Friends wrangle words in new community Scrabble group

Wordsmiths, fans of crossword puzzles, word nerds and casual spellers alike now have a place to test their knowledge and battle it out with friendly competition.

A new community Scrabble group started playing the popular tile letter game last Thursday in the St. Philip's Episcopal Church parish hall.

The group began when teacher Tracey Martin decided to gauge the town's interest since she missed playing. She posted in the Wrangell Community Group Facebook page and the post exploded with responses, among which was one from Kimberly Powell, who works at the school district.

"Kim got on there and said she was very interested, so I messaged her and said, 'If you really are, let's start something.' She said OK, so we did," Martin said.

Martin used to play Scrabble with a group of retired schoolteacher friends in Wasilla. She had to give up her board when she and her husband moved to the Lower 48 for a couple years, since they were saving on space.

"I had a big, huge deluxe Scrabble game," she said. "There's a deluxe one that has quadruple-word scores. We tried playing it once and because there are so many letters, it took us four hours to play a game with seven letters. So, we upped it to 14 letters and it was perfect because you could make all sorts of really big words. Once you play that, you never want to go back. You could make such huge words."

Martin, like many Scrabble players, likes crossword puzzles, which is how the game was invented around 90 years ago.

In 1931, Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect, started working on a game that combined anagrams and crossword puzzles. He called the game Lexico but later changed it to Criss Cross Words. He tried marketing his invention to established game manufactures, only to be rejected.

Around the end of the '40s, Butts met James Brunot, a British entrepreneur, and they began to revamp the game, eventually coming up with the name Scrabble. In the beginning, the games were made by hand, churning out 12 sets an hour and stamping the letter tiles by hand.

The game lost money in the first year they produced it. Not until the president of Macy's discovered the game and started selling it through the department store in the early 1950s did its popularity ascend like a triple-word score using the word QUIXOTIC (78, for those playing at home).

Scrabble tournaments started being held about 50 years ago with much more stringent rules, using timers and disallowing dictionaries.

"I played in a tournament once in Juneau," Martin recalled. "The library hosted a big Scrabble event. You have a timer. ... There's only so much time on it and you hit it when you're done (with your move). It was so nerve-racking. You couldn't look up words, but you could challenge people."

Martin said she had a player get upset with her because she challenged him, and she was right. Under that tournament's rules, Martin was granted her opponent's points for winning the challenge. "We don't play that way (here). We play the easy way with a dictionary," she said.

Three others joined Martin on the inaugural night at St. Philip's. Although the game can be played with two to four players, the four in attendance played one on one.

Jessica Stewart, who brought her own board, said she enjoys the game but is "horrible" at it. She plays a lot of Words With Friends, a popular Scrabble-like game app. "I cheat, I'll be honest," she said with a laugh.

Martin said they will hold Scrabble night every few weeks on Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. so that people can pop in and out as they want depending on their schedules. If that time and day don't work for those that want to participate, they will change it depending on what works best.

Posts will be made on the Wrangell Community Group page for the next game night, or those interested can text Martin at 907-209-4097 to find out more.

By the way, Stewart won against her opponent with a score of 246.