me quiet for long periods of time!
One of the charming things about this game is it asks you to specify if your TV is black and white or colour, that does take me back. Yes, I am old enough to remember the black and white TV and had one in my bedroom as a child for many years after the main house TV and had been upgraded to a colour one.
One of the charming things about this game is it asks you to specify if your TV is black and white or colour, that does take me back. Yes, I am old enough to remember the black and white TV and had one in my bedroom as a child for many years after the main house TV and had been upgraded to a colour one.
You can have up to 4 players and the computer is happy to play the absent players for you and it also allows you to set how intelligent the computer players are ( and call them silly names .)
Finally I could indulge in my favourite game and increase my word count in the company of my little black box. I'm sure you all know the rules of scrabble , this game is a superb reconstruction of the actual game. It's easy to control and nicely colourful. However when it comes up against a word it doesn't know, it asks your opinion.
Finally I could indulge in my favourite game and increase my word count in the company of my little black box. I'm sure you all know the rules of scrabble , this game is a superb reconstruction of the actual game. It's easy to control and nicely colourful. However when it comes up against a word it doesn't know, it asks your opinion.
Hmmm, what a quandary, do you tell the truth and lose the chance to get rid of some awful letters or do you lie and cheat? Well I was brought up to be a good little girl, of course I cheated when I was playing alone! This was a game I would go back to many times , it was like a vitamin tablet, you played it because you felt it doing you good. It was the equivalent to eating your greens and I did actually enjoy it. And that's where the review could have stopped , in some universes that was all this Scrabble game did for me. But in this universe it became something more. It was all to do with the challenge word function.
I began to realise that the Scrabble program could do more than help me with English, it could help me with other languages, chemical names, biological terms. If it could accept any word than I could expand the game to include words that were needed to be remembered. I could include French and German numbers, a few human body bones... What was wrong with me ? I was making this game even more educational!!
As the next few years went past and I pushed myself harder and harder to get grades in subjects I felt I needed at the time, I began to use Scrabble to relax . This time now without the educational words , now my favourite science fiction characters from Blakes 7, Dr Who, Star Trek and many more filled the board. I also played it using pop group titles, or album titles (if they were one word .) This little game from 1983 was still keeping me sane in 1990! I would find more and more challenges to add words into the game, words from Terry Pratchett's Discworld , words from Enid Blyton books even Spectrum computer game titles and characters all became added in. This being the Spectrum these words would be forgotten with each new game , on the darker days there may have been some more questionable words added as well.
I still look back on this game fondly with it's bright cheerful yellow board , it's friendly way of accepting what ever you told it was a real word. Almost allowing you to build your own reality within the framework of this classic game. Some days I played against Horace, some days I would name the computer Sabreman , some days I even called it Claypole ( feel free to make your own jokes about my taste in men!) But what ever I called it , it was always there when I felt the need to left off steam , the need to switch off from the teachers, other pupils and even family.
During the latter part of the 80's the little black box that had been my surrogate friend since 1982 became far more. It became a portal into my own secret world , my safe space , my own little oasis of tranquillity in a rapidly more complicated world.
During the latter part of the 80's the little black box that had been my surrogate friend since 1982 became far more. It became a portal into my own secret world , my safe space , my own little oasis of tranquillity in a rapidly more complicated world.