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In an effort to internationalise the game, a group of nutcases periodically revise the allowed vocabulary. Scrabble vocabulary developed into a bizarre jargon claimed to cover words from other languages. If you only play with friends, use any dictionary without the word "Scrabble" on its cover. This blog is primarily concerned with competitive Scrabble and the incompetence of some of its custodians..

Saturday, August 1, 2015

COUNTING THE MINUTES

People might have different ideas about how long a scrabble game should take. But once a figure satisfactory for the majority of players has been reached, everybody should abide by it. That figure is 25 minutes per player per game.

As expected, the one sensible group I know of, that abides by this simple logic, is ASPA (SA). Deviants postulate all sorts of unreasonable arguments to justify their unwarranted deviation from the norm.

One common argument is the desire to accommodate one extra game. Therefore, it becomes necessary to reduce the figure from 25 to 22 minutes. Well, why don’t you shorten the lunch break, instead of tampering with commonly accepted rules?


It is the same mentality that invented the stillborn ridiculous “five second” and “hold” rules, but that is another story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

22 minutes per player reduces the game time by 6 minutes. Across 8 games, 48 minutes are thus saved. So you could drastically reduce lunch from an hour to 12 minutes, or have 22 minute games to fit in another. I imagine that most players would prefer the latter.

Mohammed A. Hegazi said...

Did you ever check again with your players if they might want to return to the norm of 25 minutes? They might want to have a half hour lunch break and finish a little bit late. They might want to do without that extra game in order to have the normal 25 minute games. All national tournaments maintain the figure of 25 minutes, so why be the odd one out?