Scrabble

My daughter came into the bedroom this morning and told me she wanted to play a game with dad and me.   When I asked her what game, I was surprised to hear her say Scrabble.   I found out shortly after that that she had played a simplified version the other day with her father and then found out an hour after that she had tried to play with Blake.  

Blake had said she was frustrated by the game because she didn't want him to see her tiles but she couldn't tell what the letters were on the tiles so she needed his help.   As my daughter sat on the bed with me this morning I told her I thought we could make a version of Scrabble tactile fairly easily.   She wanted Blake to come over and help her make the tactile version of Scrabble (as well as cater to her every whim, something he excels at.)

I had been unintentionally prepared for this very thing by chance.   I had hoped my daughter would be able to feel the letter indentations on the Scrabble tiles and, should she be able to, we could use them for all sorts of things.   I had found on eBay about a year ago a large bag of tiles, number as many as you might find in ten Scrabble games, and had bought the lot.   When my daughter couldn't feel the letters successfully I shelved the bag for possible future use.

So this morning, while Blake was on his way over, I got the bag and then came to the computer to look up two things:  frequency of letters in a Scrabble set and points for each letter.   I put it in a document and printed it out for Blake and then embossed the same information for my daughter.

I met them upstairs in the bonus room, now playing the game Scoops Up in which you try and make the tallest ice cream scoop in numerical order (my daughter wins this game a lot and it was super easy to make tactile so she loves to play it.)  I showed them the bag of Scrabble tiles and gave them their respectively printed sheets of information on the tiles.

Then I went and got the braille letter stickers.   Blake and my daughter put braille letters on a full set of tiles and then placed them in a bag so they could fish out their tiles.   As they prepared the tiles, Blake and my daughter pretended to spell words so my daughter could practice scoring.   She memorized the points per letter very quickly.   It seems like a lot to remember, but it's not that complicated with only seven different point values and things like all vowels are worth one point.  It was easy enough to put a braille letter on the tile, but not enough room to also add the point value, hence why I printed the points for her to reference.

Tiles labeled, they played this first level of blind Scrabble.   I decided having a board would add a huge level of complexity both in how my daughter had to envision everything happening as well as how the tiles would have to be affixed to the board so when she felt around to see what was there or add her word, she wouldn't disrupt the playing field.   Add to that the complication of double and triple word and letters, which need to be indicated on the playing field while still allowing for items to be affixed to the area and you've got an engineering problem I'm not completely done figuring out yet.

For us, as sighted people, we can see the whole board in one glance and hone in on all the opportunities we might employ to spell our word.   My daughter would need to review the board before her turn, perhaps extensively, before making a move.   So for now, we eliminated the board from the game and left in the spelling of words for maximum score the goal of the game.

If this goes well (and she very much enjoyed playing with Blake today) I'm thinking of adding two dice to the game.   One die is the standard 1-6 while the second die has sides for double letter, triple letter, double word, and triple word.   So for example, if you rolled a three and double letter, the third letter of your word would be doubled.   If you rolled a four and double word, you would need to make a word at least four characters in length to double the score.   That's for a future expansion of the game once she gets more proficient at the basic version.

I told her Mimi and Aunt Jo play scrabble all the time and Scrabble is one of Mimi's all time favorite games.   Once COVID-19 is over, perhaps she can challenge them to a game.

The Big Boy Update:  The children had a slot at the pool today but shortly after they arrived a sudden thunderstorm arose.   It looked like it was going to pass as quickly as it came up but it persisted, including some hail.   Blake called eventually and asked if I could come to rescue them in the car as walking home in the downpour was going to be nothing but miserable to them all.  I got in the car and drove the two blocks to the pool.   When my son saw me, he headed out into the deluge, getting completely wet, instead of waiting for me to pull up at the front of the clubhouse.   He didn't seem to mind, aside from complaining that he had said this was a bad idea from the outset (he didn't want to go to the pool, even in the hot, sunny weather.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In addition to making a tactile version of Scrabble today, my daughter and Blake modified the Othello game her braillist, Mrs. B. had given her sometime back when she could still discern black and white.   Some fuzzy stickers on the black side of the chips and the game was ready for her to play ten minutes later.   She beat Blake.   She was not surprised at this, she said she was good at the game.