Scrabble influenza

As I revealed yesterday, I am back on the weak track. I have a cold, and feel generally slower and unenthused. However, when I tried to get some sleep on my new pretty sofa, all I could think of was how I wanted to play some online Scrabble.

I have a friend that has been playing this online swedish Scrabble at www.betapet.com since forever, or well at least since a year or two. She has at times seemed rather addicted to it, and told me how much fun it is, how nice people hang out there, and she has made a very nice friend there whom she goes to visit from time to time. Finally on sunday I let her convince me that I should set up an account (free of course) at the site, and start scrabbling myself. And now, I just can't seem to get enough of it, and use it as a way to reward myself for another good day being up and around.

There are at least three things that I blame the addiction on;
1.
They have a rather (for me) complex ranking system, and after every game you get a new ranking depending on the difference between your and your opponents pre-game rank, how many points scored for word tiles throughout the game, how much time spent thinking on your next move, and how many tiles you and your opponent have at the end when the game finishes. So there are many aspects to regard throughout the game, and especially when choosing opponent (what rank he/she has). My current ranking is 968 or something, but I swear I will improve! You get ranked 1000 when you start, and my friend has 2300+, and soon I will kick her scrabbling arse.
2.
You can change the settings for your Scrabble board/game: random positioning of score fields (x2 word/x2 letter etc.), you can position the score fields yourself, or have them in the default position. You can also choose between 5 different intensity levels of the game (the time allowed for each move and whole game).
3.
Finally, there is the honour aspect of getting all your white letter tiles out on the board in one move, i.e. to do a "roll" (swe. Rullning). I am not sure about the technical term of this Scrabble phenomena in english, but maybe some Scrabble fan out there can let me know? For this "roll" you are rewarded an extra 50 points, and the honour of having the fact posted on the site, e.g. when I did it for the first time yesterday on the front page it said something like 'Vigor have rolled Fransos, for 72 points'. Vigor is my alias at the Scrabble site (and also the true name of cute cat), and "fransos" is the swedish word for a french guy.

So as you see, all the addictive aspects of the Scrabble site lies within the site itself, and no guilt can be put on me for being addicted. I am a victim, an hopelessly lost Scrabble fan.