As many have commented, there are two Scrabbles. Below a certain level, it is a fun “beer and pretzels” game, where having a good vocabulary helps, and when so

As many have commented, there are two Scrabbles. Below a certain level, it is a fun “beer and pretzels” game, where having a good vocabulary helps, and when someone plays an unusual word, the other players “ooh” and”aah.” Abive a certain level, it is a strategy game requiring a large memorized list of allowable combinations of tiles to play, and the correspondance to actual words has no more significance than the shape of a rook in chess resembling a tower. The gap between the two games is tremendous, and this is, in my opinion, the game’s only fault. It’s very intimidating to enjoy the beer and pretzels game, but discover that in order to play seriously, it’s not just 10,000 hours of study, but much of that will be rote memorization. But nevrtheless, the beer and pretzels version of the game is also a valid pursuit. It’s just not the Scrabble you choose to play.