board again
QWERTY scores 63 points on a triple word square
Luis scrabbles to think of inventive uses for his old keyboards
Admittedly, it might seem like a keyboard that you aren’t going to type on anymore is completely useless. I mean really, at that point it’s just a bunch of plastic letter tiles arranged in a loose grid. But hang on a second! What else uses letter tiles arranged in a grid? Scrabble! What could be more retro and whimsical than a Scrabble set using keys from vintage Macs?
The first step was to clean the keys. I did some tests with different methods of cleaning (see this month’s How To guide) and after satisfying myself that none of them would do any harm to the plastic or the lettering, I went for the easiest, and loaded all the keyboards into the dishwasher. When they emerged an hour later, hot and steamy, I was in awe of how clean they were. They looked almost literally new! So new, in fact, that I was briefly tempted to just list them all on eBay for £20 each. But to do that, I’d need to test them and I couldn’t do that until they thoroughly dried out. I’ve no idea how long it would take for all the water inside the case to evaporate, but it’s probably at least 48 hours and I’m much too impatient.
Numeracy niggles
A standard Scrabble set has 100 tiles, which makes it sound like you would only need four keyboards. But of course, the letter