Games People Play

Recently I've been playing Lexulous on the computer with a friend. Lexulous is just different enough from Scrabble to prevent a copyright infringement law suit. My sister-in-law is a Scrabble shark. She can hit a double word bonus with an x or z hitting the triple letter square. You don't want to mess with her in a Scrabble game.
Not that I'm much for spelling games anyway. I enjoy card games from Go Fish to Pinocle. I even enjoy crosswords puzzles. But there's something about taking a pile of letters and arranging them into a word that seems more like work than play.
For one thing, I think correct spelling is optional. If a word is close enough that everyone knows what I mean, then get on with the rest of the sentence. The other thing is that a word without context isn't interesting. Take a word like edition for example. By itself it is tedious no matter how many points it is worth. But put it in context like 'newspaper edition' or '70th edition,' and my mind reels at the definitions, the entomology, the possibilities of what came before and what comes after.
My friend kicks my butt at Lexulous, which makes me like it even less.
Nancy Sherer