Spell-o-Fun

Circa 1993


I stood gazing at the plastic and colours that were all around. My eyes had become witness to a massive gallery of toys and play-items. My interest had quickly become fixated on the dark-red coloured and remote-controlled toycar. Remote-controlled toycars were technological marvels two decades ago and a prized possession for every playschool kid. The flexible steel radar with a light-top on its head enticed me through its plastic-and-cardboard encasing.

“Dad, I want that”, I pleaded with him tugging at his pants. My dad, however was in no mood to listen to me. He curiously looked around the store searching each and every corner of the place. I had a feeling he was going to refuse me that coveted toycar like everytime. He always managed to take me high on an emotional frenzy and made me do my homework on time over the delectable promise of that much-desired car. But I wanted to make the most of it since we had finally landed up inside a store that was meant only for toys. My eyes saw nothing else, neither could they see anything else. The toycar was all that fell in the line of vision of my eyes. “Daddy, Please!” I pleaded again with a mix of emotions and restrained anguish.

He left me there and headed towards a different corner of the store ignoring my heartfelt requests. Approaching a particular shelf, he bent down and pulled out a game. I ran towards him when I saw that he had a game in his hands. He finally had decided to buy something for me. My curiosity leaped like a rabbit and my heart beat like a crazy pair of drums. I saw the big cartoonish letters on the cover – “Spell-o-Fun” and was deeply puzzled.

“Yay kya hai, Daddy?,” I uttered with a sense of a failed attempt. “It is a very good game, beta. You will learn a lot from it,” replied my dad with an assuaging tone that was to turn out prophetic. But I was no one to be pleased. We returned home and I felt cheated of my remote-controlled toycar yet again. He made me sit across the board opposite to him. He pulled out the letters, set the board and prepared the score-charts. He then went onto teach me the game.


We play spell-o-fun with a fresh and empty board and a set number of letters. We see different coloured boxes on the board and try to score the maximum by placing our letters strategically. We learn new words, their permutations and combinations, and their meanings. We find trickier ways to score as much as possible. Letters start occupying the board. Our choices to place letters influences the other player's placement of letters. In turn, the other player's placement of letters influences our choices. Our freedom to use letters on the board increasingly gets controlled depending upon the placement of letters by us and the other player. Soon we run out of spaces to lace our letters. And the game ends, if either the letters get over, or if the board runs out of places where the letters could be placed meaningfully.



Life is like that board. Letters are our choices. The coloured boxes on the board are our opportunities.

Know well. Choose wisely. Play Safe!





Image from here.