Just opposite of the listing for Gary Sinise, Kevin saw an event. He gasped, and then shut the OC Squeeze quickly. When he does this, it usually means that there is something he doesn’t want me to see, or more importantly, something he desperately does not want to do. Of course this only makes me want to do whatever it is more. And that, my friends, is how I ended up at The Neighborhood Cup on Sunday afternoon playing Scrabble at a scrabble club gathering.
I figured the outing would be cheap at $4.00 a session. What I didn’t take in account was the $7.50 in tolls it took to get there and the massive amount of beverages one can consume when they are concentrating very very hard at not losing too badly at Scrabble. Thankfully I no longer drink caffeine as the amount of decaf coffee and stress that is club Scrabble may have forced me into going postal.
By the way, I’m sorry for the lack of pictures, I was too busy thinking of words and not getting my ass kicked.
So club Scrabble….It’s a bit different than ‘at home’ (or “Normal People”) Scrabble as you have a timer set up very similar to chess, you have to keep your score as well as your opponents, you have approximately 3.2 seconds to come up with a fabulous word (see timer above), no one smiles, and nonsense words are completely legal. OK, so I guess technically they aren’t nonsense words as they are in the dictionary, but you won’t hear me using zyzzyva (a genus of tropical American weevil often found in association with palms) any time soon. Actually, zyzzyva is a bad example because of the ‘Z’ thing, but you get the picture.
Here’s another short list of two letter words that are completely legal. The full list can be found here.
zi – an honorific used in Imperial China
st – an exclamation of impatience
qi – Chinese life force (chi)
ny – to approach
ky – cattle (also a jelly!)(I’m so sorry I went there.)
io – an interjection
You may be asking yourself, “Well Moe, how did you do?”
I will respond in saying, “Not as bad as I thought I would.”
The first person I played against was a serious weekly club goer. She scolded me for most things that I did, including putting my fruit smoothie on the table where it might spill and ruin the chess-like counter thing and not shouting out my play score when I worked out the math. But I only lost by 70-some points. Which isn’t so bad I think. This lady was also kind enough to say, “You don’t play online and you got over 300 points your first time here? You’re a natural. You’ll be really good if you keep it up.” I think she was giving me a load of crap but hey! I’ll take compliments (and post them unbashed here) where I can get them.
Check out the cute pink timer thing. That timer ruined my life.
The 2nd lady I played was also a newbie like myself. We didn’t take the timer too seriously and she opened herself up a lot on the Triple Word score spaces. I beat her by over 100 points (I’m a natural!)(*har har!*) and felt that was good enough to end on. Normally a session would last for 4 games, but it was getting late in the afternoon and I didn’t want to spend my entire Sunday wondering if the lady with the squirrel embroidered sweatshirt was going to take me to school and show me what the letter ‘Q’ is really made of.
Oh sure, they LOOK all sweet and Grandma-ly...
Would I do this again? Maybe. But I think I might wait a few years until I’ve aged like a fine wine (*GAG!*) to attend again. Hell, if I’m a natural my skillz (with a ‘Z’ even!) will sustain and grow with me (*I’m totally gagging myself with the cheesiness*).
See you all next week!
