In Defense of "Living Room Scrabble"

It is depressing that in contemporary American culture every activity, virtually every object becomes assimilated into the capitalist/imperialist framework -- including key features such as fierce competition, goal over process, and reworking the rules to suit the participants (cf. Bush administration on torture). I am one of many excellent Scrabble players who plays for fun; is not especially competitive; finds the type A tournament player mentality antithetical to the recreational essence of the game; and most of all, finds the so-called Official Scrabble Dictionary absurd, with its vast number of words unknown to fluent English speakers. If a letter combination doesn't appear in a standard dictionary, it's not a word -- it's that simple. That's how the game was designed, and that's the way millions of us still play the game. The term "Living Room Scrabble" is presumably meant to be belittling; I find it ennobling, and a far superior alternative to "Bunker Room Scrabble", which is my just-invented epithet for the tournament mentality.

I'd love to find or create a website exclusively for Living Room Scrabblers.