It’s true. It seems as though my teens and early 20s were an Ice Age for a lot of the things I truly get a kick out of, but couldn’t do because they weren’t cool. Board games are up there and so was dressing up for Halloween. But things are changing now that we are at a different age and I see this happening throughout my circle of friends. Halloween has become a big thing for us over the last decade or so and many of my friends who used to secretly play Dungeons & Dragons back in the day- giving it up during those formative high school and college years- are once again picking it back up.

For me, my board game excitement comes in the variety of Trivial Pursuit, Chess and SCRABBLE. The latter of those two have seen a recent rise in personal popularity (as well as several other things) due mainly to my purchase of an iPhone last year (yes I jumped on board a little late in the game). A great (and FREE) application out there is Words With Friends (Scrabble) and Chess With Friends, both by the same company that has made some hit board games in digital form. Now the key feature here is that these games can be played at a snail’s pace, at the frequency of what a text conversation would normally go at. As a result I now play Words With Friends Scrabble and Chess With Friends regularly and I love it.

Scrabble is dope as hell. I’m pretty utilitarian in nature, and so often when I read, I like to read books that benefit me in some way. The same with board games and I feel like Scrabble fits nicely with my approach to reading since a sought-out byproduct of reading for me is to improve my vocabulary. Scrabble in essence allows me to test it haha. I get to put that vocabulary into use, sometimes before I’m ready to use it in the real (spoken) world.

Anyway, I love Scrabble. Just wanted to tell you that. My name on there is idotpdot- find me.