SCRABBLE 2004 CALENDAR - REVIEWS
Review of Scrabble Calendar 2004 by Paul Chadwick (Romford)
The page-a-day calendar promises '..an abundance of challenges to test and improve your Scrabble ability&ldots;', and it does exactly that.
Based on the Official Scrabble Words International Edition, the daily puzzles come in various guises, from the expected 'anagram' tests to the more unusual 'outplay' posers (examining the useful skill of seeing a way to play out an awkward-looking rack of seven letters in two moves in order to finish the game first).However, if you're like me, even the teasers that appear simple can prove great value for money. When asked to find the seven-letter word from SUP DIRT all I could see is STUPID staring back at me (and on Valentine's Day 2004, taking too long over this task could be doubly costly to you!).
Another familiar puzzle in the Scrabble genre is the 'Target Tester', marking you up against average, good and expert scores from a given scenario – but be warned – if your friend/fiancée/flatmate has the spatial awareness to frequently spot the "expert" move, don't ever play him/her/it for money.
Although the Target Tester's expert score was often achieved by playing tiles outside of the board area shown (the board is necessarily truncated due to the space constraints) the vast majority of puzzles are extremely well-presented and researched.This is especially true when challenged to pair up a selection of four-letter words to make eight-letter words or when you are required to extend a handful of five-letter words into eight-letter words from a discrete selection of tiles. These have clearly been very well thought out with numerous diversions and wrong turns designed to ensure you rarely arrive at the correct answer in good time.
As per tradition, the answers are found (upside-down) underneath the following day's puzzle, thus ensuring that you are never tempted to spend an unhealthy amount of time trying to find the 2 valid anagrams of GHILNSTU or the highest scoring opening move from a rack of LOVAKID before the (often all to obvious!) solution is revealed.
Additional features include an invitation to 'make them quake' or 'sex up your scoring' with a 'Word for the Day' which have a different theme each month. This means that even if you stare at the puzzles in bewilderment, all day every day, at least you will have memorised 300 new words. I'll bet you 20 byzants that you wouldn't have heard of all of them&ldots;.!
Furthermore, scattered throughout the year are 'Top Tips' put across in simple-to-understand language that are invaluable tools in the pursuit of victory.
If you are worried about the suitability of the Calendar for the novice player, fear not! Not only are the occasional obscure answers flagged up in advance, but the introductory section is packed with all that the novice will require to get underway on January 1st including information on tile values, premium word and letter squares, a glossary of terms used and the important list of allowable two-letter words. All of which will be worthless if misplaced before the Christmas decorations are down, but the effort has clearly been made to make the Challenge-a-day Calendar as accessible as possible to the uninitiated.
There are also some genuinely amusing cartoons to be found hidden amongst the puzzles. Drawn by Scrabble Grandmaster Allan Simmons no less, the emotions portrayed will ring true to anyone who has played the game at either a local Scrabble Club or socially with the family during the Christmas holidays!
In short, the 'Challenge-a-day Calendar' is a superb gift. Whether it be for ensuring you get a regular fix of Scrabble throughout 2004, as a way of encouraging your friend to take up the game, or as the perfect blend of puzzle-solving, entertainment and education for that family member who's always so difficult to buy for!
Well-recommended and at £10.99 for 366(!) days worth of Scrabble-based fun it is surely great value for money.
Paul Chadwick , Romford Scrabble Club, Essex.
Review of Scrabble Calendar 2004 by Paul Richards
For those of you like me who struggle from one club night to the next wondering where your next game of Scrabble is coming from or rush home from work to play on ISC, professional help is at hand. A daily fix of Scrabble comes courtesy of Allan Simmon's Scrabble Calendar 2004.
The calendar offers a different challenge every day, testing the wordpower of the newest novice to the most battle-hardened expert. The challenges are many and varied - simple anagrams (or maybe not), hooks, extensions, outplays and target testers (which will look familiar to those of us who buy the Saturday Telegraph for just one reason), along with some more novel puzzles.
In addition, there is a word of the day, with definition and a different theme every month, for those of us who don't know a dzo from a zebu or struggle to find just the right word in polite company for a cry of Bacchic frenzy.
Throw in a liberal sprinkling of facts, cartoons and Scrabble basics for those friends and family who haven't blown the dust off the box since last Christmas and you have the perfect stocking filler for anyone who loves Scrabble or just words in general. Now all I have to do is wait until 1st January!
Review of Scrabble Calendar 2004 by Graham Harding and Helen Greenaway (Reading)
The calendar starts appropriately with a useful 5-page introduction, including: A well laid out list of Scrabble letter values; Basic review of scoring squares on the board; Glossary of Scrabble relevant terms; List of 2-letter words.
There is one page for each weekday, and one for Saturday and Sunday combined. We felt this to be a slight drawback, as the weekend is the time when many Scrabble players are likely to have more time to spend on perusing the daily puzzle. Apart from the date, the entry for each day has two Scrabble-related sections, the puzzle for the day and the word for the day, and, approximately once a week, an additional tip (turnover, rack management etc), factoid, or cartoon relating to the game.
Each month there is a different theme for the word of the day e.g. January covers "short useful words". The word of the day appears under the date, along with its dictionary definition, and also includes information about alternative spellings, unusual plurals etc. The puzzle for the day is the largest part of the daily calendar sheet and covers areas like : Target tester i.e. play a move on the board for a target score; Anagrams; Outplays; Top starts (the opening move of the game); Hooks; Extensions; Match-up (combine pairs of words to form a longer word).
The vocabulary used for the daily puzzles is broadly "everyday" English, but also including a certain amount of specialised Scrabble vocabulary. Knowledge of 3 letter words although not a pre-requisite, may be useful for some puzzles. Answers to the daily puzzle can be found on the next day's sheet.
Who is this calendar aimed at? We felt it would be best for the regular club or tournament player, and that a complete beginner might find it a little daunting. For most standards of player, there is something interesting or thought-provoking in at least three-quarters of the puzzles. Even if the puzzle for the day seems to be too easy (or too hard !) there is always something of interest in the word for the day; several of these provoked a foray to the dictionary and some discussion.
For £10.99, i.e about 3p per puzzle this calendar offers a cheap and effective method of honing basic Scrabble skills and vocabulary. If you don't buy it, your opponents will !
Graham Harding and Helen Greenaway.