Kelly's "Scrabble Showdown" Rebuttal

I did in fact find a formidable Scrabble opponent in Chris. He started the game with "wort," and while he thought he was spelling the word for the projecting viral growth, it turned out that "wort" was an even cooler word, meaning a solution that's part of the beer fermentation process. A serendipitous discovery for a beer lover such as Chris, and a good start with double scoring thanks to the star. He would’ve gotten it anyway for St. John’s Wort.

Alas, I was still overly confident that I would prevail, as games like Boggle, Scrabble and Scattergories have always been my domain. But, not this time. I was plagued from the beginning by high consonant concentration in my letter selection and a desire to hang onto certain groups of letters in hopes of pulling a good seven-letter entry.

Chris would agree that it started going downhill for me when he built on the word, "muse." I had been giving my poker face for ten minutes waiting for Chris to go, as I had the letters o, x, i and e, and couldn't wait to lay down "moxie" for a good 15-20 points. Then Chris busts out “moron” and put me in my place while sending a subtle message to me. While I did save face with “Aceh,” as in Banda Aceh/Tsunami, Chris is correct that I just couldn’t get back on top.

Back on top, you say? Oh, yeah, I was winning for a while. You know the little box on the board with the letter distribution? (i.e., A-9, B-7, etc.) Well, I took that as the point distribution for blanks. (Hey, I hadn’t played in quite some time!) I had two blanks and put down “Iraq,” so with the ten-point Q and two blanks, which I credited myself 20 points, AND the double word scoring I utilized, I pulled in 47 points for Iraq, and Chris was visibly impressed at my Scrabble prowess. But, then we realized my mistake and corrected the scoring, and I only got 8 points or so for Iraq. An ignominous defeat, but we had a great laugh.

And yes, if anyone has a ticket hookup for the Scripps Howard National Bee, please get in touch!

Scrabble Showdown

So, what to say? I mean, it's the first post of our new blog. It ought to be profound, or at least provide some interesting tidbit of information. Well, I don't know about profound and it might not interest you but here goes...

I (Chris) "showed Kelly the ropes" in a game of Scrabble the other night. You're probably saying, "so what, big deal". Anyone who knows Kelly can tell you what a wordsmith she claims to be. Always with her head in a dictionary or telling me about some new word she's discovered. And let's not forget about her unusual interest in the National Spelling Bee. If they sold tickets to this event I can honestly say she'd be the first in line. So getting back to the Scrabble, we've been wanting to play for a while now but don't own the game. We go to Chez Target to pick it up but they're sold out. Who's ever heard of a run on Scrabble. I mean, are we experiencing some sort of Scrabble shortage. And not just Scrabble, Monopoly and Scattergories were sold out as well. Our only options were Sorry and Chutes & Ladders (which I seriously considered). So we finally find it at Toys ('backwards R) Us and bust it out on Friday. I start of slow but after a few Beam & Cokes I'm on a tear. I'm bustin' out words like okra, moron and tepid. Kelly has a few moments of her own but just couldn't seem to keep up with my superior skills. Or was it beginners luck? We'll see but for now I wear the Scrabble crown.