Monday, January 11, 2021

1971 Scrabble Sentence Cube Game

We were recently sorting through our Family Game Shelf™, as we prepare for the upcoming move to Arizona that I have heretofore mentioned nothing about on this blog.1 This half-century-old game ended up in the pile of games to be sold or donated. But, predictably, I piped up and said, "Hey, let me have that for a minute. I should put it on Papergreat."2 And thus this post was born.

1971's Scrabble Sentence Cube Game, which truly deploys the term "Scrabble" very loosely, has earned a devastating 4.7 rating (out of 10) from the community at Board Game Geek. The nicer comments include "Accidentally have 2 copies" and "I will play a round of this if there is booze involved. Makes for a lot of laughing at the dumb sentences you are forced to make. Thrifted this and found a veritable time capsule in it with a local police ID and pictures of his kids from the 70's. My dad actually knew the guy. Super weird."

Alas, we do not have a version of this game that comes with weird things tucked away inside. The only things inside our box are the game itself and small foldout pamphlet advertising other Selchow & Righter games. These are vaguely interesting because of their age, and I've posted them above.

The box art is ... something. I am not sure why the man and the woman, who appear dressed for a murder-mystery cocktail party, are sitting on the floor and playing this game on the rug. Further, they seem mystified by the concept of words on dice. Or perhaps the concept of words, in general, which makes it unlikely that they are the owners of the books filling the shelves behind them. 

The box notes that, thanks to the game's inclusion of 21 word cubes, the "combinations are limitless and the results are fascinating." They are clearly overselling it.

Further researching this game, I find a schism. On Amazon, the game has a strong rating of 4.5 stars, out of 5.0, from nine reviewers. But even then, the biggest raves are "It is in good shape and has all the pieces" and "gets old fast. Pulling it out for new players or giving it a rest for a year or so will probably work fine."

I don't think we'll be taking this to Arizona.

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Footnote 
1. Oh, hey. So we're moving to Arizona sometime within the next month. It's a whole nother state.
2. Indeed, "Don't throw that's away, it's old" is the sum of my contribution to most conversations. 

2 comments:

  1. I know where you're coming from. I feel an obligation when I come into possession of old items. I think, hey, somebody kept it this long, who am I to get rid of it now?

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  2. I remembered my childhood on seeing this post today, I used to play similar games my childhood.

    ReplyDelete