Marc Havlik

A member of the Scrabble club concentrates on choosing a word in a game. While most of the 30 members are not in high school, online variations of Scrabble such as “Words with Friends,” has been a growing trend among high school students.

At 6 p.m. in the evening the Boston Market in Palo Alto is deserted, aside from the few who have taken it upon themselves to catch the early bird special. Amidst the stranded crowds of patrons a group begins to form in the back of the restaurant surrounding Scrabble boards, which have been set up on a few select tables. As the members of Palo Alto’s Scrabble Club settle into their respective positions and begin calculating their possible word combinations an eerie silence befalls the group, broken by the sound of laughter and jeers from the players.

The Palo Alto Scrabble Club was founded about seven years ago by Mitch Bayersdorfer and a colleague of his from Sun Microsystems. Originally, the club had a humble size, but as reputation began to grow and the interest blossomed the club soon found itself expanding.

“The club started with about eight or nine people and now we get anywhere from 20 to 30 people coming,” Bayersdorfer said. “It was mostly a word of mouth kind of thing and we also have flyers and we put an ad in the Palo Alto Weekly.”

Bayersdorfer’s drive to create a Scrabble club began when he found a passion for the popular board game. His main attraction to it is the combination of linguistic, deductive and mathematical skills that are involved in the game. Although Scrabble is often thought of as a vocabulary driven activity, Bayersdorfer feels that the mathematical elements play an integral role in the game.

“People think of Scrabble as a word game, but it is really a math game and is more about using probability and statistics along with inductive and deductive reasoning,” Bayersdorfer said. “So all those things come together in a sort of synergy and every move is almost like a puzzle. I love the mixture [of math and language] and having to use so many different parts of your brain all to solve one problem.”

Scrabble was the idea and creation of an architect by the name of Alfred Mosher Butts who made the game after he was inspired by the crossword puzzles in the New York Times.

The rules are simple: each player is allotted a group of randomly selected letters and must form words from them by strategically placing them on the board. With the exception of the first word, every new word must be created by utilizing at least one letter of a former word, much like in a crossword puzzle. As well as crafting words, players must also determine where to place their pieces to obtain special bonus spaces that can do anything from doubling a letters score to tripling the score of the entire word. The goal is to have more points than one’s opponent by the end of the game.

Scrabble is one of the most popular tabletop board games in America and is a staple of every family’s board game drawer. In the new, sleek, modern era, tabletop games are becoming remnants of the past and the next generation is moving from the kitchen counter to their iPod Touch.

A new game known as “Words with Friends” has made its way into student communities like a virus. The game allows users to play a variation of Scrabble on iPhones wirelessly.

Games can go on for weeks and the ease of use has made it a hit with adults and youth alike. However, “Words with Friends” has come under fire from many  Scrabble enthusiasts who feel that the game does not embody some of the true tenets of Scrabble.

“‘Words with Friends’ does not take skill, you can just try random letter combinations and it doesn’t penalize a limited vocabulary,” Palo Alto High School senior Isaac Plant said.

Because the game allows one to guess combinations of words, many feel that Words with Friends champions are not truly skilled at the game, but merely lucky. Nonetheless, the game is popular and has reintroduced Scrabble to a younger generation.

This same generation has been accused of corroding language because of constant texting and chatting. “Laugh out loud,” typically abbreviated as “LOL” has become a staple of texting culture. Bayersdorfer believes this is an example of the natural evolution of language.

“Language is always evolving,” Bayersdorfer said. “The 'Scrabble Players Dictionary' gets updated every five years to reflect the changing language that we have. Words like 'enuf' and 'nettiquete' and 'blog' and all those things get added to the Scrabble Dictionary so I would not be surprised to see ‘LOL’ added to the Scrabble Dictionary next time too. The dictionary keeps evolving and Scrabble does with it.”

Although youth prefer to play Scrabble on their phones, the club still attracts a few high school members.  Occasionally, guests will join in, but the club is generally reserved for a quiet evening with friendly people. Players in the club range from all skill levels. Some play to prepare for competitions, but the club mostly enjoys encouraging a relaxing game of Scrabble.

“I do play for competition,” Bayersdorferr said. “But this club is made for a friendly relaxing time.”