If you play a lot of Scrabble, you may look at words differently, committing obscure ones such as “guitguit” or “chthonic” to memory on the off chance that you’ll someday be able to use it against an opponent.

“I drive my wife nuts because I’ll be reading something and I’ll say, ‘Here’s a good Bingo (a seven-letter word in Scrabble lingo),’” said David Hurd, an avid player of the game. “Luckily she’s become pretty understanding of my eccentricities.”

Hurd plays Scrabble regularly on Sunday afternoons with a local club he helped start a couple of years ago with Mark Movic. He and Movic met about 20 years ago while working at Principal Financial Group Inc. They shared an interest in running initially, and have developed other common interests over the years, staying close after Hurd retired as Principal’s CEO.

The Scrabble club was born from a book Movic gave Hurd a couple of years ago as a birthday gift: “Word Freak: Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players.”

“Reading that book got both of us charged up, and we started to play a little,” Hurd said. “I don’t know why, but words have always interested me. Until I started playing Scrabble, I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary.”

The club started with people Hurd and Movic knew, and now about 30 people of varying skill levels and backgrounds are involved to some degree. Six to 10 members typically show up for the group’s weekly games at Java Joes Coffeehouse.

Games are timed, with each player getting 25 minutes on the clock at the start of play. Two dictionaries, “The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary” by Merriam-Webster and the latest edition of the National Scrabble Association’s dictionary, are used when words are challenged. Most games are played between two players.

“You keep score, and of course everyone likes to win, but it’s not that we’ve gone off the deep end and Scrabble is all we think about,” said Movic. “We talk and we joke around and enjoy each other’s company while we’re together.”

Suku Radia, chief financial officer of Meredith Corp., was recruited by Hurd to join the Scrabble club soon after it started. Radia said he is more apt to play during the winter, when he’s not as busy with outdoor activities such as golf and bicycling.

“I’m not a TV watcher, and I’m pretty much fanatical about doing something all the time,” Radia said. “I find that on a Sunday afternoon in the winter, playing two or three games of Scrabble is very relaxing.”

Radia first learned to play Scrabble while growing up in East Africa. His biggest challenge now in playing the game is that he knows six languages, so when he looks at the seven tiles on the rack in front of him, he often forms words in another language. But he’s been able to use this to his advantage a time or two. Last Sunday, he slipped a French word past his opponent and racked up a good score.

Radia tries to have some fun with the game and the other players when he’s there. “I bring a certain amount of levity to the game,” he said. “I like to tease people a little bit and lighten things up. I’m not the most serious, thoughtful player by any means.”

Chuck Riordan, a Des Moines veterinarian, is one of the top players in the Scrabble club based on his win-loss record. In January, he played for the first time in a National Scrabble Association-sanctioned tournament in Minneapolis, where he competed against some of the top-rated players in the country.

“I love playing people better than me,” Riordan said. “If I get behind, I just concentrate on trying to make my next best play. I try to learn something new from each game.”

Riordan likes how the game gets his competitive juices flowing, and it works his brain in a way that physical activities can’t. He used to run marathons and play a lot of sports, but he’s had to cut back on some of those activities since having his ankle fused last year.

“I’m really competitive, and since my legs are shot now, this gives me that release,” he said. “And it helps me with my job because my mind is the sharpest that it’s ever been. I use the same muscles to play Scrabble that I use with a tough case in my office.”

Riordan said he has “suffered great indignities” at the hands of his friends and family for his admittedly “geeky” hobby. One friend even bought him a pocket protector to poke fun at Riordan’s interest in the game. He knows that non- players don’t understand the charge you get from a good game.

“It’s actually one of the most fun things I’m doing right now, but I don’t want it to consume me,” he said. “I check my pulse from time to time to make sure I’m still playing golf with my friends, taking my wife out to eat, reading books and all those things that I always did before. It’s probably taken the place of TV in my life, if anything, and if I’ve traded TV for Scrabble, I’ve done a good thing.”