friday night Scrabble club smackdown...

Last night was a Scrabble club smackdown at the home of our fearless club director ... and his wife. I had missed the last of these and so I have to imagine that without my presence it was just a boring and hum drum sort of gathering and not at all the blast that it was last night. (I keed, I keed). Lisa brought her husband, K-girl and I brought Kay, and Raf brought some European cheese and a good time was had by all ... except for the cheese. Kay was worried about attending and asked "I'm not going to have to play am I?" to which I bullshitted "um ... no ... I'm sure that you can just watch" (because as Elwood Blues said ... I didn't lie ... I just bullshitted a little). I was reasonably sure that they would drag her into a game before the evening was over and that is what transpired. Or maybe I should say that it's all fun and games until somebody loses an "i".

I did not keep a record of the games for blogging purposes because these were "fun games" and because I was feeling lazy (it was more the later than the former). The first games were Raf and Martha (the later of which managed a 132 pt. play that blew Raf just completely out of the game); Kay and Lisa's husband (our two resident teachers); and Lisa, Brad, and me. Yes, you heard that last part right. Borrowing a page from my college days where we would all team up against my college roommate for Trivial Pursuit Lisa and I both challenged Brad to a game and Brad eagerly accepted. Sadly, oh so very sadly ... Brad beat us ... badly ... as in by almost 100 points. Brad scored two bingos to our none and well ... it just wasn't pretty. My best contribution to the game was my suggestion to add PEA to the earlier play of BRAIN which extended it to the triple word score for 45pts. (we figured out later that, in my typical fashion, PEABRAIN* is a phoney that went unchallenged). As for how Kay did ... she did very well for herself. Not using any cheat sheets and not having played nearly as much as Lisa's husband does (since Lisa just beats up on him all the time) Kay managed to be within 20 points of him at the end and his last play was what really sealed the deal (it had been a close game).

The next game I played Raf and we just kept cracking each other up while Brad played Lisa's husband and Lisa played Kay ... sort of sounds like a Scrabble orgy doesn't it? Brad beat Lisa's husband, Lisa beat Kay, and I beat Raf (by a narrow margin ... and aided by the bingo FANTASy). Lisa told me that Kay played a good game and that she was impressed with her level of play for not really doing it. Later they would ask why Kay doesn't play more often and I said that she just seems intimidated since she feels her thing is more math and less words. Brad, like many of the other people I met at the tournament, said that math people actually do better at Scrabble because they think in terms of patterns and maximizing their score better than a word freak. I can believe it too. Lisa's husband brought his "A" game and seemed to play on a higher level than he said that he usually does and Lisa noticed it too. Maybe he'll beat her sometime soon and demoralize her for our next meet-up ... wish.

Kay had to leave and collected K-girl, who had been playing with the other 11 year old in the house. Martha then decided to take me on again since we had only played once and I managed to beat her. She schooled me hard by beating me by well over 100 points (actually I think it was over 150 points). Her first bingo really was descriptive of our game with HUsTLED and she later played another bingo and I can't even recall what it was. Ouch. I'm not sure how the games in the other room went except that Lisa's hubby was doing very well and Raf was getting schooled by Brad. I really enjoyed how comfortable that the environment was and how we were able to laugh and be obnoxious, in our own Scrabbley way, without getting thrown out of a bookstore or a tournament. It was funny how someone would think of some fanciful word and we would all run off to one of Brad's computers or an OWL2 book to check it out. Brad brought out The Long List from the NSA and Lisa found an awesome ... if not improbable ... word with CARPETBAGGERIES which had us in stitches for a good 10 minutes and became a theme of the night.

After that last round of games Lisa went home and that left Raf, our Scrabble hosts, and me to discuss philosophy, Scrabble, religion and politics, Scrabble, media influence, Scrabble, and some more Scrabble on an even geekier level. I think that I came out of there late last night with at least a dozen ideas for future blog posts based upon the various subjects that we talked about. Something that I'm starting to realize about Brad and Martha is that they are eerily like me and I guess that explains why they read my blog. I have been getting to know them lately and I've found it interesting how many times that our thoughts are on the same wavelength about something, or we've read the same books, or we're making the same obscure references and getting each other at the same time. It's funny and wonderful all at the same time. At one point last night Brad trotted out his Homestar Runner action figures (which BTW ... Trogdor and I share a birthday); at another point Martha, Raf and I were talking about comparative religious perspectives; and at another point we were all talking about our favorite old tv shows and their greater social impact on our culture.

All in all it was an awesome evening and I can't wait to do that again. I hope that Kay will now see that she can play Scrabble too and will both play me when we're just sitting around and will come to club or other club events and play others as well. We'll see...

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