scrabble

Monday night I was particularly unhappy and went to my parents' house so they could feed me and tell me I'm a good person. (They're good at these things.) As my mom and I sat down to play Scrabble, she said a little prayer: "Please let me win. Please let Obama win, too." I was a little concerned. I wasn't sure I wanted the future of our country to hang on the outcome of a Scrabble match. You see, I usually win.

I never took the lead once. She beat me by like 50 points.

four square

You know how a while ago my work wasn't going that well? I thought it was getting better, but then it got worse. I know you were waiting with bated breath for my next installment of Chicago pictures, but, well, you're just going to have to wait a bit longer while I freak out.

This week I finally started exercising, in a very small way - after-work walks with friends. Today Chatty and I took a walk that included the playground of my elementary school! We came at it from another direction and I didn't realize where we were until we were halfway across the field. I hadn't been there since June 1987.


Still the same four square court, although it's probably been repainted in the last 21 years. Wasn't four square the best game? Now I kind of want to buy a red playground ball.

darts

Last night I went to a birthday party. I was so not in the mood. I even considered calling in "sick" - I did feel a bit feverish but I think that was just because it was so hot out. The party was for my coworker Barkley, and I knew it was going to mostly be her friends from college, and making conversation in a noisy bar is one of my least favorite things in the world. But I like Barkley, and I'd RSVP'd yes, and you never know, I could suddenly decide I like bars, noise, and strangers.

It turned out to be awesome! Someone else I work with was there with a friend of hers, and she suggested darts. Turns out, none of the three of us who were playing knew how to keep score. In the beginning, we weren't even all that good at hitting the board. So we came up with our own scoring, which I will record here because I think it's funny.

Hit the wall: 1 point.
Hit the board: 2 points. (There are three darts, so by far the most common score was 6.)
Hit the red middle of the bullseye: 1500.

At some point one of the guys playing on the middle board explained the scoring, and we smiled and nodded and had no idea what he was talking about.

We kept adding rules as we thought of them. (Ok, it was mostly me.)
Green outer part of the bullseye: 500.
Red elsewhere on the board: 100.
Green elsewhere on the board: 50.
Two of your darts end up touching: double your score.
Hit one of the letters on the board: its value in Scrabble.
Hit inside a closed loop of one of the numbers: the value of the number.
Get a dart to stick straight up in the floor: 5.
Hit outside the metal circle but still on the board: 10.

It's possible that this is the most fun I've ever had in a bar. When I left home I told myself I only had to go for an hour and I'd make it home in time for Saturday Night Live. I got there at 8:45 and didn't leave til after 11:30. (So I had to watch this online today.)

Also: There were cupcakes.

cousins on facebook

One of the unexpected bonuses of Facebook: reconnecting with distant family members. My cousin (actually my dad's cousin's kid, so whatever that makes her to me) M.Dav lives in Kansas, which means I see her once every, oh, 5 to 20 years. But we're buddies on Facebook, so she let me know she was coming to town for a conference, and today we got together for brunch 'n' scrabble. (Actual, real-life scrabble, rather than the usual scrabulous.)

I had what I think was my best scrabble game of all time. Not only did I play all my tiles twice, I also played a wide range of other outstanding plays. End score was Towwas, 483; M.Dav, 225. If only I could've made 15 more points, it would have been truly awesome. (I had two points in my hand when I went out.) This is M.Dav pretending to look depressed over the final board:


We also went shoe shopping at a comfort shoe store in My Little Town (which is the kind of little town that has independently-run comfort shoe stores that also stock a lot of local-made jewelry and guatemalan handcrafts) and, because M.Dav has the same family foot issues I do, she was able to recommend some excellent shoes. My feet are very excited.

scrabulous

Here's how I hope the Scrabulous thing goes: It ends in some kind of settlement thing where they actually have a game called "Scrabble" on Facebook. And Hasbro and Mattel will make money off it, and everyone will live happily ever after, except for the guys who wrote Scrabulous.

Because, really, Scrabulous is the best reason for going on Facebook (well, that and Superpoke) and I think Facebook knows that and will work something out with the toy people. And the toy people will realize it's good for them if bazillions of teenagers discover their game.

I hope.

You think?

facebook

Ok, I have to take back what I said. You know how I declared myself to be over social networking sites? Yeah. I joined facebook. But I wasn't going to socially network! It's not my fault! S.Vix and B.Vas were tempting me with tales of this game where you click on places on a map and you get points and it's awesome. So I joined and, indeed, it was. It's called the World Traveler IQ Challenge and I am no longer #1 among my friends because my cousin Haw Haw is better than me at maps, darn her.

