New generation of word gamers
Nathan Geary, 9, with his favourite Thursday word game, Make Five. Photo: Maria Polglase.
Small eyebrows furrow as a nine-year-old shuffles letter tiles.
“Hmm. I need to ask Murray. Murray…?” he calls across the room. “Is ofrent a word?”
And what do the words overlook, turnup, sideway, washout and workbook have in common?*
It’s Thursday at the Community Centre, at Murray Rogers’ after-school word games for children. Nathan Geary is battling Adam Polglase for a Make Five win. It’s Nathan’s second week, and word games are fun, he says.
“They’re interesting and you can learn new words. Sometimes it helps with spelling. My favourite is Make Five – you get ten extra points for a five-letter word.”
Daniel de Tombe’s favourite is Scrabble “because it’s fun and helps with word skills.” He’s concentrating hard in an Upwords challenge against Scrabble club member Rune Kiunke. “Upwords is hard sometimes,” he says.
Spread across the tables among the box games are sheets of puzzles, all collated by Murray—anagrams, palindromes, odd definitions, matching pairs and more. When the session finishes at 4.30, there are all-round moans of protest.
Murray, a father of four and a grandfather of two, has been a word gamer since his own childhood, and has committed to memory all allowable two and three-letter Scrabble words, 98% of the fours (4000) and 75% of the 11,000 fives. He is currently New Zealand’s 29th best player, but says rankings are very mobile. “My best was 17th. The trouble with being at that ranking is that you can play 14 games at a tournament and win 12, and still go down.” He has played in the NZ Scrabble Masters tournament (for the top 24 Scrabblers) for the last four years, and expects to gain entry again next year.
“At Wordfest last year I helped run a Boggle event and it worked really well. When Wordfest came up again this year it was an opportunity to bring my love of words and share it with children.
“It’s all about having fun while learning.”
Community recreation worker Dave Myall also sponsored Murray’s games under Boredom Busters “and everybody loved it,” said Murray. “I thought if people enjoyed it enough we could have a regular session.”
The Community Workers said go for it, so the Thursday games began, and Murray hopes more young players come and join in. His intention is to run the sessions during school terms for as long as people keep coming, from 3.30 to 4.30pm, gold coin entry.
New or visiting Scrabble players are also very welcome at the Tuesday night meetings in Takaka: phone Murray at 525 8286.
Maria Polglase
*No, ofrent isn’t a word, though offrent is a word in French. Overlook, turnup, etc, are compound words that make other words if you divide them and reverse the halves.
