Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Scrabble set from cardboard

When I was very young, I vaguely remember some game we played by writing, called 'word building'.  A little later I recall some friend had a set of Lexicon cards, also a game of words.  When I was finishing high school, I got to know the game of Scrabble through my street mate Shankar.

I must mention about him. He came from an illustrious and intellectual family.  His grandfather was a Priest in the Royal Palace.  Veda Brahma Gundavadhani, a great scholar who was also featured in Kannada Magazine Kasturi in the issue of March 2010, compiled by his grand daughter.

Shankar's father was G.Sachidananda, son of Gundavadhani.  He was a Hindi Professor in the Mysore University.  His brilliance reflected in his command over English and Mathematics!! He used to write maths problems in chalk on the floor of his living room [cement floor] and solve them while discussing with Shankar and his brothers.  "Braininess" seemed to run in the family.  

Shankar grew up in such environment.  He too was quite brainy.  They had a Scrabble set with them and when I went there many times, I used to find a group including his neighbours engaged in Scrabble. Sachidananda used to show his vocabulary and the total score of the games was very high which meant all of them played well! This was in the mid 70s.

Shankar used to bring this set to our house and some of us friends used to play, esp. in the summer vacation.   We did not have Scrabble with us, nor was it available in the city in any shop.  So what to do?  Make one!  Another new project had arrived!

Around the same time, my grandfather's law books had been given away after his death.  Many other old obsolete books [from my great grandfather's time] were also waiting to be sold off to increase shelf space.  Among them was one good bound book with a hard cover, that would be cut into squares for letters. 

I set about making our own Scrabble set.

Making the board [copy from Shankar's] was easy. These card board pieces were perfect, but needed to be cut to size properly, uniformly.  I had the carpenter's chisel and mallet that my late uncle had and I knew how to use it. Lo, it worked reasonably well.  I had to make the required 102 pieces.  Sanded the edges wrote the letters and scores on each one of them using felt pens.  I also made the shelf [see in the pic below] - four of them.  It was from the left over pieces of Balsa Wood from my Aeroplane project. 

 Board, letters and shelf from balsa wood

Cardboard letters I made

We played a number of games with it.  While picking the letters from the bag, these did not make the sound that Shankar's plastic letters made.  It was silent picking!  

Many years later, I requested my childhood friend, Srinivas to bring me a Scrabble Set from America where it was available and of good quality.  He was kind enough to oblige me. My children have played with both these sets.

 Scrabble Set from Srinivas

 Beautifully cut wooden, embossed letters - from Milton Bradley

Shankar introduced me to..

and I must remember him in this post because we had many hours of loud laughing [also ROFLOL at times] during play, much to the annoyance of my grandmother who often scolded us to stop laughing, but we never could.  Ask me why we laughed?  We used to make funny, non existent words from the letters we had on our shelves!  This 'funtainment' also helped me get to know a lot of new words as we consulted the Dictionary after we made the word!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trash has given us an appetite for art.  -- Paulene Kael.
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Alva Edison

2 comments:

  1. It was so refreshing to read this blog of yours and thank you for the same. I am Pankaja and I am Shankar's wife. I will definitely pass this along for him to read and also share with my kids.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What a wonderful surprise, Pankaja. Thanks for the response. That is why I have put Gundavadhani in the label!! I really look forward to Shankara's response now. Because of Shankar I could pass my PUC. Do write to: dinakar58
      @
      yahoo
      .
      com

      Delete

Your comments will be published only after the author of the blog reads them. Thanks.