THE WORD

I hate team games like Monopoly ( too endless) but simply adore anything that involves a mental challenge. I managed to conquer my fear of flying entirely because of Suduko ( and a shot of neat vodka pre-take-off) and my idea of total relaxation is to spread out a 500 piece wooden jigsaw on the table and methodically finish it without once looking at the picture for guidance. I love crosswords, but most of all I love Scrabble. Playing Scrabble on-line is the sticky plaster of sanity for insomniacs. Any-time, any place - and across multiple time-zones - anonymous opponents are waiting to play. Result. No more staring up at the ceiling listening to the muffled alarm clock tick-ticking towards dawn; it's up to kitchen for a cup of mint tea for me..... and a quick round of wordplay.
Scrabble satisfied me for about a year. I liked playing with imaginary friends, messaging them the mandatory on-line introduction: "Hi there. Good luck!" before getting down to the serious business of playing the game. One night I found myself playing against an opponent who kept putting down the most extraordinary words, and it wasn't until I'd been playing for over 20 minutes and messaged a tentative " Where are you from?" that I realised I was pitting myself against a gentleman in China who spoke ( nor wrote) not a syllable of English.
Then I was introduced to Words With Friends. Word with Friends knocks Scrabble out of the water. It takes no hostages and doesn't allow all those ridiculous two-letter combinations on-line Scrabble encourages. Words like KY are simply not tolerated by Word. Nor do they allow much slang or swearing. It's a purists game. It's also a bit like belonging to a secret society, for although the app will happily search for random opponents, it's also much easier to search for people you actually know. I'm currently thrashing my daughter in New York, being beaten in two simultaneous games by an old schoolfriend and in the midst of a deeply competitive dual that's gone on for two weeks with a businessman travelling in Dubai.

It's good to talk but sometimes it's even better to try and have the last word.