Scrabble is a game that transcends its two dimensions. It can be creative, playful, crafty, provocative. Even controversial at times. Has there ever been a game when ‘That is NOT a word!’ hasn’t been plaintively cried? At which point the current player refers to the Collins dictionary with an air of smug certainty masking furiously crossed fingers.

If you unpick the game further there are many hidden nuances. There is the helping hand of the blank tile which opens the door for a greater word but has no individual value. The high scoring letters which can be both a gift and game changer or a curse if left too late. The simple power of the letter ‘S’ to facilitate a turn as if in life everything is better in the plural.

It only takes one letter to make a link – and these can take varied forms. A tentative unfurling addition from a main stem or a full overlaying effect like the latticework of a carefully constructed pie. Both outdone by the more subtle approach of finding a word to be kindred to another on the same plane, invoking the use of multiple two letter words to fuse the pair.

The board’s bonus squares have an interesting influence on players. There are those that go for gold with total abandon, forgetting that their triumph may be short lived and in fact cause them to be surpassed by opening up other opportunities. But then some play scrabble with strategy, while others just seek a happy home for a word as if it were a lost child at the supermarket restored to its parent.

The word ‘scrabble’ itself means to scratch or scrape in a hasty fashion, desperate actions seemingly (the Collins dictionary refers to finding a foothold). But if anything, playing the game serves to do the opposite, unscrambling the mind in the act of gentle concentration. Presumably mathematically inclined devotees of Sudoku achieve the same result.

Perhaps the connection between scrabble and the mental image of an impending fall off a cliff is appropriate when you consider the board is so endlessly perpendicular. Thank goodness then for a bit of horizontal respite in between drops or no amount of (annoyingly) clever usage of a Q or Z on a triple letter square would be enough to cope with the sense of drama.

And always there is the holy grail, using all seven letters to create a ‘bingo’ and receive a fifty-point windfall. But is it worth it? The action can’t help but be so self-congratulatory as to be fundamentally un-British. By all means play the word, but at your peril, for your opponents won’t like you for it. Better to fly under the radar with incremental creep and win by a whisker.