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After spending a few hours to clean up the banquet area, the Scrabble board came out and Chris Fosmire, Anthony Celona, and I dueled.  We played with what I call speed rules which stipulate no more than 2 minutes per move, no consulting a dictionary, but allowing the 2- and 3-letter word lists to be on the table.  While I recognize this is both slower than tournament Scrabble and more permissive its pace is break-neck compared to the geriatric version where one can consult one of three dictionaries and actively solicit advice from other players.  I had a few notable plays:

  • In my first attempt to use all 7 tiles to spell ELOPING I created the word GLOTS.  I bullshitted that this was a colloquial term for the area comprising the glottis and epiglottis.  Chris detected my bullshit and I lost my turn, and my chance at ELOPING.
  • Creating ZING to get a triple letter score on the Z led me to play ELOPER and created the word OPE.
    Chris: What does it mean?
    Me: I have no idea, it’s on the 3-letter word list.
    Anthony: Dictionary says it’s an alternate spelling of OPEN.
    Me: That’s a special type of lazy man’s elision if it’s from the South.
    Anthony: Nope, it’s apparently Middle English and was used as AWAKE is to AWAKEN.
    Me: I don’t know if I feel smarter or dumber now.
  • My attempt at scoring big.
    Me: If you leave that trailing I open, I’ll give you a dollar.
    Anthony: IRON.  Your turn.  What were you going to spell?
    Me: QUYTING, probably for the first time in recorded Scrabble history.

I’m not as angry now that I know that QUYTING is only allowed in International Scrabble competitions and not American ones.

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On Fridays I attempt both the Friday and Saturday Scrabble Calendar puzzle and today I solved both correctly:

Provide three anagrams for SERIF that end in S (fries, fires, reifs)
And another where I needed to make a seven letter word with the rack given (AEIIRTZ) and a free S, (SATIRIZE)

Which prompted the following:

Boss: Terry, is everything ok?
Me: Yeah, why?
Boss: On my way out earlier I saw you yelling “IN YOUR FACE!” at your desk and wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem.

Far from, I look forward to remembering my ignorance come Tuesday when I have three days worth of fail to endure.

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Now that the New Year has begun I’ve started to go through the Scrabble Calendar.  Each day’s puzzle is more ludicrous than the last with the people who complete them being capable of bending spoons with their minds.

Fake Examples:

What three standard endings can be added to WEEPING for a 14 letter word: SWEEPINGNESSES.

_E_U_ _ A _ R

With a rack of NNPHXTI, what tiles can you lay to spell a type of Egyptian Lily?  NENUPHAR.  Right on the tip of my tongue.

The worst are the “What’s your play?” pages where it’s an existing Scrabble board and you have to make the best play and guides are given like: 50 points – learning, 80  points – good, 190 points – expert and I get around 12.  On the plus side, none of the tiles fall out when I throw the entire calendar at the wall.

Happy spelling!

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I don’t want to say the staff reunion was a disappointment, Joe, Dan, Dave, Ed, Marc and myself could have just eaten pizza at CFS and I would have been happy but more people would have been enjoyable.   After two hours of volleyball involving feets of fat-crobatics like Chris Rinelli mocking somone then eating volleyball or Joe Naylor, Pat Toye and I making it appear that Bob Fosse was fielding a corpulent volleyball/dance troupe.

Later we played Scrabble and after staring at ACEILLH and thinking “ACHILLES” isn’t legal, like in a dream HELICAL came to me.  I did a word check found CHALLIE to exist and BAM 78 points.  Maybe I should give up Scrabble so soon.

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I don’t want to say the staff reunion was a disappointment, Joe, Dan, Dave, Ed, Marc and myself could have just eaten pizza at CFS and I would have been happy but more people would have been enjoyable.   After two hours of volleyball involving feets of fat-crobatics like Chris Rinelli mocking somone then eating volleyball or Joe Naylor, Pat Toye and I making it appear that Bob Fosse was fielding a corpulent volleyball/dance troupe.

Later we played Scrabble and after staring at ACEILLH and thinking “ACHILLES” isn’t legal, like in a dream HELICAL came to me.  I did a word check found CHALLIE to exist and BAM 78 points.  Maybe I should give up Scrabble so soon.

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For years my hobbies were obscure enough that none of many family dare get me anything related to them for Christmas.  That was until I decided to take up Scrabble.  I swore it off a few weeks ago, but apparently not loudly enough as I’ve received a Scrabble Calendar, Scrabble Dictionary, Scrabble Portable (which is quite nice), Scrabble Word-Builder and a subscription to the Scrabble MMORPG.

Next time I get a hobby, it’s going to be collecting Fabrige Eggs.

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Joe and I decided to get better at Scrabble.  We’ve played a bunch of practice games and started to memorize the two and three letter words.  Despite this, Chris Fosmire pwned us, partly due to his invented word “THROTLE”, I saw the tiles go down and assumed there was a third T.  I’ll never trust my boss again.

Anyway, after an amazing game of three-at-once words, Q’s on triple letter scores in two directions the scores still barely broke 200 (intermediate players should hit 500 to 700).  In a last ditch effort, we lasted two hours at Teejay Green’s playing two enraging games.  I had the tiles AAEIRTS and I knew there was a seven letter word in there.  After three minutes of staring, I played ATRIA for a whopping 12 points only to find today that ATRESIA would have have net me 76.  If someone had pointed it out to me, Joe and Teejay would have been picking wood out of their teeth.

Words hard.

Joe and I are looking for something new to become obsessed with, preferably something easier to become skilled at like sepak takraw (great video) or Sanskrit (good comic).

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Joe and I decided to get better at Scrabble.  We’ve played a bunch of practice games and started to memorize the two and three letter words.  Despite this, Chris Fosmire pwned us, partly due to his invented word “THROTLE”, I saw the tiles go down and assumed there was a third T.  I’ll never trust my boss again.

Anyway, after an amazing game of three-at-once words, Q’s on triple letter scores in two directions the scores still barely broke 200 (intermediate players should hit 500 to 700).  In a last ditch effort, we lasted two hours at Teejay Green’s playing two enraging games.  I had the tiles AAEIRTS and I knew there was a seven letter word in there.  After three minutes of staring, I played ATRIA for a whopping 12 points only to find today that ATRESIA would have have net me 76.  If someone had pointed it out to me, Joe and Teejay would have been picking wood out of their teeth.

Words hard.

Joe and I are looking for something new to become obsessed with, preferably something easier to become skilled at like sepak takraw (great video) or Sanskrit (good comic).

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I still very much prefer speed Scrabble (two minutes per play) versus traditional Scrabble which takes three times as long with scores only slightly higher.  These fast pace games appear to bring out the more primal end of play as the first game brought the following NSFW words:

CUNT, PENIS, PENISES, BRIDE, BREED, COY, and LUTS (anagram of SLUT but LUTS was worth more points) and once instance where a proper two person combination could have spelled DONKEYPUNCH across two triple word scores.