Smithfield — Melissa Dooley looked at the letters on her Scrabble rack, shook her head and whispered, “Rats. Double rats.”

It had been that kind of night for Dooley, who had been stuck with low-scoring letters against her opponents, Phyllis Henry, Don Bell and Ossie Fields.

Finally, Dooley placed her letters on the board, closed her eyes and waited for the scorekeeper to announce her points.

When the tally came in at 28, Dooley celebrated. “I did it,” she yelled as she threw her arms in the air. “I got more than 10 points.”

Last Monday, Dooley joined seven other people at the Scrabble Circle at the Public Library of Johnston County and Smithfield. “I haven’t played Scrabble since I was probably 10,” she said. “I was bored off my gourd, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so I came here. I was sick of watching TV so I said to my husband, ‘Are you coming with me?’ He said ‘No,’ and I said ‘See you later.’”

Dooley was making new friends and learning new words, such as “avei,” or the omen of a better age. Within minutes, she had formed a special bond with Fields, who has been playing Scrabble for 50 years. Although he won the Scrabble game, Fields has a hard time beating his son, who majored in English at Davidson College.

“The main strategy I use when I play Scrabble is try to beat my son, and I can’t do it very often,” Fields said. “He lives in Charlotte, and when he comes to visit me, we play Scrabble. He is about the champion of Mecklenburg County.”

Bell managed to get a few laughs from his opponents when he accidentally misspelled a word. He pulled a few tiles from the rack and placed them on the board to spell “firms.” Instead, Bell came up with “frims.”

“I hate to use that S,” Bell said. “I hate for you to use that place because I was going to,” Fields said.

Camille Tamlyn, an assistant librarian in the reference department, came up with the idea of creating a club for “Scrabblers.” “People have just been excited about the club,” Tamlyn said. “It was so cute. This lady called me and said, ‘I usually play Scrabble with my family when it snows. We stay up until 3 a.m. Why doesn’t it snow anymore?’ I said, ‘You have to come play with us.’”

Tamlyn grew up playing the game with her sisters, mother and grandmother in Brooklyn, N.Y. Everyone wanted to win, but they kept the game friendly, she said. Tamyln wants that practice to continue with the Smithfield club.

“We were playing it in all good fun, and I think that is important,” she said.

The Scrabble Circle meets from 6 till 7:45 p.m. Thursdays at the library, 305 E. Market St. For more information, call Tamlyn at 934-8146 or write to ctorchiano-tamlyn@pljcs.org.