After spending a few hours to clean up the banquet area, the Scrabble board came out and Chris Fosmire, Anthony Celona, and I dueled.  We played with what I call speed rules which stipulate no more than 2 minutes per move, no consulting a dictionary, but allowing the 2- and 3-letter word lists to be on the table.  While I recognize this is both slower than tournament Scrabble and more permissive its pace is break-neck compared to the geriatric version where one can consult one of three dictionaries and actively solicit advice from other players.  I had a few notable plays:

• In my first attempt to use all 7 tiles to spell ELOPING I created the word GLOTS.  I bullshitted that this was a colloquial term for the area comprising the glottis and epiglottis.  Chris detected my bullshit and I lost my turn, and my chance at ELOPING.
• Creating ZING to get a triple letter score on the Z led me to play ELOPER and created the word OPE.
  Chris: What does it mean?
  Me: I have no idea, it’s on the 3-letter word list.
  Anthony: Dictionary says it’s an alternate spelling of OPEN.
  Me: That’s a special type of lazy man’s elision if it’s from the South.
  Anthony: Nope, it’s apparently Middle English and was used as AWAKE is to AWAKEN.
  Me: I don’t know if I feel smarter or dumber now.
• My attempt at scoring big.
  Me: If you leave that trailing I open, I’ll give you a dollar.
  Anthony: IRON.  Your turn.  What were you going to spell?
  Me: QUYTING, probably for the first time in recorded Scrabble history.

I’m not as angry now that I know that QUYTING is only allowed in International Scrabble competitions and not American ones.