Scrabble Tactics and Short Words
Over the years, I've learned some cut-throat tactics for Scrabble. Success, I've deduced, hinges on a stockpile of incredibly short words like 'Aa', which volcanologists worldwide recognize as the word for rough flows of lava. Another ace up the sleeve is 'xu', a monetary unit of Vietnam. Or 'os', an anatomical term, is another good one. Have these at the ready and everyone's lunch money is as good as yours.
The Joy of Party Games
I'm a lunatic for games like charades. It's not so much the outcome of the game, but I just love watching people flail about conveying movie titles like 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being'. To me, this is endlessly entertaining. I'll happily humiliate myself attempting to communicate a book title like 'The Rise And Fall Of Nations' to my team if only for the merriment and derision that ensue.
I was recently introduced to crokinole, a game I was surprised to learn is of French-Canadian invention. In some respects, it's like curling, except you're finger-flicking wooden discs across a board of obstacles. It was far harder than it first appeared, and my fingers ached the next day.
Mafia: A Social Deduction Game
I'm hoping that at some point over the summer someone insists on launching the party game, Mafia. It's a social deduction game that involves bluffing. It pits two groups against each other. One group is the informed minority — the Mafia — the other is the uninformed majority. So like life, you say? Indeed! Except for the moderator, no one knows who is who. The game involves 'killing' someone, saving someone, and investigating the events. The winner is the best liar.
Puzzles and Cognitive Benefits
Failing party games, I'll settle for a puzzle. Puzzles are like big snifters of brandy — they seem to inspire rumination and disclosures. Many's the time, as I click an elusive part of the puzzle into place, I've announced, 'You know, I served time for murder.' It's not true, but the hushed moment seems to beg for sweeping declaration.
In the meantime, I keep a small tin of lettered dice close at hand. At least once a day, I dump those dice on a table and form as many connected words as I can. I'm often frustrated by how few vowels are available on those dice, but I'm often gratified when I manage to form words by whatever's come up. The medical community tells me that games like this offer a robust mental workout. There is plenty of evidence that it will also offset cognitive impairment and memory loss.
