If you ever thought I was cool, stop reading right now.

A few days after I returned from London last spring my mother placed a newspaper clipping on my desk. It was well intentioned, but it was a big mistake. She had given me Nora Ephron’s May 13 “Addicted to L-U-V” column from The New York Times. Those who know me know I am by no means addicted to love or romantic in any way but I am addicted — highly, highly addicted — to Scrabble.

Reading through Ephron’s column I related to everything — especially her addiction to computer games, croquet and of course her passion for Scrabble. More particularly, she was writing about her experiences with Scrabble as a computer game. I had experimented with that myself. I had first played the free downloadable version and then gone so far as venture to Best Buy for the CD version. (My previously paid-for computer game was Civilization IV if you must know.) I had managed to escape e-Scrabble’s grip because I found it too slow and not competitive enough — playing against yourself or the computer offers weak bragging rights. But the reason my mother had given me the article is that Ephron introduced her and then me to the world of Blitz Scrabble, a four minute, and intense solo player version of Scrabble. When I was not thinking of new strategies to improve I was brooding over the fact that I did not know about it in TV-less-earlier-bar-closing-time-than-Ithaca-London when I resorted instead to hours of Canasta and Mah Jong.

Blitz (as it is known by its devotees) can be found on Scrabulous.com. I was hooked right away. Scrabulous.com has a few different versions of Scrabble ranging from Blitz to Just Scrabulous which is traditional Scrabble online.

Sunday, and then yesterday, The New York Times — in a rare instance of journalistic sloppiness — wrote additional articles about Scrabble but did not refer to Ms. Ephron’s. I knew I must correct this injustice!

The focus of the recent articles was about the challenges Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of Scrabble, are facing with the recent and growing popularity of Scrabulous.com. There was no mention of Blitz or Nora Ephron. Instead it attributed much of Scrabulous’ growth to the Scrabulous Facebook application. Now, some of my friends may be scratching their heads at this column because nowhere on my Facebook profile does it mention my love for Scrabble — nor have I added the Scrabulous App (or any other). In addition, my Scrabulous identity is in no way revealing (unless you know my mother’s Hebrew name and her birthday — as I have stolen hers).

One of my main reasons for keeping my Scrabble obsession (until now) under raps is because I am not fun to play with. Until Scrabulous.com my only two regular (and worthy) competitors were my mother and sister — just ask Julia Mehlman ’07. I would begin every rare game here with a disclaimer of sorts warning my opponent that unlike them, I had grown up observing the Sabbath — logging countless hours of board game time and honing my skills to perfection.

I am torn about Scrabble’s moment in the sun. On one hand I am enjoying the plethora of new competitors, a new rewarding gambling outlet, my ability to play more often than my trips home and (possibly) the loss of the nerdy stigma associated with the game. On the other hand, every Katie, Camille and Steph is playing these ridiculous month-long games through Facebook thinking they’ve discovered this new cool way to seem smart and have fun. I am also quite annoyed about the lower quality of game infiltrating the scene — with these newbies taking advantage of the very liberal SOWPODS (a combination of the international and American Official Scrabble word lists). I, on the other hand grew up limited to the Oxford English Dictionary. I have only recently begun accepting the fact that fax is no longer slang for a facsimile but a verb referring to the action done when using a facsimile machine. But I digress …

As the NYT article pointed out some players feel that Scrabble is a game in the public domain akin to chess. While I am not ready to stop playing on Scrabulous.com I must admit I do not agree with that sentiment. The creator of Scrabble, a game initially known as Criss-Crosswords, Alfred Mosher Butts designed the game for commercial reasons, eventually selling the rights. [Oddly, the NYT missed another chance to praise itself by failing to mention that Butts used its front page to determine letter frequency and point value.] If Scrabulous.com maintained its initial not-for-profit stance, I might concede it is no different than a high-tech version of hand-creating your own board; however, as the Times pointed out, the creators collect over $25,000 a month in advertising fees and are hoping for a multi-million dollar buyout deal. Scrabble, as well as Scrabulous, is worth paying for. With the correct marketing scheme, more people might be more like my family and have more boards than people, or give it as a gift — as I recently did. In fact I have employed a very successful marketing plan myself — betting over games. Stakes can be very high or very low and are by no means necessarily monetary, ranging from cooking dinner to more personal favors.

If or when Mattel or Hasbro introduce an online version of Scrabble similar to Scrabulous I hope they hyperlink words played on the board to a dictionary (after the turn has been played, of course!) so that opponents can increase their understanding of the word in addition to adding it to their play list.

As I always do before a column, I searched The Sun’s archives to make sure no one had covered the topic in the recent past. I discovered from a column written this past October that a Scrabble Club was formed last semester, and I couldn’t be more excited. If one of its members is reading this now, please add me to your listserv! S.C., I am thinking that for our first philanthropy event we could play a tournament that would raise money to put a Scrabble board in every classroom. No triple letter score left behind!

Simone Greenbaum is a senior in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. She can be contacted at sgreenbaum@cornellsun.com. Socialist Socialite appears alternate Wednesdays.