WS Game Company Scrabble Grand Folding Edition

The WS Game Company creates superbly-crafted editions of traditional board games, such as Monopoly and Scrabble. While shopping their extensive catalog of these classic diversions can easily blow away an afternoon, our unequivocal favorite is their enlarged Scrabble board.

We play Scrabble daily. Paired with a glass of wine and some classic rock, it’s a fitting close to a cold winter’s day… or a hot summer’s afternoon with the air conditioning ramped up, depending on when you find yourself reading this.

Conventional Scrabble boards evince a number of shortcomings… mostly because they’re boards. Once a cardboard Scrabble game has been unfolded and play has commenced, moving the beast is decidedly imprudent, lest all its tiles make a break for it, and change locations.

Unfortunately, Scrabble boards really want to move at every turn, such that each player can face the board appropriately.

The WS Game Company Scrabble board addresses both of the foregoing issues. Its playing surface is a raised grid into which its tiles fit, such that lateral movement of the board won’t shift them. Concealed beneath its surface are four wheels, allowing the whole works to rotate effortlessly between players.

Beyond its innovative design, however, is the extended size of the game board and its tiles. About twenty-five percent larger than traditional Scrabble tiles, these letters give the game an epic quality. They’re also somewhat kinder to aging eyes.

Finally, the WS Game Company edition of Scrabble is flawlessly crafted of hardwood the likes of which weekend cabinetmakers just can’t obtain anymore. When it’s not in use, the board folds up to become a box to store its tiles, its tile trays and a score pad. It suggests an heirloom from a forgotten epoch when when everything was made like this.

The Wheel

If the WS Game Company company’s Scrabble board deserves five out of five stars, their customer service should receive six. About a year after we bought our board, one of its subterranean wheels ceased to function correctly… possibly due to high mileage. In fairness to its creators, plastic parts will do this on occasion.

We contacted WS Game Company through their web page to inquire about buying a replacement wheel. They sent us a whole new game board at no cost.

The WS Game Company Grand Folding Edition of Scrabble promises a lifetime of enjoyable play, to be followed by the descendants of its original owners squabbling over who’ll inherit it. We live in amazing times.