My 98 Point Facebook Scrabulous Bingo

Scrabulous on Facebook is gone?? Barred from North American users?

This is just the kind of 'surprise' we have been talking about. Note the words in the article: "sudden, but not wholly unexpected."

This is the watchword from now until November, astrologically, for all of us.

And yes, it is a surprise - to the half a million people who played daily.

I'll admit I was one of them. I was playing Scrabulous via Facebook in the early hours of Tuesday, and suddenly something was wrong.

Well, I thought, just temporary. We in the Scrabulous community had been frustrated with a few glitches ... like requesting to host a table and having a game set up with the same person 5 times. But no, this was something serious, for a LOT of people.

From The New York Times, the HALF A MILLION PEOPLE who played Scrabulous daily had the rug abruptly pulled out from under their feet.

I'll admit I'm a Scrabulous fan and spent and hour or two daily, for relaxation. I got on line as usual, and there was a notice - no Scrabulous. I didn't even get to get my final stats on BINGOS.

I played with my sister, my nephew, my niece, and a host of people from all over the world I knew nothing about. Sometimes we chatted, sometimes we just played. Everyone had their own style at Scrab. I know it was a big thrill in my life that just that day I had put down a 98 pt. bingo. The highest one before that was AFFLUENT for 95.

I have a list of my Bingos tacked up on my bulletin board. My stat was slowly building as I learned strategy from people I played with - people from the UK, India, all over the US.

I joined the environment of the Scrabulous community - the controversy over word lists and "cheaters," the 'adult' lists, the people who would write in their requests to host a table - no porn, no chat, just fun, and brain power only.

From the article:

The Calcutta-based brothers who developed Scrabulous bowed to legal pressure and barred North American users from playing the game on Facebook. The demise of Scrabulous was sudden but not wholly unexpected. The game, a favorite time-waster among cubicle dwellers, was created by two brothers in Calcutta. On July 24, Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble, sued them for copyright infringement. On Tuesday, the brothers made Scrabulous unavailable to Facebook users in Canada and the United States, citing legal pressure. The backlash was instant. Bloggers denounced Hasbro, howls of protest flooded message boards, and new Facebook groups were created with names like “Down with Hasbro.” Although some people spoke up to defend Hasbro’s rights, most people jeered at the company, calling it everything from “short-sighted” to “technologically in the dark” to “despicable.”

A waste of time? I think one should have some time during a day to "waste."

Be expecting surprises in the coming weeks. eMail me for a reading to prepare for this time period.