Just a random thought

April 4, 2008

Every summer, for as long as I can remember, there was the cottage. My grandfather built it oh must have been around 1965 and it's been a family vacation spot ever since. We would spend our days frolicking in the sun and swimming in the lake. And we would spend our evenings playing games with my grandmother.

My Grandmother taught me how to play card games, board games and word games. She was great at them. Russian Bank, Spite and Malice, Hearts, Gin, Rummy, Bug Your Neighbour (yes, that's a card game), Boggle, Scrabble, I Spy, Uno, Quilt and so many more that I can't remember all their names. She never played poker however. Weird - she would have kick butt at it! :)

Us kids were allowed to play these games as long as we understood a few things: she played to win, no pouting when you lost, no gloating when you won and two letter words were NOT allowed in Boggle and Scrabble. You played by the rules set for the games.

I liked playing card games with my grandmother, but my favourite game to play was Boggle. Boggle was played with 16 lettered dice on a tray. The idea is to make as many words you can in three minutes. You would write down all your words on a piece of paper. At the end of the three minutes, you compared the words you found against the words your opponents found. Matching words were eliminated and you counted what words you had left. The one with the most words won. Simple enough eh? Well, my Grandmother knows a LOT of words :). And (as stated earlier) she played to win. No pity points for us.

I was seven when I first played Boggle. It quickly became my life mission to beat my Grandmother at this game. I still haven't, by the way. :) I pushed myself to learn new words. I read the family dictionary finding new words to try out and remember for "the next time". She challenged me to expand my knowledge of words. To learn how to study a random group of letters and create words from them. As long as I don't have to actually string all those words into a coherent sentence, all's good - lol.

So bring on the Boggle and let's play! :)