Mondays with Momma: Playing Games

Our family is big on playing games and we tend to be highly competitive when doing so.  We like everything from board games like Monopoly, Scrabble, and Parcheesi … to video games like Wii bowling and Mario Kart … to running a football pool.  Occasionally there will be the sore loser.  You’ll know for certain if that occurs when you see chess pieces flying across the room or when someone with a losing team makes a quick exit after an important playoff; but for the most part we take it all in stride and just enjoy the encounter.

Charley and I use to play Scrabble almost every day when we were first married.  As time went by we would set up the board less often, but it continued to be a favorite game.  I think it was because we had a level playing field, he would win a game, then I would win a game and then we would have a tie breaker.  For the most part we averaged the same amount of wins and losses.  We were delighted when Words With Friends came out and picked up the habit of playing daily again.  The best part about playing this variation of Scrabble was not having to set up a board or keep score, as the game is played on the computer or phone where all that stuff is done for you.  We could take this game with us wherever we went and pick up where we left off at any moment.  Sometimes we would have two or three games going on at the same time, one with each other and one (or two) with another player.  I lost interest in playing that game after Charley passed away. I thought about playing it again a few weeks ago, but just couldn’t bring myself to reload it onto the computer.

I have three games on my phone now.  First, there’s Spider Solitaire, which is a great warm up exercise for my brain, especially if I’m challenging myself not to “undo” any moves and win the first time through.  Then there’s Scramble, which is a variation of Boggle.  Most of the time I play Scramble with SquarePiece and most of the time she wins.  Even when I’m using “helps” in playing a round, like extra time or hints on words, there is no level playing field between us.  It’s a little sad to see a long register under the “Game Over” section that reads:

SquarePiece Won!  

SquarePiece Won! 

SquarePiece Won!  

SquarePiece Won!  

SquarePiece Won!  

SquarePiece Won!

But, I do enjoy playing and I love when I finally see a “You Won!” pop up.

The third game on my phone is a recent addition which was introduced to me by my “twin”  (I’m older by 7 or 8 years).  This one started off easy and then became more and more challenging.  The game is called 4 Pics 1 Word (there are a dozen or so variations of this game, but I use the one developed by Lotum).  One would typically play this solo, but I think it’s fun to sit with a friend and see who can guess the answer the fastest.  Here are a couple of puzzles for you to figure out.  Look at each screen shot and try to think of one word that each of the four pictures have in common.

Note that you can only use the letters at the bottom of each screen.  The blank squares under the four pictures show you the number of letters in the word that you’re trying to guess.  Let’s take the 2nd screen shot for example, the one with the goat, milk pouring out, a baby bottle and a cow … it’s a four letter word and the letters you can use are shown … the answer for that is MILK.  Now you try it with the other three screen shots.  Have fun guessing!!!

How about you?!  What’s your favorite game??