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When I 
was little, I had a really hard time getting anyone to play board games with me. My brother called them ?bored games? (so clever) and generally only agreed to play Battleship, a game at which he routinely kicked my butt. My dad was usually the one who would break down and play a game of Scrabble or Sorry (I recently realized how much he humored me when reading the official Sorry! rules and discovered that the game is much harsher than Dad?s version); Mom usually caved for Chinese Checkers. But still, we didn?t have a regular game night or anything like that. Of course, for all I know, we might have played board games far more often than the average family; it?s just that I wanted to play them all the time. I think I burned my family out. Now, when my parents play Scrabble at home, they don?t necessarily link the words or adhere to dictionary rules. They just play the most interesting words they can play, whether those words exist or not, and the person who makes the last move has to tell a story using all the words on the board. Regular Scrabble? Well, they?re just plain tired of it.
Now that I?m grown up and married, I have my husband to play games with, and that?s fun except that I almost always win. Not that winning is bad; when I was a kid that?s all I wanted to do, which probably contributed to my dad?s decisions to alter rules and eliminate scorekeeping. On top of all the winning, my husband is not really one for word games. He can take a half an hour to choose a word in Scrabble, and since I pick out three possibilities for my next move while he?s thinking (he has a knack for stealing the one tile I wanted to use), he never has time to catch up. So imagine how happy he was when he downloaded Word Feud into my phone, a Scrabble-esque game where I can play with other people, people I?ve never met, people who know all the words that start with Q and how to get the most points out of every tile.
Of course, that ocean is also peopled with those who think ?hot? is an acceptable word with which to start a game, people who have obscene usernames and quit games after a single move, which it took them six hours to make. I had mostly played with these folks, and was about to give up on Word Feud (my best game at that point had taken a week to complete), when I met a player who played well and fairly quickly, though her responses were always quickest in the morning or at lunchtime, a player who kicked my butt. It was amazing. After a single game, I felt I?d learned a lot about strategy. And the best part: she wanted to play again.
For a while, I kept playing with other opponents?who knew when this girl (I assume she?s a girl because her screen name is ?jrzygrl99?? she might also be twelve years old) would leave me? But then she started messaging me to congratulate me on a good move or to chastise herself for a lame one (it took me a while, but I figured out how to message her back). My other games started to wrap up, and I didn?t start new ones. Not with anyone but jrzygrl.
It was when I started talking about her like a friend that I knew I was in too deep. I?d be out with my husband and my phone would buzz, and it would be jrzygrl, playing a new word. And I?d dig out my phone and say, ?Oh, it?s jrzygrl. I think she?s letting me win,? as if this were a friend texting to chat and not an online board game with a twelve-year-old east coaster (my husband argues that she could be thirty if 99 is her high school graduation date? I only buy that theory when I lose). Things needed to cool off, you know? So I started a new game with a random opponent: the meanest opponent I?ve ever played. This person was a strategist of the most selfish kind. She took every opening I offered, but because she rarely played more than a three-letter word, she never left an opening for me. And these short words earned her about thirty points apiece. She elbowed me out at every turn, and though she only beat me by about forty points (at one point she led by 200), it was an eye-opener. I had it so good with jrzygrl? what was I doing with other opponents?
So now, I?m back on the straight and narrow. Maybe one day things will dissolve between jrzygrl and me, but so far, so good. I?ve found the perfect Word Feud partner, and I?m not going to let her go.
Source: http://thebarking.com/2011/09/wordplaymates-24-pts/
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