Of course, now that I've joined, I also have to obsessively search for friends on it. Grr. Stupid social networking sites, sucking me in.

scrabble

At the end of my first day at A-B's, she said, so, do you play any games? They don't drink, so it's all wholesome family entertainment at the A-B household. One of the first games I mentioned was, of course, Scrabble. It's not that I especially like Scrabble, but my mom loves it, so I play it all the time, and I'm pretty good at it. Well, they own Scrabble...in Norwegian. I eventually convinced them that, yes, I really did want to play and lose, it was fine, it would be good for my ego. My vocabulary in Norwegian isn't terrible, but it's a heck of a lot smaller than that of my opponents.

Only problem is, I didn't lose. I knew that strategy was a big part of Scrabble, but I didn't realize quite how big. I did get one special rule: If I played something and it wasn't a word, I was allowed to try again.

I think A-B and Mr. A-B realized they were in trouble when I played PATTE with the P on a double letter and E on a double word for 24 points. Which is not all that fantastic a play, but uses some basic strategy. (I rocked their Scrabble-novice worlds a few turns later when I made JA both ways on a triple-letter off the A in PATTE.)

Well, I said I didn't lose, but I also didn't win. When Mr. A-B played the last of his tiles and ended the game, I was about 30 points ahead. But I had the W in my hand and A-B had the C - those are worth a ton in Norwegian Scrabble because they're rare in the language, and they're rare in the language because they're only used in words that are borrowed from English, like "waldorfsalat" and "camping." The problem is, none of the three of us had any idea what words had been officially borrowed from English, and therefore would be in the dictionary, and which are just English words that everyone uses all the time. So once we'd subtracted a bazillion points from A-B and me and given a bazillion points to Mr. A-B (for going out first), he and I tied.

So the next night we agreed to play without the C and the W. This time, I won. That's my seven-letter word going vertically near the right of the board. (SLAPPER. I don't really know what it means, except that "Slapp av!" means "Relax!")


I totally lost the third game - I played my last vowel, an Å, about halfway through the game and spent the rest of the game staring down the barrel of a bazillion Js and Ms and whatnot. But that's ok. I still impressed the heck out of them in the first two games.

Here's my favorite play of all three games: Mr. A-B had (foolishly) played ORD close to a triple word score. So I added FJ in front of it to make one of the few words we've borrowed from Norwegian - and a whole bunch of points. I was proud.

Of course, if they ever learn a little basic strategy, I'm done. My only hope is to play them in English next time...and even then, who knows.

speed cubing

This week I'm reading intern applications, which includes reading all the writing samples they send in. (Well, not *all* - I give up on the boring stories after a few paragraphs, and some people send so many, I can't read them all.) The applications I've gotten so far have been of unusually high quality, and I've read a lot of really interesting stories - including a profile of a kid who competes in speed cubing. As in, Rubik's cubes. This website lists official world records like "4x4x4 fastest time" and "3x3x3 blindfolded" (blindfolded??), plus the unofficial ones like "Unofficial World Record for solving Rubik's Cube with feet." And the times are insane. The guy in the story could solve a Rubik's cube (with hands) in 16 seconds. Sixteen seconds??? I've never solved one in my life!

I couldn't find the intern applicant's article online, but here's another one.

boggle queen of the universe

I just got the best Friendster message ever. In fact, it may be the best message of any kind ever. It's from someone I'll call "Dave." Because it is his name and because, like, everyone is named Dave. He was a friend of mine in grad school - I haven't seen any of these people in about four years, and I only barely knew [unusual name redacted], and had no idea that he knew Dave.

From: David
Date: Friday, December 29, 2006 8:11 PM
Subject: Boggle
Message:

[my name]!

I just was talking to my friend [unusual name redacted], who mentioned that his wife was the best Boggle player ever in the history of humankind. Then he hesitated and said, "but she did meet one girl who is her match." Then I deduced that he was talking about you! I was much amused.

Hope all is well out east! Happy holidays,

Dave

settlers of cataan

So, it is basically impossible for me to go anywhere in D.C. without running into people I know. Yesterday afternoon I was killing time before that holiday party and saw someone I know at Starbucks. We'd been trying to get together so she could teach me to play Settlers of Cataan, and this was the result:


...Today I went downtown for two hours in the middle of the day to sit in that same Starbucks and play a board game with the friend, her husband (above), and a friend of theirs who was visiting from out of town. It made me wish I had weeks off with nothing to do more often. Like, say, all the time. Except then I would need to have all my friends quit working, too (or be willing, like this friend, to take two-hour board-game lunches), and I don't see that happening.

planarity

This game is totally addictive. Consider yourself warned.