Scrabble is a game I’ve always enjoyed and camp has been the most common place for play.  Being an arrogant sum-bitch my goal is always to either use obscure words in an attempt to get someone to challenge me or use just plain bigger words than other people.

The floor has leveled somewhat by people bringing Scrabble Dictionaries and other game aides but vastly lengthened the time required to complete a game.  I’ve fought back with speed Scrabble.  Each player has two minutes to make a move and once time is up you have five seconds to start moving tiles, skip your turn or refresh your rack.  The greatest change upon implementing these rules was that Anthony Celona’s score skyrocketed.

We tried more versions where we eventually got move times down to a little under a minute and each reduction in time gave Anthony another leap in points until he became devastating close to victory at 50 seconds a move.  Once again, the less thought involved, the more probably Anthony’s victory.  At 15 seconds a move he’d be a world champion.

While playing Scrabble vicariously through Chris Fosmire, a rare Bingo occasion occured.  A Bingo in Scrabble is when one uses all 7 tiles at once and gets an additional 50 point bonus.  In this case, there was an open D and the letters R E R I BLANK E E.  Immediately we checked for DREERIER, but learned it was DREARIER, to which I responded “My ass that’s not a word.”  Immediately, Chris grinned, turned the board and put down DERRIERE.

C. Fosmire was tired of indirect Scrabble competition as I shot words through other people so we had a throwdown.  A narrow victory in the first game gave way to a narrow loss in the second.  I would have been able to snatch victory but I later discovered that Qugei and OqG only exist as words in Klingon.