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!