Friday, August 25, 2006

The hare and the tortoise

Both Delta and I were frowning at the board in fierce concentration. An intense Scrabble game was in play, with words and letters forging through, around, over and under each other, creating a delicate linguistic filigree. (And I don't use the term delicate lightly - twice already, we had accidentally shaken the table and thrown all the letters askew).

We'd eaten through most of the letter-collection, with only a handful of letters remaining in play. "You're blatantly going to kick my ass," Delta said, glancing over at the scorechart. I looked at the scores, and true, I was averaging somewhat higher numbers than he was. Averaging more than Delta! I certainly hadn't expected this. I puffed out my chest in pride, and succumbed immediately to the eternal faux-pas (cockiness) of the youthful inexperienced. With only a few letters left, it was pretty much a fait-accompli.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Delta came up with an 85-point word (I didn't even know there were such words!), and blew his competition (ie me) right out of the water. Whacked me out of the playing field. Lobbed me out of the tennis court. You get the idea. Who stores their Z's right till the end anyway?!

"Oh." I was crestfallen.

I hate sneaker-uppers.

1 comment:

Inihtar said...

I had forced family Scrabble time imposed on me when I was growing up, so it's not one of my favorite games -- yes, yes. Me, a journo, not like Scrabble!

But one thing that always baffled me was that the Qs and Zs ALWAYS came up at the end of the game. They'd always be quietly sitting at the bottom of the bag, and just when it looks like you're home free, they emerge -- just like that. I've never figured it out!