
Does what it says on the box
Of an evening at Chez Snail, there are a variety of entertainments to be enjoyed, with some coming out of a box rather than a bottle. One such amusement is Qwirkle, which in stark contrast to our other favoured game of Scrabble, has no interest in correct spelling whatsoever. It’s a great game, simple to understand and uses different parts of the brain compared to Scrabble. You have to match up coloured tiles for points. And points mean, er, very little really.
Unlike Scrabble, the game does not come with any type of tile holder (not a long-lost cousin of the lead singer of Slade) and it is this deficiency I address in this post.

I think it was a pen holder or something originally
It was one of those ScrapHappy coincidences, in fact. A few days before, the Snail had been clearing through her office/sewing room/SnailCave and had come across a piece of an old easel she used to use when teaching. Most of the rest of said easel was propping up the pipe feeding rainwater to one of our water butts. “Can you think of anything that this bit of metal might be useful for?” she asked, and I, in my customary way, had shrugged and put it in my office/workshop/studio/unholy-mess-of-a-room for safekeeping.
If this were a radio programme, there would be “time passing” music now.
Days pass and we are playing Qwirkle in the Limery, tiles balanced end-on, occasionally falling over (the tiles, not us. We sit down to play, it means the wine has less far to travel.). The Snail mentions about having tile racks and a lightbulb goes on over my head – well, it’s dark and the Snail has put the lights on. I head to my writing space/junk pile/guitar store and emerge with the piece from the old easel.
By chance, the tiles fit perfectly. A ScrapHappy post is born!

About to get the chop

Figuring out some support
I cut the metal into two racks and used the rest to provide angled supports. As the tiles fitted exactly into the racks, there was no space for a nut and bolt to hold the supports on so I used superglue.
Unbelievably, there was almost no swearing during this phase of the project. No, really.
Two days later, one of the supports fell off, to absolutely no one’s surprise. There may have been a little swearing then. I used sugru to reattach it. Oddly, the other rack has remained in one piece.
After all that, time for a game of Qwirkle and a long drink!
oOo
This was an example of foresighted midden-hoarding, I feel. I was only surprised that you didn’t make the supports themselves out of Sugru®. I notice that the game is for players aged 6+… do you need to consume a certain amount of alcohol first in order to qualify, or do you find that you automatically revert to the relevant age group the longer you play?
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Indeed it is foresighted – my foresight means that I can no longer see the carpet for scrap so my foresight has cost me my floor sight.
I made the supports out of more easel because I didn’t think about the Sugru® option at the time! It was nice to use up some more of the scrap though.
6+ refers to mental age required and, frankly, most evenings it’s a struggle to reach that dizzy height, even before the wine! 🙂
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hehehehe!
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And they are so perfect for the job that we haven’t played Scrabble since!
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Very clever Mr S and even more terrible puns than usual!
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I tried to rack up a good number this time!
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Genius! I love it when Useful Things emerge out of my “den of iniquity”…
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It’s as if it were meant to be! 🙂
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very clever, enjoy the game, hope the wine helps you see the stars.
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Thank you! The wine is definitely a great help as, after a while, all the shapes start to look the same and the game gets very easy indeed! 🙂
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I’m always interested in seeing what scrappy project you’ve created! This is a good and useful one, definitely!
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Yay! Thank you, I am pleased you find these projects interesting – this one I was particularly satisfied with! 🙂
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