May 3, 2007

  • Beyond Scrabble...

    I thought since I enjoyed Scrabble so much I'd read up on the inside story, how it really goes down in the competitive Scrabble world.  What I soon realized is how much I do NOT aspire to be a Scrabble competitor. 

    Here's a short excerpt from the book:
    "...For now, though, I understand only that while definitions can be interesting, they're not necessary.  It's just about impossible to play high-level (or even low-level) competitive Scrabble if you're hung up on the games' use of odd words.  The two most common refrains of living room players are the incredulous 'That's a word?' and the indignant 'That can't be a word!'...To play competitive Scrabble, one has to get over the conceit of refusing to acknowledge certain words as real and accept that the game requires learning words that may not have any outside utility...No, Scrabble isn't about words.  It's about mastering the rules of the game, and the words are the rules."

    The book goes on to tirelessly delineate how this guy goes and learns about and gets a hold of all these lists.  Lists of all 2 and 3 letter words, words with more than 70% vowels, eight letter words containing five vowels, words of fewer than seven letters containing J, Q, X, or Z, seven letter words arranged according to the most probable six-letter combinations plus a seventh letter, four letter words made from three-letter ones, every three-, four-, five-, six-, seven- and eight-letter word arranged alphabetically by alphagram.  Just tons of LISTS of all these words that no one ever uses, even the most erudite of all.  Just tons of lists with no definitions.  Just mere combinations of acceptable letter configurations.  They might as well be numbers or shapes or whatever else you want it to be.  The author makes the point that it really is just about learning what everyone finds acceptable according to the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, and using that to make the best play.  To learn the rules, and play by the rules.

    I got to thinking that maybe this applies to more than just Scrabble.  Let's think big and let's say...oh, I dunno, it applies to LIFE.  Yeah, doesn't it seem like we're just learning what's acceptable and what's deemed praiseworthy and we're just all trying to see how we can "further" ourselves in this world we're living in right now?  There was a time in my recent past where I analyzed everything and thought that I really had figured it all out.  That yes, life throws you some ups and downs, but you yourself could control it in a reasonable manner if you really were aware of what was going on, of how things work in this world.  After that, it seemed so simple...yet so unattainable.  Happiness, what we all in some way seek, was not coming to me so easily.  It seemed that a lot of things really had no purpose.  I could act a certain way, do certain things, fake myself into believing certain things, but after it all it somewhat seemed purposeless.  I couldn't win even if I did win.  It's like this guy in this book, Joe Edley, who followed some weird New Age philosophy and asked himself, "What beliefs do I have?  What are my attitudes?  What kind of reality do I want to create?"  What kind of reality do I want to create?  Wow, I think in some sort of way I really believed that this is how it was, too, that you really could just create whatever kind of reality you wanted.  It didn't seem that hard.  You just had to learn the rules, play the role, play the game.  Well, this guy Joe Edley decided that the Scrabble world and winning Nationals was the reality he wanted to create.  After years of memorizing lists and playing thousands of games and barely losing tournaments, he went on to win the 1980 National Scrabble Championships.  This is what he said upon winning: "I felt I hadn't done anything.  I felt it was fated to happen for two years prior.  I was just doing whatever the universe told me to do."  What kind of satisfaction is that?  He worked for years and years trying to get to that point, and when he finally did, that's all he had to say?  Is this what's going to happen to the rest of us?  The reality I want to create is this: get my PhD, get a job, get married, buy a nice house, live a nice suburban life, raise a nice family, travel the world, help some people out, give generously, etc.  I sure hope this reality that I'm wanting to create isn't just something the "universe told me to do."  How freaking sad would it be to get to the end of it and find out that all of this was pointless.  There's no deeper meaning, there's just happiness and joy that I conjured up myself.  How utterly sad.  I sure hope that these Scrabble players find more meaning than memorizing lists and lists of words that have no utility.  (I still love the game, though, and the book is fascinating!  haha).  My conclusion: There's gotta more to life than this.