Paul Berger is a staff writer at The Forward. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The (London) Times, The Daily and Guardian.co.uk.

Dec
07

Fabulous Scrabulous

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Final-Scrabble-Board-627.jpg

The other week I played the Scrabble game to end all Scrabble games. Before you jump out of your chair and whoop for joy, I apologize profusely for this blatantly egotistical, and somewhat geeky, post. But if you like playing Scrabble, and judging by the number of friends who have challenged me to a game on Scrabulous lately that’s an awful lot of people, then you will understand.

As you can see above, I scored 627 points. That includes four bingos (when you use all seven tiles and score a bonus 50 points) and a triple triple (an eight-letter word that covers two triple word scores and scores 3 x 3 plus 50). And the best thing of all, it was against a more than worthy opponent—my best Scrabble buddy William.

My play of the game was HAPPIEST across the “P” in William’s PRONATES that scored 202 points. But there were other highlights, such as bingos DEBUTING, LINGERIES, LEAKILY, and my penultimate 42-pointer GRIFT.

I’m losing my current game with William, so it looks like my Scrabble roll is coming to an end. But at least this screen grab allows me to relive my 627-pointer…again and again and again. Your move, William.

7 Comments

1

How appropriate that your 202-point bingo was HAPPIEST, and my only bingo was PRONATES, which is how you position your hands when getting crucified.

2

That’s a great score. If you played 2 cents a point at the reckoning, William would owe you 6 dollars and 14 cents. I play gbp 5 pounds a game with a friend and because I am bad at both scrabble and gambling, I am 40 pounds in the red. But I also play in the open internet league and, through the chat section, I am assured of a very warm welcome if I ever go to Melbourne. In fact some of the things this lady in Melbourne says she would like to do to me would score very highly in scrabble

3

Um — Wow. I’m addicted to Scrabulous, and I’ve gotten past 400 points a few times, but 627 is just ridiculous. Congrats.

Found you through Normblog. I did an interview there a while back. Isn’t it fun?

4

Gah. All I do is lose at Scrabulous, and yet… it’s so compelling. I bow before your multi-bingo greatness.

5

Wow. That is pretty darned impressive.

I’d challenge you to a scrabble game, but I’m rusty and four bingos is a little scary. Two is fine. But four. Hm!

6

627 is impressive! I remember my max score was 497 before they redid the board. You ever read the story about the dude that got 830? He had ‘quixotry’ on a triple triple for over 300 points.

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