Scrabble Smackdown - Absolutely Amazing

[Aunt Sponge]

So my oldest, who'se 10, is autistic - most of you know - and he has his passion for statistics and spelling.

So today, when the other kids were all playing Operation and my oldest was just drawing pictures, I decided to teach him how to play Scrabble. He's a bookie, like me, and has a flawless dictionary-mind. I figuredi t would be an interesting challenge for him - get his wheels turning.
I walked him through his first few moves - teaching as we went, helping him pick out words and so on so I could help him learn how to square off words and take advantage of special tiles.
So I intended on playing over-shoulder so we could look at eachother's tiles and such and I could help him out the entire game but not too long into the game he told me "i've got it figured out."

So at move 15 I backed off - leaving him with his letters and me with mine with no hover-mother or any further help.

After he slaughtered me royally with 268 to 174 - I calculated the points AFTER move 15 (recalculating from 0, just ditching the score for the first 15 rounds) and he still beat me!
Excluding hte first 15 rounds - the final score was 202 - 111.

Oh - and adding to that - he didn't have to look at the paper to know his score. He kept up with it in his head the whole freaking time! He was able to calculate his increasing score the second he set down his tile - the kids got a talent!!

Well - he LOVES this game after just ONE game of playing - when I mentioned that there was a scrabble dictionary that was just a book of all the anagrams and words he asked for it for Christmas.

[Sophie♥Hatter]

Awesome! He might like the scrabble tournaments. http://www2.scrabble-assoc.com/

[Aunt Sponge]

I'll keep that in mind if his interest continues!

[Armywifenmomof2]

that is awesome

[Rain.]

That's awesome!! I love that game

[Loretta]

That is amazing and way cool! My sister is a huge Scrabble junkie, I had no idea people were that into it...I bet he could KILL at those tournaments!

[Aunt Sponge]

Hehe - scrabble can earn you a living if you're good enough!
I remember hearing about the world champion (10 years ago maybe) who had memorized the ENTIRE scrabble dictionary!

[eelo]

Originally Posted by Aunt Sponge So my oldest, who'se 10, is autistic - most of you know - and he has his passion for statistics and spelling. So today, when the other kids were all playing Operation and my oldest was just drawing pictures, I decided to teach him how to play Scrabble. He's a bookie, like me, and has a flawless dictionary-mind. I figuredi t would be an interesting challenge for him - get his wheels turning. I walked him through his first few moves - teaching as we went, helping him pick out words and so on so I could help him learn how to square off words and take advantage of special tiles. So I intended on playing over-shoulder so we could look at eachother's tiles and such and I could help him out the entire game but not too long into the game he told me "i've got it figured out." So at move 15 I backed off - leaving him with his letters and me with mine with no hover-mother or any further help. After he slaughtered me royally with 268 to 174 - I calculated the points AFTER move 15 (recalculating from 0, just ditching the score for the first 15 rounds) and he still beat me! Excluding hte first 15 rounds - the final score was 202 - 111. Oh - and adding to that - he didn't have to look at the paper to know his score. He kept up with it in his head the whole freaking time! He was able to calculate his increasing score the second he set down his tile - the kids got a talent!! Well - he LOVES this game after just ONE game of playing - when I mentioned that there was a scrabble dictionary that was just a book of all the anagrams and words he asked for it for Christmas.

Sponge- how does he do with things like Yahtzee? Another great game is Rummikub; it's very easy to learn to play, but a kid who can do numbers like that in his head would probably really enjoy Rummikub.

One more dice game- Greedy. It's in the stores as Farkle; the only difference is that Greedy uses five dice and Farkle uses six. Both are very easy to learn, but will be good for your little number-headed one.