Monday Night Scrabble

Sure, you're feeling erudite- but can you spell it? And more importantly, can you make it stretch to that triple word score in the corner?

“That would be the wow of the game,” says Missoula Scrabble League founder Suzanne Reed, “to get a triple word score and use all your letters.”

While everyone else was watching the final game of the final four, a dozen Missoulians were lively debating whether ur or ar are acceptable words. And what about aa?

The game is on at the Monday Night Scrabble League.

I've come for my second visit. Welcoming smiles and calls of "Well, you came back!" greet me, and I feel "yeah, this is a good crowd." Disappointingly, I notice the Super Scrabble board is full. Too full. "Hey! Can you have five players?" I ask the knowing elders. "Sure," they say, referring to the oversized board. "It's got double the tiles, why not?"

This is not cut throat Scrabble, and I'm glad of it.

This winter, my latent Scrabble obsession came out of remission, and I got hooked on an Internet version of the game. (I'm ranked at 500.) The Internet Scrabble Club is populated by players all over the world, but lacks the camaraderie of live play. That's why I've come here tonight.

"Hi. My name is Cindy and I'm a Scrabbler." Laughter fills the Missoula Public Library boardroom. "We don't give last names because we're addicts." More peals ring out, and the shuffle of small wooden tiles is lost in the din of too many conversations happening at once.

Newbies are welcomed with inquiries as to what they do, while players who've been at it longer are deep in the scuffle of matching letters upon the board, raking up the points in an effort to beat their friends.

The Scrabble League draws a lively group of word aficionados that appreciate both the beauty of the language and the beauty of the tiles.

"I've never played with tiles this color before," Paula Strong said, placing a rosewood E on the deluxe game board. Next table over the Super Scrabble players found uses for two q's, two z's, two x's.

Suzanne Reed, an adjunct professor of Organizational Psychology at the COT, is the club's founder. She's using an original board. "Original original?" I ask incredulously. "Yes," she says. "This board is from 1948."

It's owner, Frankie Morrison, chuckles when asked how long she's been playing. "As long as there has been Scrabble," says her compatriot Sarajane Savage.

The two women, both over seventy, have been playing the tile crossword game since it’s inception. They play together at their condos in the Maplewood Apartments, and they play at the library -- but they refuse to play at the senior center. “That was a fiasco," Frankie says of their one journey there. The women tell me of improper play styles, of botched rules, of sore losers. “We don’t play with senior citizens anymore,“ Savage finishes. “We’re too young for that.”

Tonight’s crowd is anything but the senior circuit. Twenty-something Lauren Monroe has come for his first visit, learning as he plays. Other players range in age “from 12 to 82,” Reed tells me.

“Hey! You used the word bogarted!” one player shouts out. “Yeah?” comes the repsonse.

In a different league, the word might be challenged. Here, “it comes down to agreeing which dictionary you’re going to use,” says Reed.

Most folks learn of the league through ads in the newspaper. Some become regulars. And some come just to watch. “We have a lot of photography students come. We’re a very attractive subject,” Reed states.

The Missoula Scrabble League welcomes all players every Monday at the public library. Maybe we’ll see you there next week.